How the rise of massive datacentres strains Australia’s drinking water supply "Water demand to service datacentres in Sydney is forecast to be larger than volume of Canberra’s total drinking water within the next decade. In Melbourne the Victorian government has announced a “$5.5m investment to become Australia’s datacentre capital”, but the hyperscale datacentre applications already exceed the water demands of nearly all of state’s top 30 business customers combined."
the Guardian
Thirsty work: how the rise of massive datacentres strains Australia’s drinking water supply
The demand for use in cooling in Sydney alone is expected to exceed the volume of Canberra’s total drinking water within the next decade
The energy needs of 30 data centers that are planned or under construction across the Carolinas, according to one industry report, would more than double the current energy needs in the Carolinas. Projected demand on the power grid creates a slew of unknowns that North Carolina utility regulators have only recently begun to grapple with publicly. Read more at: https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/business/article312306586.html#storylink=cpy
One 10-second AI video on OpenAI’s Sora app takes about 1 kilowatt hour of energy – about 10 per cent of the daily energy used by an average German household. Netflix 1 hour’s streaming takes around 18 watt hours. One 10 sec Sora Video takes the same as watching 5 and a half of hours of Netflix. Alastair Alexander
Substack
Alistair Alexander (@reclaimedsystems)
A few days ago I posted that creating one 10-second AI video on OpenAI’s Sora app takes about 1 kilowatt hour of energy – about 10 per cent of ...
"The irony was hard to miss: the same month our union received layoff threats, OpenAI’s education evangelists set up shop in the university library to recruit faculty into the gospel of automated learning. The math is brutal and the juxtaposition stark: millions for OpenAI while pink slips go out to longtime lecturers. The CSU isn’t investing in education—it’s outsourcing it, paying premium prices for a chatbot many students were already using for free."
AI is Destroying the University and Learning Itself
Students use AI to write papers, professors use AI to grade them, degrees become meaningless, and tech companies make fortunes. Welcome to the deat...
"AI's rapid growth is depleting local water reserves around the world, from drought-stricken Chile to South Africa. Its physical footprint reflects a new form of colonial extraction; instead of silver and soy, now it is the cooling water that keeps the digital economy running." "These community struggles highlight a familiar pattern in which corporations and governments present data centres as engines of modernisation while downplaying their environmental costs." https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/3144490/ais-growth-is-depleting-water-reserves.
"So, when we arrived here at COP30, we were abandoned. We didn’t have access to water. We had a hard time finding meals. It was very difficult for our people, who had traveled for so long to get here. And the people wanted to be heard. We came in a large delegation, and we wanted to speak, and we wanted to be heard. But we were blocked."
Democracy Now!
Indigenous Amazon Defender Alessandra Korap Munduruku on Saving the Amazon Rainforest
Full interview with Alessandra Korap Munduruku, who led an Indigenous protest outside the U.N. climate summit in Belém, Brazil.
"Degrowth offers a counter-narrative. By deliberately reducing consumption, scaling back wasteful production, and prioritizing sufficiency over excess, societies can redistribute resources more fairly. Degrowth is not about poverty or stagnation; it is about shifting priorities. Luxury consumption, speculative finance, and high-emission production are curtailed, while public services, social welfare, and environmental protection are expanded."
The Asian Age
The Equality Hidden in Degrowth | The Asian Age Online, Bangladesh
In today’s world, growth is celebrated as the ultimate measure of success. Nations boast of rising GDP, corporations want to reach record profits...
Google Strives To Keep Data Center Water Use Secret After Judge Orders Records Released A Roanoke judge has ordered the Western Virginia Water Authority to release information related to a potential Google data center.
The Roanoke Rambler
Google Strives To Keep Data Center Water Use Secret After Judge Orders Records Released
A Roanoke judge has ordered the Western Virginia Water Authority to release information related to a potential Google data center.
 All over the world, Google tries to keep secret its water use
Serious $1 Trillion Crypto Price Crash Warning Sparks Panic As Bitcoin Drop Suddenly Accelerates "The bitcoin price has fallen almost 30% from its peak last month, plunging bitcoin into bear market territory and wiping $1 trillion from the combined $3.2 trillion crypto market, with traders panicking over a bitcoin crash nightmare scenario that could be suddenly coming true." https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2025/11/18/serious-1-trillion-crypto-crash-warning-sparks-panic-as-bitcoin-drop-suddenly-accelerates/
Informal recycling can involve washing the e-waste—often using bare hands—in acids such as “nitrates, sulfates, hydrogen fluoride, etc., to create slurry. Gold is extracted by mixing sodium cyanide to run off gold cyanide. Lots of toxic wastewater results from this process. The remaining slurry is dried and buried or burned. It’s very toxic and problematic to handle. Burying causes terrible leaching 10 or 20 years later, poisons the land and makes large areas unfarmable.
Gerry McGovern
Nature will recycle us