Watch a video from Democracy Now about Data Center development on Tribal Lands. Many governing bodies like Tribal Councils or City Councils sign nondisclosure agreements (NDA) with developers of data centers that prevent citizens from knowing what kinds of deals their governing body makes. Link below to segment.
Krystal Two Bulls, Executive Director of Honor the Earth is interviewed by Amy Goodman about tribal nations pushing back on data centers on their lands, many in water stressed regions such as Utah.
Data Centers for A.I. are also drawing Americans’ ire with concerns about fresh water use, land use, property values, and quality of life when a massive data center builds within 25 feet of your property. I live in Virginia, ground zero for data center development promoted by Glen Younkin, past Governor. Abigail Spanberger, the current democratic governor, is promoting data centers for rural communities which seek the income from taxes that such gargantuan projects offer. I believe this is misdirected. We are a water-stressed state from drought. Our farmland, meadows, and forests must be protected as a natural failsafe against drought and rain bomb events that ravage landscapes without increasing the watershed. Also, after construction, most centers will run via A.I. and maybe a few employees. Is it worth the impact on our natural resources for a short term gain? Voters will decide.
This report has been downloaded by dozens of readers. It discusses the impacts of data centers on the environment and communities while advising business developers about the relative risks they face should communities say yes and then later, when the impact is fully realized, turn against them.
Nature teaches more than she preaches. There are no sermons in stones. ~ John Burroughs
In 2024 my daughter gifted me a small book, John Burroughs, The Gospel of Nature published by Applewood Books. The book is part of the American Roots series of books published by Applewood. It is a treasure that can be carried in your pocket as you take your walk in the woods.
Nature writing is an American tradition and we have many great writers who have each been inspired by this wonderful land we call America.
At present, however, we have leaders who look upon our most iconic landscapes only for the minerals or forests to be exploited for industry and profit. Many of our public lands are vulnerable today due to legislation signed into law by our current president and Republican party. The president has devoted most of his business career to exploitation of people and places. Now in this 250th year anniversary of our nation, we are understanding the full impact on the values we have enshrined as fitting – for our Republic. We as yet know whether the American psyche and will can withstand the forces of anarchy that currently pillage our natural and economic treasure. My own belief is that liberty and truth will win out. I just hope I live to see it.
To salve my broken heart I turn to nature. Below is a first draft of A Long Walk in the Woods, a memoir I am crafting which is almost entirely based on the principle that the land where we live forms much of our character.
Introduction
It began in Tennessee.
As an infant “the woods” encompassed a living room, and my bare feet searched for purchase only months after my arrival. From there to the front yard, and much later to the street on a Schwinn bike. My paternal grandparent’s farm in nearby Watauga served as a touchstone. All the while my body stayed close to the soil, the trees and the miraculous creatures of ground, water, forest and air that delight youngsters who are awake to the Creation.
The Watauga House, still unfinished in 1906, was purchased for $600 when my grandparents were married. My grandfather and uncle finished the interior. Here it is today still maintained in its classic beauty:
My grandparents’ farm house in Watauga, TN.
I was born into a military family so my adventures were destined to encompass “the woods” of a continent. For eight decades I’ve been in discovery of “woods” and curious about the humans who call them home. These stories are a memoir of hope and conviction that we can restore “the woods” when we realize we are a part of them.
Awareness of “woods” is present in the body as we grow up and all through our lives. Each infant comes equipped with knowledge of Earth begun in their Mother’s body, listening to the sound of her voice and the beating of her heart. All through gestation, a newly developing life gains greater awareness of interconnectedness, i.e. association, as life-sustaining and that awareness persists in us to our death. It may dull over a life in which a child is not afforded access to the greater scope of nature, and it can also be deaf or blind to the life-giving natural world by living in unnatural conditions. Parents must cultivate that essential knowing though wonderment and exposure. Every little person should touch Earth soon after birth. Feet in the warm soil, face in the sunlight and breezes, a garden of scents and color, or a puppy are delightful means to the know the “woods”.
Though I currently live in an urban environment, I consciously seek out little havens of nature and there are plenty: a simple window box of flowers, the deep grass in an unmown lawn into which we may roll in its cool embrace breathing in the scents of plant and earth. Other “woods” may be:
A bench on a trail in a botanical garden under shading trees;
A walk in an urban forest animated by birdsong or cicada choruses;
The wonder of farm, field and stream; a vibrant farmers’ market among neighbors;
The fragrance of upturned soil basking in the noonday sun in your garden;
The joy with friends on a golf course edged by trees; the feel of spikes penetrating the closely mowed green and the scent of rich earth underneath;
A long walk on the beach where white sails fly and skimmers dip and dine;
The lovely song of a Carolina warbler that cheers the heart;
Fishing along a stream, lake or ocean; plop of frog and buzz of dragonfly wings;
Light playing through water or rainbows sparkling across the mist from a sprinkler;
Rain on a hot day with the window open and the curtains afloat;
A teacup tidepool of hermit crabs and keyhole limpets on a rocky beach.
The fact is every living being is born of nature. We “recognize” its features, scents, and touch in myriad ways because we all belong to the same Mother. We are all made of the same “stuff”. Wherever I have resided for a time, there are perceptible Earth energies, no matter how much concrete may lay over it. That lovely little plant will find its way through a crack in the surface, or a tree root lift that sidewalk. I cheer my kin on!
“A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.” ~ Aldo Leopold
We see this phenomenon in the seven states who have been drawing down the Colorado River Basin water resources to the point of an emergency, and now in the proliferation of data centers in support of AI. In both cases large scale industrial projects drive decisions rather than prudent decision making with a land ethic (meaning the best decision making by a thinking community).
Citizens are finding themselves in a water crisis across seven states who utilize Colorado River Water, or in the fact that citizens in U.S. states are in a quandary as data center developers pressure them to either sell their homes or face the whine, pollution, grid and water overuse of mega data centers built in their backyards.
These kinds of abuses and overuses of the planet’s generosity occur without an ethic that all agree upon. Aldo Leopold made the greatest contribution to this discussion in his landmark essay, The Land Ethic. Leopold considered a land ethic as a dynamic outcome of a thinking community working together for the best outcomes for both the biotic health of the land and for people. The quote above sums up the concept.
When the Colorado River Compact, which includes seven states that utilize its waters, discussed how they could work together to share this great river’s resources, they did so in spite of a basic fact: the river experiences periodic one-hundred year droughts as shown in fossil records and tree rings.
Americans living in these states have witnessed a long-term drought that has all but emptied the two giant reservoirs, Lake Mead (lower basin states) and Lake Powell (upper basin states).
Desert states like Arizona and California, have sucked the regions dry to support enormous growth in cities and agriculture. Before building the Hoover Dam to create Lake Mead, Congressmen in 1878 sent John Wesley Powell to assess the southwest region for its potential for development of the western states. He returned after 18 months to deliver a sobering conclusion: the arid region is unsuitable for large scale development based on available water supply and geological aspects of the west. Read a summary of his report here.
Today, nearly a century later, mega-wealthy oligarchs who developed artificial intelligence (AI) want to build huge (thousands of acres) data centers to power AI. The horses are ahead of the cart again as the public isn’t sure they want AI to be developed without careful discussion and oversight. Virginia, a drought-stressed state, has hundreds of data centers clustered in the northern part of the state and are salivating for land in rural area. They bully landowners, promise huge tax income while drawing large amounts of fresh water from aquifers. The trend is to push out home owners, farmers, and even small townships, by offering as much as $12M an acre. Some owners are pressured when neighbors sell and leave other land owners whose homes, farms and enterprises are their treasures. Emissions from gas-powered turbines, noise pollution, and hidden impacts such as the water required to produce the power to run the data center are unsustainable and undemocratic. Read this recent executive summary of data centers pros and cons from CERES, a nonprofit that supports sustainable business solutions.
What is missing is the values-discussion that Aldo Leopold described that is a dynamic process within a thinking community. It is an ongoing discussion that considers the health of the land when making decisions that could decrease its well-functioning. Read The Land Ethic Below. **This is one of the most downloaded files on my blog. People from all over the world read it. My own view is that no one from the scientific community has analyzed “how to live on a piece of land without ruining it” better than Aldo Leopold. See the Aldo Leopold Foundation located in Baraboo, Wisconsin for more about his legacy.
“The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality,” Wilkerson writes. “It is about power — which groups have it and which do not.” ~ Caste, by Isabel Wilkerson
America is beset with a wound of spirit. Slavery, or the subjugation of others based on skin color, origin – or any other arbitrary distinction -is an ongoing contradiction in our Constitutional lives yet to be resolved. Today, Black Americans are still struggling for equal representation. Now, with the striking down of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, are we back at the basic question: Do Black Americans have a right to equal representation in voting districts? We are at another make or break moment. Is the Supreme Court right that there is no longer a need for federal oversight of district maps in southern states which have historically worked to suppress the vote of African Americans?
Human beings can be vicious, murderous, and also kind and loving…and everything in between. We are a complex species with potential for good or bad. Our canon of law traces all the clever ways we try to obtain power.
For millennia, humans have sought distinctions that give them a false rationale, stemming their sense of guilt when taking what is not rightfully theirs. More advanced cultures are more tolerant, making judgements based on how people act in various situations.
Much of this wisdom of the ages was on the minds of our founders when we set out to establish a new kind of government based on equality. Yet, most of them owned slaves and denied poor whites privileges who did not own land. Over our history as a nation, Americans have subjugated and disparaged African Americans, Irish, German, Slavic, Italian and Chinese immigrants, and Native Americans. The Constitution and Bill of Rights, and ongoing adjudication in our courts, continues to refine how we live together and who gets a “slice of the pie.”
Isabel Wilkerson explains in her landmark book, Caste (2020) that she set out to discover the origins of our discontent. In her lengthy study, interviewing thousands of people, the things that divide us the most are not so much color or gender but rather about who’s got power.
In a 2023 interview with Oprah Daily, she was asked about the banning of Caste from libraries across America. She responded, “In writing Caste, I had to do a tremendous amount of research into India and Germany during the Nazi era. The Nazis studied the United States’ Jim Crow laws in creating the Nuremberg laws. We are coming perilously close to the spirit of what they were doing in another century with the banning of books. It’s revisiting a past that we should never want to experience again.”
It seems to me that we are at a new juncture in determining whether a redistricting map achieves the goals of the party submitting it for review: to determine whether it serves to weaken the moral principles of a Republic to achieve a new form of government, i.e. an autocracy based on white male supremacy and Christian Nationalist ideology. Yes, it is a grab for power, but much more, right? It seeks to tamp down the voices of Black Americans who are seen as opposing white power and privilege which for centuries enslaved generations. Sound familiar? I think we are right back at Reconstruction.
There have been 9 generations of Americans since the ratification of the Constitution. Our form of federal governance has been discussed and amended by citizens over our Republic’s history as we labor together to create a more perfect union.
Over the last 80 years however, that “conversation” has gradually intensified until the present moment. The rule of law and civil rights are ignored. Corruption is flagrant. The treasure of America is being raided and spent without Congressional oversight.
Dark money has bored into the election system, causing candidates to find more substantial sources of funding to win a race. Citizens United, one of the most consequential Supreme Court rulings on the election system, has diminished the vote of the people. The rich and powerful have steadily gained greater influence.
The American citizen is the last and greatest bastion of our freedom and justice. But how do we become the kind of citizens who know how to wield power or identify its misuse by our representatives and administration?
I can only share my own experience to describe how I learned about my government and the roles a citizen plays to fulfill his or her obligation.
As a child and teen my parents led discussions at the dinner table about our nation’s history and, at times, of elections and why they voted for a candidate. Often, my mother and father diverged on candidates which was fun with spirited debates. This was how my sisters and I realized the nature of democracy: it is participatory.
In public school, we students learned how and why our form of government was established, and what rights are guaranteed and rules of order. Social studies and civics education was integrated into K-12 education. Debate clubs offered students instruction on how to defend ideas while learning to respectfully listen to opposing views. When Congress functions in this manner it is called bipartisanship. Compromise is the core.
Public institutions further reminded us about democratic behavior. Churches, clubs, libraries, museums, and public leaders across many disciplines modeled how we treat and care for each other as citizens and neighbors. Standards of moral behavior kept the Republic steady. No one is above the law in a democratic nation.
My parents and grandparents also supported our education with expectations we would apply ourselves to learn a body of facts and skills that prepared us to go out in the world. Then, there were generally accepted truths and facts shared by three TV channels. Diversity of thought and opinion were available in numerous print magazines and journals. People read books, journal articles, and local newspapers. We exchanged opinions face to face.
My parent’s love of reading was contagious. Biographies, literature, and poetry – culture from across the world – was brought to us as we read together or listened to discussions. I recall my father reading Sherlock Holmes mysteries out loud on a winter’s day around a roaring fire. How was this possible? There were no cell phones, no social media. And, in our small southern town in Tennessee, no business was open on Sunday. There was time and quietude. We were not wealthy or powerful people. Our relatives were farmers and skilled laborers. They all understood that dreams could be fulfilled with a good public education.
I do not expect that we could or would even wish to go back to those “slow” times, but maybe we might look back to understand how to raise up citizens who are curious, well read, and able to function as a living guardrail to keep our democracy fit and strong.
A key skill is the ability to discern when ideas that are opposed to a healthy functioning democracy rise up as they do from time to time. Today, American citizens can barely make heads from tails with an onslaught of disinformation and outright lies. AI enables citizens to create false videos to fool an electorate. We are all to blame for the mess we are in today.
Should we wish to keep our democracy, we must seriously confront these issues. Working locally to speak truth to power; to discipline ourselves to listen respectfully to ideas you may abhor. But listen we must.
We are the guardians of freedom, of liberty, lest we neglect our obligations and let it slip through our hands.
The first steps taken by the incumbent regime sought to selectively erase American history:
Fired the national Archivist putting the national archives under the watch of the Secretary of State who also holds several other major offices for which he has no training; the minions of fascism bore away in the Archives like termites in channels and holes under no sunlight of public observance;
Deleted web pages of government agencies, replacing articles and documents to reflect a racist, white history and removing all they call “woke” (i.e. racial justice; the mistakes America has made at home and abroad as we have learned how to live up to the high ideals of a true democracy where truth is key; the most egregious are the removal of civil rights struggles over our history, and the multicultural nature of our population from our inception: a. erasure. deletion of language of human rights and therefore human dignity; b. lying about the truth [misinformation] thus disabling citizens of a shared history, shared reality; c. denigration and shaming as a way of instilling fear and removal or disempowerment);
Harassment and legal actions against America’s most prestigious universities in order to make Boards of Governance to bend to their will;
Attacking science institutions and ignoring the illegality of impoundment of funds authorized by Congress.
Harming the public and worldwide population by denial of climate change; removal climate change research and monitoring facilities and staffing; withdrawing from global climate and health agreements and initiatives.
Disempowering political opponents and the public through legal, social media, and law enforcement activities meant to shame and induce fear;
Abandonment of the government’s responsibility to the public to follow the laws and regulations of a democratic Republic through our federal, state and local laws.
Acting against longstanding policies that have created peace among nations with longstanding allies across the world.
I never thought this could happen in the United States of America, but it truly is and we in the fight of our lives to defeat the evil doers in the trump regime that seek to install a Christian nationalist autocracy with unelected fascist ideologues like Steven Miller supported by the Heritage Foundation.
I fault the Republican party which no longer can claim any legitimacy in our Republic, our democracy. They abrogated their claim to moral fortitude by selling out the American people for an ideology inconsistent with democratic values. Indeed, looking over its long pursuit to enslave Americans whom they have long deemed unequal to white Christian males, we have tolerated it long enough. We must turnover this vile, dark element and once and for all declare and reiterate the moral force of our founders’ vision with a new one for modern times including a public awareness of its duty to guard against despots and their sycophants and the utter corruption of wealth in our politics.
Photo by Susan Feathers. A ghost crab on Santa Rosa Island, Gulf Islands National Seashore: sands of quartz crystal washed to sea form barrier islands.
Dear Senators and Representatives of the Republican Party,
This moment requires members of the Republican House and Senate to act decisively to protect the civil rights of citizens and adhere to Constitutional laws. Under your watch, the nation has never been more at risk of becoming another form of government: autocracy.
We the People have patiently waited for you to stand up for democracy. There is no more recent and brazen example as the persecution of Minnesota leaders and citizens. Pam Bondi’s request for voter roles is a clear violation of state’s sovereignty under law. Other cities have endured violations of civil rights by ICE but in Minnesota the worst of the far right ideologues of your once great old party are persecuting people it labels with a host of unamerican labels from elected officials right up to the White House.
We are not dealing with a “strong executive” but with people in key positions of power who have publicly stated their hatred of immigrants and their hatred of Democrats. Whatever happened to a nation in which both Republican and Democratic administrations were adhered to by citizens of all political views because all our leaders followed the rule of law and Constitutional laws.
My view is that we learned who DJT was in his first administration in which he pushed against the laws of our nation but was held in place by our guardrails against a despot: Supreme Court and Legislature. Now we have a stacked court of right leaning judges who have given immunity to a leader who is exactly the kind of person our founders wrote about who if he got into power would destroy the Republic. That is what we are witnessing, and, I have to say, is doing so with a lot of facilitation by you and your colleagues.
I am 80 years old, and I have never seen anything like we have in Donald Trump: an erratic, unstable human being; a person ignorant of our country and the world al large; a man whose mental health is deteriorating in plain view. We have never been more at risk in national security.
The killing of two Minnesota citizens by ICE who were protesting (their civil right) and the cowardly way in which Homeland Security reacted by calling them both insurrectionists is how dictatorships operate. Each family has a right to a full investigation. Life is not cheap in America under normal conditions.
I am begging you and your colleagues to stand up for the Republic! Protect our 250 years of striving together to make the best country we can. My God, the world is turning away from us. But do you know what I hold each of you most responsible for? Breaking the trust of the American people in such ways that you have weakened and endangered us. STAND UP!! Think about your legacy.
Sincerely,
Susan Lee Feathers
Devoted Patriot of American Democracy
Teacher, Writer, Active Citizen
Freedom, Nation’s Capitol. Photo by Susan L Feathers, 2013
Witness: from America’s ashes a global reorganization without US…
Mark Carney is the wise leadership America lacks. Americans at home are under attack from a vicious police force created by a rogue regime purportedly of the Republican Party. THIS cabal of small minded, unelected ideologues, has nothing to do with our Republic’s governance or American history. The man in the seat behind the Resolution Desk is a despot, a tyrant, and an ignorant and psychologically damaged man.
Kudos to Mark Carney and all the men and women who lead democratic governments across the world and who live in reality.
Americans enter a new world where we are a danger to the world and a minor player in world affairs. We can thank the MAGA party and the cowardly republican reps supporting and in lock step with a fascist movement tearing up our democracy in plain sight.
Americans, we must recover what we can, and then elect sober, intelligent leadership which can recover our values and come to terms with how this tragedy has happened to us. I suggest we study how Germany recovered after they, too, tried to destroy other nations and create a white male hegemony.
As an American, as daughter of a decorated WWII veteran, my heart is on the ground. In spite of that, I am actively working with my fellow Americans to recover the guardrails of our democracy, and then work to repair the damage to our collective belief in our country’s ethos.
Susan Feathers 