Great perspective! Thank you for sharing. I appreciate understanding better the water usage issue and also your thoughtful way to address economic concerns.
Of course the issue is not "data centeres" it is Data Center X in location Y. That's the only place to address the negative externalities. And the way to address that is by compensation.
This is actually a situation in which a Coasean solution wouldn’t be feasible, unfortunately. There are far too many people to compensate and it isn't reasonable to spend the time to determine who should be paid what due to the damages they incur as a result of the data center. Negative externalities, as with positive externalities, exist in the real world so it seems more important to stop their senseless spread rather than trying to spend a huge amount of resources to discourage or diminish their existence.
Great perspective! Thank you for sharing. I appreciate understanding better the water usage issue and also your thoughtful way to address economic concerns.
Great article Sam. You must get the facts out to the public!
Of course the issue is not "data centeres" it is Data Center X in location Y. That's the only place to address the negative externalities. And the way to address that is by compensation.
This is actually a situation in which a Coasean solution wouldn’t be feasible, unfortunately. There are far too many people to compensate and it isn't reasonable to spend the time to determine who should be paid what due to the damages they incur as a result of the data center. Negative externalities, as with positive externalities, exist in the real world so it seems more important to stop their senseless spread rather than trying to spend a huge amount of resources to discourage or diminish their existence.