22 comments

  • pyrophane1 hour ago
    &gt; Clean Air Act (CAA) Acid Rain Program (ARP) does not apply to power generation facilities that are not connected to a public electricity grid, commonly referred to as “islanded” power generation facilities.<p>This of course makes no sense whatever, as whether or not a power generator is connected to the grid has nothing to do with its environmental impact.
    • sensanaty1 hour ago
      It literally is just a cartoon villain plan. The AI companies look at something called the &quot;Acid Rain Program&quot; and think to themselves &quot;Fuck that, what&#x27;s a bit of acid rain going to do?&quot;. I truly cannot comprehend the mindset here as hard as I try
      • btbuildem55 minutes ago
        &gt; truly cannot comprehend the mindset<p>The mindset is &quot;if I could harvest your organs for profit I absolutely would, and I would make it illegal to protest against it&quot;
        • tclancy41 minutes ago
          That’s completely unfair. They would also rent the organs back to us on a subscription plan.
          • orbifold4 minutes ago
            Step 1: steal all of the worlds IP and make a judge rule it is fair use<p>Step 2: declare end of the Anthropocene (defined by man made influence on earth), while simultaneously accelerating mass extinction<p>Step 3: ???<p>Step 4: Profit?
          • Ekaros37 minutes ago
            Do not forget loans with APR starting at 24%. Recourse of course. With the collateral taken back if payments fail.
            • 0x45722 minutes ago
              I recommend wathching &quot;Repo! The Genetic Opera&quot; on this subject.
      • Avicebron1 hour ago
        I think you nailed the mindset with the &quot;cartoon villain&quot;.
        • lvspiff52 minutes ago
          Less Snydley Whiplash and more the pig guy from captain planet though
          • sterlind10 minutes ago
            Hoggish Greedly if memory serves. Regardless of one&#x27;s politics <i>Captain Planet</i> is so campy it&#x27;s fun to watch MST3K-style. Remember Linka from the Soviet Union? &quot;Imperialist pigs!&quot;
          • Schlagbohrer50 minutes ago
            Both of whom could happily sit together on a corporate board. It&#x27;s just capitalism!
      • consensus158 minutes ago
        The AI companies look at something called the &quot;endless government bureaucracy&quot; and they think to themselves &quot;fuck that, I&#x27;m not waiting 10 years for all that bullshit, I&#x27;ll just use the loophole.&quot; I truly cannot comprehend any other reaction because I would rather have my fingernails ripped out than deal with years of government bureaucracy.
        • Schlagbohrer49 minutes ago
          Government beauracracy, which provides things like democratic oversight, environmental protection, enforcing power grid standards and interoperability, construction regulations, etc? Would you rather we just didn&#x27;t have those things?
          • rangestransform20 minutes ago
            It should be mind numbingly trivial to stand up a solar farm and ram through some transmission lines in the desert, and mind numbingly hard to set up a temporary gas generator. We needed regulatory exemptions yesterday for clean energy, public transit, and EV charging.
          • malfist41 minutes ago
            You&#x27;re not thinking like a techbro. My startup shouldn&#x27;t have to adhere to those regulations, but everyone else should. In fact, once my startup gets established we should make even more regulations
        • inamorty31 minutes ago
          Do you get upset when staff have to wash their hands at your local eatery?
        • Jweb_Guru20 minutes ago
          Employees at the companies that do this stuff know exactly what these regulations are for and are violating them quite deliberately. They don&#x27;t actually think it&#x27;s &quot;government bureaucracy&quot; whatever they tell the public.
        • root_axis44 minutes ago
          What you label &quot;government bureaucracy&quot; is very often environmental protections working as intended.<p>One AI company&#x27;s &quot;bullshit&quot; is another citizen&#x27;s &quot;clean air and water&quot;. Since the AI companies don&#x27;t care about those negative externalities, the government can act help to mitigate the damage.
        • Muromec53 minutes ago
          I would rather take &#x2F;them&#x2F; going through fingernail ripping government bureaucracy for 10 years over &#x2F;me&#x2F; having acid raid, but hey, I&#x27;m just a egoistical and don&#x27;t see the Big Picture or something.
          • ahartmetz8 minutes ago
            &gt;Big picture Well, if you juuust let the rich get richer, something (intentionally left unspecified) will trickle down on you.
      • hn_throwaway_9950 minutes ago
        &quot;Cartoon villainy&quot; is the best possible way to describe this administration. I&#x27;m more than willing to accept lots of policy differences, but so many decisions just seem tailor made to fuck over 95%+ of the public. Like how could any sane person defend this?<p>It remains to be seen if the administration doesn&#x27;t successfully steal future elections, but the vitriol against data centers is a rare thing that has huge bipartisan support. <i>Texas</i> of all places largely has a competitive governor&#x27;s race because Republicans have stated they&#x27;re willing to vote for the Democratic candidate because she has supported a moratorium on data centers while Abbott supports them.
    • bob102957 minutes ago
      Most generators not connected to the grid are for emergency backup purposes. Granted, this carve out is now clearly being abused, but the original intent is quite rational.<p>If we enforced strict regulations on all generators without any exceptions at all, your sewage lift station might not have a backup source anymore.
      • jaapz54 minutes ago
        If that is the original intent, why did that not get added into the law? Explicitly specififying that the exception only applies to emergency backup situations would have solved this, right?
        • bob102944 minutes ago
          &quot;Emergency&quot; is a spectrum.<p>Would you be OK with one specific generation station temporarily emitting 3x more than legal limit (e.g., from the hours of 2pm to 6pm) if the alternative is a 5% increase in absolute probability of a multi-day regional blackout? What about a 10% increase? Where is your red line?
          • m46310 minutes ago
            Isn&#x27;t the US in a perpetual state of emergency?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_national_emergencies_in_the_United_States" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_national_emergencies_i...</a>
        • Ekaros40 minutes ago
          My reasonable guess is that they did not want to make those case that need off-grid generation too hard to build. And never considered that anyone would build any actually significant amount of off-grid capacity. At certain threshold grid just makes economic sense. So rational actors would never do that.<p>Sadly AI companies are entirely irrational actors so this really was rather hard to foresee...
          • Sanzig13 minutes ago
            Yep. The loophole is not hard to close, they could restrict the exemption to standby generators which only operate (1) in the event of a grid outage, and (2) for testing purposes.<p>For a genuine off-grid use case (eg: very rural locations), they could add a new exemption which allows installations up to X kW capacity per site where local grid connections do not exist. Set X large enough that it won&#x27;t negatively impact applications like cabins or nature retreats, but small enough that it&#x27;s not useful to a large operator like a datacentre.<p>Of course, this all requires a functional Congress... so good luck.
        • Muromec52 minutes ago
          Clearly codifying intent in a string of bytes is hard, especially if an alternative makes a nice sound folding into a pocket.
        • Marazan17 minutes ago
          The law is not a set of hard coded rules. It is an agreement between humans, tied up in unspoken conventions. The principle one being, don&#x27;t be a dick. The law always breaks down when it is treated as a hard and fast set of instructions that can be &quot;hacked&quot; by slavish adherence to precise language.
        • bpodgursky49 minutes ago
          Because congress passed the law in 1970 and did not expect we&#x27;d lose the ability to pass legislation that fixes minor problems with the original laws.<p>Since congress can&#x27;t do that anymore, to maintain a functional civilization we have to turn minor loopholes in the original law into load-bearing aspects of an industrial society.
    • voxic111 hour ago
      I think its so that like people don&#x27;t need to do an EPA assessment for their home backup generator right? They are very common where I live due to the instability of the power grid.
    • pfdietz40 minutes ago
      The effects of this will be reduced by the realization that these regulations can be changed in the future. No one will make a large capital investment if it could be shut down in a few years.
      • voakbasda24 minutes ago
        Most regulations provide a grandfather clause that exempt existing players in the game.
        • pfdietz1 minute ago
          There is no need in law for that. And if previous regulations were enacted in bad faith, it suck to be you if you depended on them.
    • manwe15048 minutes ago
      It seems pretty much how law (specifically common law) has always worked though. If Congress thinks the law should apply to them, then Congress&#x27;s job is to write a law that applies to them. The president and judicial branches are not supposed to make new laws, but rather to enforce the laws as written.<p>My reading of the EPA&#x27;s statement here is they also wanted to mildly warn the companies that if they ever in the future want to contemplate connecting to the grid (eg. to bring down costs), they should be aware that bypassing compliance now could have expensive consequences for them later. Of course, Congress (local or federal) could also change the law in the much shorter term, so there&#x27;s risk to them either way if they design without any forward thought for how to comply. On the other hand, if this inquiry to the EPA was merely requesting clarity on whether they are exempt from the reporting paperwork, but are using otherwise standard and compliant designs, then maybe the law is already working generally as intended.
      • miltonlost44 minutes ago
        Giving the benefit of the doubt to this President and his EPA that they are simply enforcing the laws as intended is foolish, irrational, and against all known evidence and their own words and policies and actions.
    • inigyou47 minutes ago
      But it does have to do with whether it&#x27;s interstate commerce!
    • Ekaros1 hour ago
      It does make some sense. There are some semi-reasonable scenarios where not that much power is needed and you use electricity.<p>Still they make no sense with data centres and there should be reasonably sensible name plate capacity on it.
    • joshstrange34 minutes ago
      No, no, no you don&#x27;t understand it&#x27;s beyond the environment, it&#x27;s not in an environment, it&#x27;s been towed beyond the environment.
    • charcircuit1 hour ago
      You are being confused by the names. A general name doesn&#x27;t mean it is a general law that applies to everyone.
    • techpression1 hour ago
      Pretty insane, expect data center to be data center + coal power plant soon, why bother with generators or the pesky local grid.
      • adamgordonbell1 hour ago
        Somebody mentioned that a solar panel field to power a data center requires a lot of impact assessment paper work and approvals.<p>Whereas natural gas generators do not.<p>Hence the runs on gas turbines, while solar panels are plentiful. ( Although I&#x27;d guess the consistency of power is a bigger issue. )<p>Running existing coal is now supposedly more expensive then putting in new wind or solar ... all else being equal.
        • jaapz52 minutes ago
          That might be a reason, but probably more relevant is the fact that when you want solar to provide all power for a data center, you need a lot of buffering capacity (batteries). And then you also need a back up for when the sun doesn&#x27;t shine... Which is probably a gas generator.<p>Easier to just install a gas generator then
          • inigyou44 minutes ago
            AI <i>training</i>, not inference, seems like it would actually be a good application for a solar powered DC because you could just checkpoint and pause when it gets cloudy. It might end up worth it for the free electricity.
            • rogerrogerr9 minutes ago
              If you think you are building God, and every second counts, interruptions cost you way more than measly electricity.
          • rangestransform18 minutes ago
            If we didn’t have stupid regulatory bullshit and protectionism, it would be cheaper to run a data center on solar and batteries in bumfuck Nevada
        • techpression56 minutes ago
          They should definitely use wind power, since you could use the fans to cool the computers at the same time!<p>I for one would love a nice HTTP status in the form of &quot;due to the weather being nice and calm outside, AI services are down, go outside and enjoy the day&quot;
          • Muromec50 minutes ago
            Imposing rules like that is what we are supposed to use religion for.
      • andsoitis54 minutes ago
        &gt; expect data center to be data center + coal power plant soon<p>Why do you think that’s likely?
        • inigyou44 minutes ago
          Because coal is the cheapest source of electricity that isn&#x27;t banned in the USA.
      • cucumber37328421 hour ago
        If coal doesn&#x27;t pencil out economically for the grid it still likely won&#x27;t pencil out economically for data centers even if you remove some of the compliance stuff.
        • techpression59 minutes ago
          Fair enough, I don&#x27;t know if it matters short term for massive buildouts, but I&#x27;m sure whatever comes out of this is not a benefit for anyone except the owners.
      • llm_nerd33 minutes ago
        A number of data centres have been proposed in Alberta, including a giant Meta one. Alberta has a derelict, obsolete power grid that can&#x27;t even serve the current population, so you might wonder how that is possible.<p>They&#x27;re coupling them with dedicated natural gas power plants. Meta finally stopped the green charade and simply dropped out of RE100, as they&#x27;re all just going full speed ahead on destroying the planet.
  • tastyfreeze2 hours ago
    Hmm... rules for thee but not for me. Sounds like the beginning of the end for the EPA. Two tiered rules breed resentment. There are already plenty of people that don&#x27;t like the EPA. Making exceptions just makes it easier to argue the EPA is useless or just a tool for oppressing the little guy.
    • mixdup1 hour ago
      &gt;There are already plenty of people that don&#x27;t like the EPA<p>And those people are the ones making these bifurcated rules undermining the EPA. The destruction is the purpose, it&#x27;s not incidental
      • sailfast1 hour ago
        Correct. The people that don’t like the EPA appointed their friends who also don’t like the EPA to run the EPA.<p>This is the playbook generally - PE vulturism, but for government agencies. And to their credit it kinda works. Just… not for citizens of the country they have sworn to protect.<p>Currently in progress at GSA, OPM, CFPB (for a decade+), Interior, EPA, labor, education… Nevermind I should’ve started with an exclusion list instead.
    • MisterTea1 hour ago
      &gt; There are already plenty of people that don&#x27;t like the EPA.<p>Rich assholes who are upset they can&#x27;t throw their trash on the ground. Anyone else is parroting propaganda generated by said rich assholes.
      • rpdillon1 hour ago
        I don&#x27;t think that&#x27;s true. There&#x27;s probably a valid critique that they&#x27;re doing their job badly.
      • cucumber37328421 hour ago
        &gt;Rich assholes who are upset they can&#x27;t throw their trash on the ground. Anyone else is parroting propaganda generated by said rich assholes.<p>Yeah, that guy who owns a liquor store on 7-mil and can&#x27;t make the $100k underground stormwater treatment it would take to pave his dirt parking lot pencil out and that city in the rust belt who saw a major manufacturer pack up and leave for a desert state because environmental compliance precluded expanding their site, all their grievances are illegitimate, they&#x27;re just simping for billionares and BigCos who wanna dump crap in the river.<p>People looking down their nose and categorically denying that there is collateral damage when you wave the wand of legislation is a large part of how the current populist got elected.
        • ceejayoz1 hour ago
          &gt; that city in the rust belt who saw a major manufacturer pack up and leave for a desert state because environmental compliance precluded expanding their site<p>The one that&#x27;s about to whine and demand Federal assistance when their water gets cut off because it ran out?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2026&#x2F;08&#x2F;21&#x2F;climate&#x2F;colorado-river-water-cuts-drought.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2026&#x2F;08&#x2F;21&#x2F;climate&#x2F;colorado-river-wa...</a>
          • cucumber373284220 minutes ago
            No this was a plastic molding company ~10yr ago.<p>Edit:<p>They had a facility with a rail siding. Cheaper to relocate to a new site with expansion potential in another state than pay the state a million bucks an acre to let them fill in wetland (a ~100yo mill pond). The city did what they could to facilitate things but it basically just came down to the discretion of the state officials who live a few hundred miles away amongst all sort of moneyed tech and medical and finance industry and don&#x27;t really see any upside to economic development in the poor end of the state, we&#x27;re just a line item on the welfare bill as fare are they care.<p>The real cherry on top is that the wetland went away &quot;naturally&quot; as the result of a low head dam removal a few ago, at the behest of the same agency that said you can&#x27;t fill in any of the mill pond.<p>The site is still vacant. It got sold to a REIT that&#x27;s headquartered a couple blocks from the statehouse and environmental agency. Supposedly Waste Management or Republic Services wants to buy the old site now for it&#x27;s rail siding and development potential.
            • ceejayoz8 minutes ago
              Do their employees not need water?
        • inigyou43 minutes ago
          Did that happen?<p>The former sounds like a guy being told his trash needs to be picked up and not being able to afford it so not being allowed to generate trash, and the latter was provided with no details at all so I can&#x27;t evaluate it.
        • martythemaniak1 hour ago
          Framing Trump&#x2F;MAGA as some kind of divine retribution against the sins of liberals great! All bad things are caused by liberals, because MAGA is mere reaction to their actions. MAGA have no mind of their own, and thus no responsibility for their own actions.
          • cucumber373284227 minutes ago
            These same types of evil people exist in droves on the right too. They just circle jerk about different topics and peddle different forms of progressivism (lowercase P!!). Right now the establishment is somewhat catering to them, much to the chagrin of the useful idiots who are all in on the other team. They were the ones screeching all throughout the last administration.<p>At the end of the day has very little to do with MAGA(TM) or Liberals(TM). They&#x27;re just the current characters in a script that&#x27;s been played a bunch of times. Kinda like how you can set the basic plot of Romeo and Juliet in any century. From the Tea Party to the Ron Paul thing to the Bernie bros to MAGA the populist movements will keep arising so long as the &quot;we know what&#x27;s best we&#x27;re so smart&quot; crowd continues to do things at the expense of the average person. Whether that&#x27;s back handed environmentalism or facilitating monopolistic big business (or both, for these two examples often go hand in hand) doesn&#x27;t really matter. The average person doesn&#x27;t like it even if they can&#x27;t quite articulate why. And so the populists will keep coming, until one day one shows up that the system can&#x27;t de-fang. Who knows what&#x27;ll happen then but I&#x27;d bet a lot of money we won&#x27;t get a stronger EPA or a more favorable environment for big business out of it.
    • dgellow2 hours ago
      It’s literally the playbook from project 2025. FWIW it’s not the beginning, that has been a process at play since day 1 of the 2nd trump admin<p>Edit: actually since the 1st term as mentioned below
      • lvspiff41 minutes ago
        Right? This isnt the first chapter in a long story to come. This is the middle of the book where the villain has all but the final stone of the gauntlet but rather than put up a strong resistance we appear to have elected sycophants who are just watching and saying “dont let him get that stone”
      • josefresco1 hour ago
        Clarification: During his <i>first term</i>, Donald Trump appointed former Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt as the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In his role as state attorney general, Pruitt had sued the EPA multiple times to challenge federal environmental regulations, including the Clean Power Plan and the Waters of the United States rule.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Environmental_policy_of_the_first_Trump_administration" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Environmental_policy_of_the_fi...</a>
    • jimt123435 minutes ago
      &gt; Sounds like the beginning of the end for the EPA<p>The beginning of the end of the EPA started the day Trump was sworn in. In the last few years several cases have been decided by this Supreme Court that have effectively reduced the EPA to an advisory board, like a group of consultants that have no real authority over anything.
    • miltonlost40 minutes ago
      And this same behavior is how Republicans prove their own theory that the Government is useless and evil and bad. Because they do everything in their power to actually make it useless and evil and bad. Do not blame this on the &quot;EPA&quot; as an agency. Put the blame where it goes: conservatives actively sabotaging government programs.<p>You&#x27;re neithersidesing an issue where clearly one partisan group is doing evil things to actively make the situation worse and then &quot;see, told you!&quot;
  • wilburx31 hour ago
    What a disgrace. Abysmal leadership in this country.
    • metalliqaz1 hour ago
      It&#x27;s consistent leadership. Malevolent and stupid, but consistent.
      • claytongulick58 minutes ago
        Are you sure you&#x27;re aiming your ire in the right direction in this case?<p>The EPA provided guidance that the CAA (Clean Air Act) itself was written to not apply in these cases.<p>Shouldn&#x27;t you be angry at the authors of the law?
        • inigyou42 minutes ago
          The EPA is currently run by MAGA people.
        • dalyons28 minutes ago
          You think the guidance was written as a good faith interpretation of the law? Cmon.
        • pkilgore45 minutes ago
          Well the one thing I know about lawyers:<p>Utterly impossible to get them to write a dishonest guidance document interpreting the law in a way that benefits them somehow.<p>You got me. Check mate. No counterarguments here.
    • iso16311 hour ago
      This is exactly what the leadership wanted. And as they won the election. Not like in 2016 (where more people voted for the other guy but they won due to the difference in power of votes), or in 2020 (where they lost), they won a clear outright victory, it&#x27;s exactly what the USA wanted.
      • ceejayoz1 hour ago
        I&#x27;m not sure it&#x27;s fair to characterize 49.8% of the vote as a &quot;clear outright victory&quot;. Harris got 48.3%; that&#x27;s a pretty close to even split. The majority of voters <i>didn&#x27;t</i> vote for this.
        • rogerrogerr4 minutes ago
          It is nonsensical to consider popular vote numbers in an election not decided on the popular vote. How many Democrats stayed home in red states because they knew their vote wouldn&#x27;t matter? And how many Republicans stayed home in blue states for the same reason? It&#x27;s unknowable. I&#x27;m all for the presidency being decided by popular vote, but until it is there is no point using those statistically-flawed numbers in any debate.
        • s3p12 minutes ago
          The majority of voters who voted for president got the president they wanted. With a president comes admin of all these agencies. So yeah they voted for this.
      • lovich1 hour ago
        Is there a word for this behavior where a politician wins by the slimmest of margins in a first past the post election and then spins it as a mandate from The People instead of an incredibly tight split?
      • jjuel1 hour ago
        If you are talking about the billionaires and trillionaire who spent as much as they could to get this elected then you are correct it is what THEY wanted.
        • inigyou40 minutes ago
          They got what they wanted by making half the country&#x27;s idiots want it too
    • shimman1 hour ago
      This seems pretty inline with our leadership tho. This country has always put profits above people.
      • browningstreet1 hour ago
        Go research the green house gas emission projections for the end of Biden&#x27;s term and the projections for Trump&#x27;s administration.<p>Hand-waving dismissiveness doesn&#x27;t serve when there were, in fact, significant (and yet not sufficient) efforts written into law.<p>We can have better things, but we as a people certainly need to do better. There are Mamdanis and there are Trumps. There&#x27;s a difference.
        • shimman1 hour ago
          Okay? That has nothing to do with what I said, what about the Biden admin helping run cover for the Gaza genocide? Was that not a case of putting profits, the military industrial complex, above people?<p>What about when Clinton signed NAFTA and condemned swaths of the US to poverty (rustbelt is not a term of endearment)?<p>I mean this country&#x27;s founding document had carveouts for slavers and some of the first laws signed into Congress was the fugitive slave act.<p>Sorry but it&#x27;s not US leadership that cares about Americans, it has always been Americans themselves fighting for justice + a better a life.<p>I am not hand waving anything, this is the reality of neoliberalism and has been a core American trait since our founding: some Americans are more equal than others, elites deserve more money.<p>There was only a small period of time in our country&#x27;s history, 1940s to late 1960s, where workers had a true say at the table:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Great_Compression" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Great_Compression</a><p>We have yet to return to the only period of history that not only improved the lives of workers materially, but also spiritually by increasing civil rights and making it so that the first time in our nation&#x27;s history that every American had the legal right to vote.<p>I mean FFS our leaders are literally allowed to engage in insider trading and legalized bribes, you&#x27;re trying to tell me with a straight face that these same ghouls somehow have a soul and want to save the planet?
          • ceejayoz1 hour ago
            Whataboutism works a lot better if you don&#x27;t literally start sentences with &quot;what about...&quot;
      • lanstin1 hour ago
        Allowing more carbon dioxide sources is going to be distinctly harmful to profits in the mid-term. As with racial bias, strict gender roles, anti-vaxxing, and being anti-science, being pro-carbon burn is ultimately a foolish anti-truth stance as silly and ill-outcomed as any three year old insisting that they can stay up all night.
        • sailfast1 hour ago
          Do the octogenarians in power not remember when they couldn’t breathe because of the lead in the gas in the 60s and the lack of emissions controls on everything? Do they yearn for the mines and coal dust of early industrial England?<p>Everybody loves clean air and water but apparently forget why they have it in the first place.
          • triceratops1 hour ago
            &gt; Do the octogenarians in power not remember when they couldn’t breathe because of the lead in the gas<p>Lead causes brain damage and memory impairment...
            • bayindirh1 hour ago
              ...and lead was standardized only because it was <i>patentable</i>. Otherwise ethanol was enough to achieve the same thing.<p>Brought you proudly by Thomas Midgley, Jr., who solved science problems by making bigger ones.<p>- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.chemistryworld.com&#x2F;features&#x2F;thomas-midgley-and-the-toxic-legacy-of-leaded-fuel&#x2F;4014684.article" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.chemistryworld.com&#x2F;features&#x2F;thomas-midgley-and-t...</a><p>- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ehn.org&#x2F;thomas-midgley-jr-lead-poisoning" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ehn.org&#x2F;thomas-midgley-jr-lead-poisoning</a>
          • aetch1 hour ago
            They’ll be dead by the time it gets worse again
          • throwway1203851 hour ago
            Most of those octogenarians weren&#x27;t responsible for any of that. Their parents did it for them. If you&#x27;re 80 you came of age in the 60&#x27;s, and you wouldn&#x27;t have been eligible for the Senate or the Presidency until 1970 or 1975. The decline of the US started pretty much when the baby boomers came to power and the people who fought WWII were all retiring.
          • Muromec47 minutes ago
            Just wait for the new generation of grifters to get their chance to be at the wheel. Current timid bullshit will be billed under nostalgia then.
          • cooggog1 hour ago
            &gt; Do the octogenarians in power not remember when they couldn’t breathe because of the lead in the gas in the 60s<p>No, lead poisoning makes you a brain damaged retard. They can probably hardly remember shit.
          • metalliqaz1 hour ago
            no, they don&#x27;t
      • bayindirh1 hour ago
        &gt; This country has always put profits above people.<p>Please, the correct word is &quot;value&quot;. Using the word p-word makes people understand and get irritated.
        • shimman1 hour ago
          The easiest way to radicalize workers is to simply tell them what profit is.
          • Muromec45 minutes ago
            You are not radicalized enough.
  • andsoitis2 hours ago
    EPA guidance source document <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.epa.gov&#x2F;system&#x2F;files&#x2F;documents&#x2F;2026-07&#x2F;epa-issues-clarification-on-islanded-power-generators-and-acid-rain-program-provisions.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.epa.gov&#x2F;system&#x2F;files&#x2F;documents&#x2F;2026-07&#x2F;epa-issue...</a>
    • peri-cl58 minutes ago
      This is so amateurish. This document misquotes its own authorities, with grade-school grammar mistakes:<p>&gt; <i>&quot;In particular, while a “utility” under ARP regulations includes any person that sells electricity, the 1990 edition of DOE Form 860 only covers those electricity generators who sell “electric energy primary</i> [sic] <i>for use by the public.”</i><p>Said &quot;1990 edition of DOE Form 860&quot; is included on page 8 of the pdf, and it very clearly reads <i>&quot;primarily&quot;</i>; not <i>&quot;primary&quot;</i>. As is proper English.
      • andsoitis56 minutes ago
        What about the substance?
        • peri-cl45 minutes ago
          I think it&#x27;s plausible and I don&#x27;t disagree with you on that.<p>But: legal drafts failing at basic correctness issues, like quoting laws accurately, is an anti-signal.
    • user000051 hour ago
      Thank you. This seems like a pretty straight-forward clarification of current law. The current thread title (OP said taken from Reuters) saying this side-steps the law seems misleading.
      • cmiles741 hour ago
        Are they clarifying? It reads to me like they are making up an exception for data centers out of thin air.
        • andsoitis1 hour ago
          In what way do you think the guidance is in contradiction to the law?
          • phonon55 minutes ago
            The entire argument rests on a 36-year-old survey form: &quot;DOE Form 860 (1990) defines electric utility to mean &#x27;a corporation, person, agency, authority, or other legal entity or instrumentality that owns and&#x2F;or operates facilities within the United States for the generation, transmission, distribution, or sale of electric energy primarily for use by the public.&#x27;&quot;<p>So the leap is: an old survey form says &quot;sale of electric energy primarily for use by the public,&quot; therefore anything not grid-connected isn&#x27;t a sale to the public.<p>No assessment of prior practice, history, the plain meaning of the statute, or other statutory exemptions. And there are grid-connected plants serving a single customer so why the distinction?<p>Why the 1990 form? Congress froze it into the statute so a survey agency couldn&#x27;t rewrite Clean Air Act coverage by editing a questionnaire. EPA is now exploiting that freeze by treating the form&#x27;s obsolete boilerplate as substantive law; a taxonomy EIA itself abandoned, since modern EIA-860 covers essentially all generators above 1 MW, grid or not.<p>It&#x27;s as if Congress defined citizenship by reference to a 1990 Census form, and the agency decided who&#x27;s a citizen by parsing the instruction booklet.<p>100% complete BS. The silver lining is that without Chevron deference, this &quot;interpretation&quot; won&#x27;t survive litigation, though the memo&#x27;s &quot;not final agency action&quot; disclaimer means challengers may have to wait for an actual permitting decision to sue.
            • abracadaniel42 minutes ago
              It’s an “or”. Generation, transmission, or sale. Not exclusively sale.
              • inigyou39 minutes ago
                of electric energy to the public
      • convolvatron1 hour ago
        its very much using the letter to violate the spirit - since the pollution is emitted regardless of whether the plant is grid-connected. these datacenter plants don&#x27;t run as clean or as efficient as proper power plants, but the primary acid rain contributor is no2. how much are we really talking about?
        • andsoitis1 hour ago
          &gt; its very much using the letter<p>That’s how law works.
          • Marazan13 minutes ago
            No it isn&#x27;t. Otherwise the entire concept of Original Intent would be dead in the water rather than a cornerstone of how multiple federal judges all the way to the Supreme court rule on cases.
          • convolvatron55 minutes ago
            apparently you&#x27;re very excited about this partisan victory. at some point we do need to actually think about how to effectively manage the country. there should be a back and forth about the appropriate degree of environmental regulation since it is a tradeoff between economic constraint and qualify of life.<p>I grew up in the 70s, and my father was a Nixon supporting environmental engineer. At the time the amount of nitrogen and sulfur being emitted into the air in the northeast was turning surface water into acid. a ph of 6 was getting quite common, 4 wasn&#x27;t unusual, and if you were in a bad spot it was approaching 1. Not only would that water not support life, or be unsafe to drink, but it was actually unsafe to touch.<p>So if we were reasonable people we would look at the economic activity and the upside of burning these gasses, and add up the numbers and based on past experience make a very reasonable estimate of the impact, and make a decision.<p>but we fired all those people, and we&#x27;re very much not interested in having this discussion. I fail to see how that&#x27;s a win for anyone except the polluter.
        • brandonagr21 hour ago
          What are you basing your they are not as clean assertion on? It&#x27;s more likely that data center generation can be run continuously instead of turning on and off according to market prices. Can see the swing in amount of natural gas production during a day, <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gridstatus.io&#x2F;live&#x2F;ercot" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gridstatus.io&#x2F;live&#x2F;ercot</a>
  • londons_explore2 hours ago
    There are big benefits to having power generation grid connected.<p>It is more reliable (due to many possible generation sources). It is more eco-friendly (solar in daytime, wind when the wind blows). It is more cost efficient (no need to overbuild for peak usage, generators don&#x27;t sit idle when computers are off for maintenance).<p>Yet our electricity grid has such a mass of regulations attached that people are choosing to lose these benefits - and with it we lose the benefit of them connecting to our grid.
    • dylan6041 hour ago
      That&#x27;s partly a result of having 50 states writing laws for themselves instead having all statues living under federal laws for everything. The line between what is acceptable to be regulated by federal laws and what is not is something I, not being a lawyer, have never studied. Power and water type utilities does feel like it might be something that could benefit from same rules&#x2F;regulations every where, but basing regulations on feelings is probably not the best bit of logic
      • mixdup1 hour ago
        For the most part power grids are federally regulated. The exception is Texas because they are self-contained and don&#x27;t cross state lines<p>States rights is not why there are issues with the power grid
    • KaiserPro1 hour ago
      &gt; It is more cost efficient<p>Depends. Getting a grid connection, and all the equipment to connect and step down with negotiating prices is not always fun. Especially as there is a limited amount of power on the grid. its not a free lunch and takes time.<p>Its far easier to just slap shitty local generators on and live off the crappy noisy electricity they provide.
    • Noaidi1 hour ago
      Those regulations are there for a reason though. I’ll never understand this logic. We have regulations so things are clean and safe. Yes, it would be easier to not have those regulations and just have dirty and unsafe electricity. But that’s the cost of having a business and also having a clean and safe society. Corporations love to externalize costs and that’s what’s happening here again.
      • mk8950 minutes ago
        Becoming and staying a leader in innovation sometimes requires shortcuts. You can also frame a law to make that exception specific for an industry, a field or a group so it doesn&#x27;t become the norm (or time box it, if you want). You need innovation, there is no other way USA can lead in AI if you don&#x27;t build these damn data centers.<p>Come to live in Europe and you will see how nice it is to stagnate because rule A depends on rule B, but there is an exception C that requires D....<p>Death by a thousand cuts.
        • Muromec43 minutes ago
          It is in fact very nice to live in Europe and stagnate. Can recommend.
  • Levitating2 hours ago
    Title is taken from the reuters coverage[1], but I used the link to the original epa.gov press release.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reuters.com&#x2F;legal&#x2F;litigation&#x2F;epa-says-power-data-centers-can-sidestep-pollution-laws-2026-07-27&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reuters.com&#x2F;legal&#x2F;litigation&#x2F;epa-says-power-data...</a>
  • two_handfuls2 hours ago
    Surely this is going to cement the reputation of datacenters as a blight.
    • WarmWash1 hour ago
      Right, I can only imagine the most foolish DC operators are excited about this. Just more gas on the political fire, when DCs should be boring and out of public politics, even if they rank 15th for water consumption and 8th for energy consumption.
    • epistasis54 minutes ago
      The bipartisan opinion shift towards absolute hate for data centers was extremely fast.<p>Just adding more fuel to one of the brightest fires out there in politics right now. Expect it to continue and grow as people feel even less heard, and any negative media towards data centers gets lots of clicks.<p>The AI companies and Trump seem to be doing everything they can to encourage this.
  • Zigurd2 hours ago
    About that P in your acronym...
    • blooalien2 hours ago
      &gt; About that P in your acronym...<p>For the next couple of years (at least) it stands for &quot;Pollution&quot; or &quot;Poisoning&quot;.
    • ethagnawl2 hours ago
      &quot;Profit&quot; or &quot;Plunder&quot; would seem to fit.
    • 32ikU2 hours ago
      &quot;privatization&quot;
      • cestith2 hours ago
        The EPA as overseen by Donald J. Thatcher.
  • gwbas1c1 hour ago
    What&#x27;s frustrating is that the title in this thread is <i>very</i> misleading. This is the way the laws have been: Separate laws for generators feeding into the grid.<p>Why this is, I don&#x27;t know. I <i>suspect</i> it&#x27;s because the vast, vast, majority of non-connected generators were, (until now,) backup generators that only ran occasionally. I even have a &quot;fancy&quot; portable generator in my garage that probably emits way more pollution per kwh than a typical fossil fuel plant, but I probably only run it ~10 hours a year at most.<p>What&#x27;s more disappointing is that this loophole is being promoted instead of closed; but everyone here seems to think that laws were weakened.
    • msandford1 hour ago
      I suspected that this was the case as the president can&#x27;t just invent new laws on a whim. They have a fair amount of leeway on their interpretation of laws re: directions to the administration on how&#x2F;when to do things but they can&#x27;t just invent a law from thin air.<p>Also I mean what constitutes a generator if it isn&#x27;t something connected to the grid? If my car has an engine and it also has a small inverter and an AC outlet is that now a generator and subject to generator laws in addition to car laws?
      • inigyou38 minutes ago
        They can, however, just refuse to enforce a law, or start enforcing the opposite of a law. While they may not be able to change the words on the page, the effect is identical.
  • singpolyma31 hour ago
    Beyond stupid. Why there are any &quot;power generation&quot; mechanisms that could produce air pollutantion in this decade is already incomprehensible. Making rules to allow for them on purpose is even dumber.
  • josefritzishere1 hour ago
    This is completely unforgivably wrong. Pollution is pollution regardless of the source. We need clean air and water to live.
    • jimt123425 minutes ago
      The most ironic part of this is that data center pollution will impact Trump supporters the most. In 5-to-10 years, after swimming in the same river their parents and grandparents swam in, kids will start develop breathing complications or their teeth will fall out, and there won&#x27;t be anything anyone can do about it. Congratulations, MAGA, you played yourself.
  • 0xy2 hours ago
    First they say data centers should pay their own way on power infrastructure, then when they start springing up entirely off-grid and fully self-funded power infrastructure, suddenly there&#x27;s a new problem.<p>The problem was never power or water (water being a known Chinese spy op after Karen Hao was caught exaggerating water usage by 1,000x in her book).
    • m4ck_1 hour ago
      &gt;The problem was never power or water<p>Correct. The problem isn&#x27;t just data centers or power or water, it&#x27;s that left unchecked these greedy people will risk the power grid, drain rivers&#x2F;reservoirs&#x2F;aquifers, and destroy our natural environment (and cities) with pollution because it&#x27;s more profitable than doing things the right way. I think more than anything we want responsible, friendly neighbors who are mindful of the impact they have in the areas where they operate.<p>They&#x27;re callous, reckless, have no concern for anything but their money. And &quot;self-funded&quot; isn&#x27;t even true, the tax breaks and negative externalities of these data centers will be paid by the people (see: xAI and Memphis.)<p>inb4 i&#x27;m a chinese operative because I mentioned water. Get bent, I think grass farmers in the desert should be forced to get real jobs instead of exporting our water to China&#x2F;Saudi Arabia as cattle feed. And people who farm real crops should be forced to convert to less water-intensive methods or shut down.
    • jordanb1 hour ago
      I&#x27;m trying to build a torment nexus and these negative ninnies complained that it used up all the electricity, so I made a machine that turns breathable air into toxic smoke to power the nexus and they don&#x27;t like that ether!
    • tzs29 minutes ago
      It is not a new problem. Look at Musk&#x27;s Tennessee data centers to see the problems with off-grid data centers that don&#x27;t have good pollution controls.<p>Second, in many places power is a problem with AI data centers that do want grid power. I don&#x27;t think you realize just how many new AI data center projects there are and how much more power they use than a normal data center. Combined with the short timeline these projects want they need grid expansion far beyond what anyone had in their long term grid planning.
    • kasey_junk1 hour ago
      Aluminum smelters have run their own power generation for ages and don’t get to skip epa regulations.
    • mixdup1 hour ago
      The environmental impacts of how that power is generated is not a sudden or new concern, it was a concern even if the power was delivered via the grid or not and the fact that the power is generated on site or whatever does not alleviate that concern
    • triceratops1 hour ago
      You&#x27;re saying multiple wrong ways to do a thing is evidence that the thing is undesirable?<p>Why don&#x27;t you want an auto repair shop in the house next door, and why won&#x27;t you let them pour old engine oil on your lawn? Are you anti-car-repair? All your &quot;noise and pollution&quot; complaints sound like psy ops to me, paid for by the Chinese EV industry.<p>^ that&#x27;s what you sound like.
  • Varelion1 hour ago
    I expect nothing and am still disappointed
  • vrganj58 minutes ago
    The US as currently composed is a climate supervillain, there&#x27;s no other way to describe it.<p>We&#x27;re in an existential crisis and instead of stepping up to a leadership role, they are actively sabotaging efforts to avert disaster.<p>Shameful.
  • ck21 hour ago
    right on cue for my meme of the three boxes this administration reaches into daily<p><pre><code> [chaos] [corruption] [cruelty] </code></pre> fine then, make mar-a-lardo and the ballroom into datacenters<p>November and the &quot;AI&quot; collapse cannot come soon enough<p>but if the Dems don&#x27;t get the Senate nothing will change even in the slightest
  • bix61 hour ago
    How the fuck does anyone still support these world destroying assholes.
    • rc_mob1 hour ago
      70 years of very successful propaganda techniques. Republicans are the GOATs of propaganda and manipulation of public opinion.
    • nancyminusone1 hour ago
      They really accel at making people their supporters don&#x27;t like, angry. To gleefully rub your hands together while your enemies cry is a dream for some.
    • dylan6041 hour ago
      $$$ Hangers on looking to scoop up some of the loose change overflowing the rich asshole&#x27;s pockets
    • Noaidi1 hour ago
      Everyone is doing it all around you. We can mostly blame the people who make AI but we also have to blame everyone who’s using it. We can boycott AI until they make it safe and clean to use. Until then, everyone’s to blame that uses it or builds it.
      • inigyou36 minutes ago
        Boycotts basically don&#x27;t work unless you get a big percentage of the company&#x27;s customers to <i>simultaneously</i> agree to boycott that company because they are <i>really angry</i>. Nobody&#x27;s really angry at chatgpt.
    • JohnTHaller1 hour ago
      The administration and Republicans get paid off, right wing billionaires produce propaganda news, voters consume said news.
  • zach_moore2 hours ago
    then whats the fucking point of the EPA
    • dylan6041 hour ago
      According to this administration, there isn&#x27;t one. They have told us this for years, but I guess nobody believed them??? It just took someone willing to not give a damn about working with others and just forcing their will upon others. After all, the people elected them and they are just carrying through with their well advertised plans.
  • Noaidi1 hour ago
    Let this sink in. Nobody cares about you and your children. They don’t care about the planet. These people are sociopaths. A lot of you work for these people. And a lot of you should stop working for these people. And if you’re using AI, you should stop using AI and you should make your boycott vocal.<p>This is not about Trump. This is not about Republicans or Democrats. This is about people who have the money who control all of those people. The AI play is nothing but pure greed. They don’t want to make your life better. They’re actively making your life. worse while they’re getting rich.
    • himata41131 hour ago
      I don&#x27;t really care about &#x27;future &amp; children&#x27;, but even I find this absurd.
  • dukeofdoom1 hour ago
    Its for the greater good. Net benefit would still be in data centers favour, as AI replaces useless office workers, it will lower carbon footprint of all those people commuting by car &#x2F; needing to work in cities. More people living in nature in the country side, doing something productive in the new economy, growing their food. Just invest in banks, to ride out the transition.
    • rc_mob1 hour ago
      None of what you say is true to real life
      • dukeofdoom1 hour ago
        AI is making working from home much easier than ever before. You don&#x27;t really need to live in a city to have a tech career now, and it will accelerate. We don&#x27;t really need so many office workers going forward in cities. Almost anything they decide to do instead, will more productive in the economy than being a useless cubicle monkey thats no longer needed because AI can do it better.
        • KaiserPro1 hour ago
          ok, but if AI is doing it better, then they won&#x27;t be working remote, they&#x27;d be just unemployed.
          • dukeofdoom37 minutes ago
            Sure, they&#x27;ll be unemployed until they chose to do something else that people will pay for. Like I was reading some guy is making downloads for Minecraft and making great living in it (science fiction a few decades ago). Worse case scenerio, move to the country side, and homestead. Thats how people survived wars and famines. Surely they can survive a tech transition.
            • inigyou35 minutes ago
              How much money is your homestead making?
  • swader9991 hour ago
    I thought we were in a end of times global climate crisis? So confusing...