Microsoft AI Data Center arrives for drought-stricken water in Mexican city (with Diana Baptista)

As the climate crisis intensifies, billions of poor and working people around the world are suffering from a lack of regular (or any) access to clean water, but the rise of ‘AI’ is about to make the problem much worse. In their recent report for Context, “Forget Jobs – AI Comes for Your Water,” Diana Baptista and Fintan McDonnell write, “Artificial intelligence lives on power and water, fed to it in large quantities by data centers around the world. And those centers are increasingly located in the Global South.” In Colón, a municipality in central Mexico that is home to Microsoft’s first large-scale data center campus in the country, working people are already bearing the environmental costs of man-made climate change, and they will be the ones to bear the costs of AI and Big Tech . “The city with 67,000 inhabitants is suffering from extreme drought. The two dams have almost dried up, farmers are struggling with dead crops and families are depending on truck and bottled water to meet their daily needs.” In the latest episode of our ongoing series, Sacrificed, Max speaks with Diana Baptista, a data journalist at the Thomson Reuters Foundation based in Mexico City, about Mexico’s ongoing water crisis and the human and environmental costs of AI and cloud computing.

Additional links/info below…

Diana’s Context author page and X page
Fintan McDonnell & Diana Baptista, Context, “Forget jobs. AI comes for your water (Video report)”
Fintan McDonnell & Diana Baptista, Context, “Thirsty Data Centers Emerging in Water-Scarce Mexican City (Text Report)”
David Berreby, Yale Environment 360, “As the use of AI increases, so does the energy and water required”
Tamara Pearson, The Real News Network, “Indigenous Mexicans Risk Their Lives to Defend the Environment from Organized Crime and ‘Insatiable, Predatory’ Transnational Corporations”
Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / The Real News Network, “In Brazil, the climate crisis is already turning working people into climate refugees”
Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / The Real News Network, “East Palestine residents left behind – and running out of water”

Permanent links below…

Leave a voicemail and we might play it during the show!
Labor Radio/Podcast Network website, Facebook page and Tweet page
On the These Times website, Facebook page and Tweet page
The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page and Tweet page