In response to last week’s post about AI data centers, I got this fascinating response from TPM Reader RK. Very interesting details and nuanced. But mostly I find it fascinating because it complicates the storyline by placing the data center rebellion in a line of continuity with earlier opposition, in the same or similar communities, to efforts to build wind turbines or solar arrays — stuff liberals obviously think is great.
Intrigued by this post, as I’ve spent the past 2+ years lurking at township halls in Michigan, working on a book about the rising backlash against big companies with big plans to transform how land is used in rural communities.
It didn’t start with data centers. I was originally interested in how rural communities are pushing back hard against solar and wind farms. In Michigan, you have Gov Whitmer pushing a clean energy agenda, which requires vast swaths of open land. It takes a lot of real estate to replace an oil or gas plant with a solar or wind farm, and that much open space is not available in cities or suburbs. So you wind up in rural areas where voters lean conservative, are skeptical about climate change, and would prefer to see their pleasant landscape left alone. Lots of yelling, recall elections, angry rhetoric as formerly sleepy town halls turn into sights of intense conflict.
This pits one groups of residents against another. Farmers who are offered leases from utility companies are happy to sign, for a steady source of income that doesn’t depend on weather or commodity prices. Their neighbors, with smaller holdings and no lease $$ available, are not happy to see their communities transformed on behalf of the “Green New Scam.” The utility companies, interestingly, wind up on the side of the progressive governor. Not because they’re climate warriors, but because they make good –and guaranteed — money every time they build new power generating facilities (regardless of the energy source.)
I thought I was onto a nice, tight story about possible obstacles to decarbonizing the electric grid, and how they might be overcome, with big business, for a change, on the side of the enviros. Then the data center guys showed up.
This happened in early 2025, after the same governor pushed a sweet tax break for data center developers at end of 2024. Now you have the same dynamic, angry neighbors pitted against large landowners who want to cash in on data center bonanza (in this instance, selling land instead of leasing it.) But the coalition of opponents is different, this time including liberals and enviros (who love solar farms but energy-sucking data centers.) Township meetings have to be moved to the local high school to accommodate overflow crowds, there’s lots of yelling, death threats against township officials, a number of local elected resigning their posts rather than face all this pressure.The oppo to data centers is a horseshoe coalition, joining left and right. People are kinda happy about this, that MAGA red hats can unite with true blue tree-hugging Sierra Club members to fight a common elite enemy. Among other things, shows you how the right vs left typology that is on autopilot among political journos and other influencers just doesn’t match lived reality for a lot of people.
And I think Josh is exactly right that in our federal system, the hyperlocal authority of local governments is pretty much the only place left where regular people can fight back, successfully, against the tech lords who have intruded into every corner of our lives. In the 20th century, business elites had to contend with powerful unions, high corporate and personal taxes, robust antitrust enforcement and an emerging regulatory state that was enforcing a growing body of enviro and consumer protections.
Not much of that left anymore. As state and non-state actors wither away, who is left that can say “No, and Fuck NO!” to the likes of Zuckerberg, Ellison, Musk, etc.? Rural peeps in ballcaps and bluejeans, that’s who.
Book should be out in a year or so, stay tuned.
To be clear, I don’t think this backstory in Michigan is the totality of the data center story. It’s taken root in the politics of 2025 and 2026 in unique and distinct ways. But it’s important to see these movements in their totality and unruliness. Just in the nature of things we see the parts that are most relevant to us, most comprehensible to us. A lot of the rest we miss.
Another aspect of this is that there’s nothing new about conflicts between city’s and rural hinterlands. The town about 60 miles north of New York City where I do most of my woodworking was effectively destroyed by New York City about 130 years. New York City needed more water and more places to put it. So it went to the state legislature and got empowered to find and condemn land to build new reservoirs. It found that land in the town of Southeast where it condemned land and went about building a series of reservoirs on the Croton watershed. The state of New York, the sovereign entity, decided the needs of the millions in New York City outweighed those of the few thousands who lived in these farms, villages and small towns in a dairy farming community. Whole farms, village centers and communities are now permanently submerged in those reservoirs which remain the lynchpin of New York City’s water supply. The region’s dairy farms and a factory built there by the Borden company to produce condensed milk provided a key source of supply for the Union Army during the Civil War. But that whole economy was destroyed and eventually replaced by a new economy first providing weekend getaways for city residents and finally transitioning into a far-flung commuter town.
One can imagine similar – if perhaps less draconian – battles and transformations as resource hungry cities need renewable electricity to power them. What makes the current data center boom and backlash distinct is that cities aren’t asking for this, certainly not in the basic infrastructure sense that tends to unite whole regions. So the demand for data centers isn’t pitting city against rural hinterland. They don’t have a real base of support anywhere. And people across the political spectrum have found passionate reasons to oppose them.
