AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Back in the 2010s, I was an energy reporter, and one of the biggest stories I covered was the fracking boom and the public backlash to it.
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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #1: Fracking can turn struggling farmers into millionaires.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #2: And the protesters are back here at this drilling site.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #3: Their message to urge the state Senate to pass a permanent ban on fracking...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: We voted in Denton in November. We voted no on fracking.
RASCOE: Those news clips are from CBS News, Fox 4 Dallas and WBAL in Baltimore. Fracking wasn't just in the news. It seemed like part of the culture. Actor Mark Ruffalo was on TV holding up jars of dirty water, like at this protest in front of the New York State Senate in 2010.
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MARK RUFFALO: We're having water contamination. We're having contamination of rivers, of lakes. We're having contamination of air.
RASCOE: It was even on "The Simpsons" in this 2014 episode.
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YEARDLEY SMITH: (As Lisa Simpson) This whole building is just a facade for a drilling operation.
RASCOE: In the face of all this pushback, half a dozen states did ban fracking, but elsewhere, the industry thrived. U.S. natural gas production is projected to hit record highs this year. Fracking is on my mind lately as I watch the opposition to data centers.
FRANK AHRENS: There's a boom as these things spread, and then there's a backlash, right? We're calling it the boomlash.
RASCOE: Frank Ahrens is head of analytics at the BRG (ph) Group. He said, with fracking, it took more than a decade to get from boom to widespread backlash. With data centers, it's happened much faster.
AHRENS: If you kind of look at the beginning of data centers with the rollout of ChatGPT - right? - 2022 or so. Already, we're seeing widespread anti-data center legislation. So what's happened is the boomlash has compressed a great deal.
RASCOE: We wanted to hear from people involved in both fights. In a few minutes, we'll hear from a lobbyist who was on the front lines representing oil and gas companies and whose clients now include data center developers. But first, environmentalist Bill McKibben - he's a professor at Middlebury College, the author of many books and founder of the nonprofit Third Act. I asked him if he was surprised by how fracking opposition took off.
BILL MCKIBBEN: It didn't surprise me. You know, say, in New York, we had the example of what it had done in Pennsylvania to kind of inform everybody. So they were able to look across the border and see the results there - all that brown water showing up in people's sinks, those faucets catching on fire - and that provided a real boost for the local organizing.
And at the same time, we were in the middle of a kind of emerging fight around climate change, so people were primed to understand how important this could be at a kind of global level, too. But of course, in most of the country, that organizing had started too late, and these fracking wells were built before anybody had an opportunity to really understand what was going on. In many ways, that's much like the data centers at the moment, although the opposition here has arisen much more quickly.
RASCOE: Well, that's what I want to touch on because data centers - until recently, they seemed relatively obscure, and now they're everywhere. You know, people are talking about them. They're all over the news. A recent Gallup poll found that 7 in 10 adults oppose construction of data centers in their communities. That's more than oppose construction of nuclear plants in their communities. Do you see any similarities between the opposition to data centers and the opposition to fracking?
MCKIBBEN: Yes, many similarities. This is a case of people trying both to protect their local areas from development that they don't want to see, stuff that robs them of water and runs up their electricity bills. And at the same time, it's a way to challenge oligarchs who are doing dangerous things with the entire planet.
There's really no other way for Americans to stand up to a technology whose own creators say offers a 10% chance of driving the human race to extinction within the next decade. So, you know, how else are we supposed to figure out how to stand up to it?
These guys have purchased politicians across the country. But at local zoning boards and things, we have the chance to stand up to them, both on the grounds of the damage they're doing close to home and on the grounds that we don't want Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg running the world any old way they want.
RASCOE: Do you feel like your movement against fracking was successful or unsuccessful?
MCKIBBEN: Some of both. In some places, it worked, and in some places, it came too late. But we're now - as we take on data center stuff, remember that a large part of that fight is the same fight. What a lot of this fight is about is preventing the use of fracked gas to run these giant data centers 'cause we know how polluting it is. So that's one part of this fight. They all merge into each other and continue.
RASCOE: Is there also the problem, though - because people are still driving their cars, people are still heating their homes, people are still getting on Google and doing their searches and asking ChatGPT to plan their vacations. Like, do you still have to deal with that push and pull?
MCKIBBEN: We have plenty of ways to power our lives that don't require fracked gas. We now live in a world where the cheapest way to produce energy is solar power and wind power. So all we have now is the political power of the fossil fuel industry keeping us tied to natural gas. We were able to plan our vacations before AI came along. We do not need data centers in order to plan our vacations. So I think people have acted entirely rationally in response to this stuff, and I'm very glad to see it.
RASCOE: That's environmentalist Bill McKibben.
While McKibben was busy fighting fracking, Frank Maisano was helping oil and gas companies weather the opposition. Maisano is a senior principal with the D.C.-based lobbying firm Bracewell. In addition to gas projects, he's also worked on wind and solar development and, more recently, data centers.
FRANK MAISANO: You know, some developers did a good job in those places, and some didn't, frankly, right? We had this challenge where the community started to push back because there were some who were cutting corners and weren't quite doing as much community engagement as was necessary. And so that created a groundswell of opposition that moved from project to project, no matter how much work you had done.
RASCOE: But now, this opposition to data centers - it's featuring some of those same activists who were involved in the anti-fracking and anti-pipeline protests. So what can the tech industry learn from the fracking fight?
MAISANO: Well, so far, they haven't really focused on it that much and haven't done a very good job. I'm disappointed the hyperscalers have done such a poor job of trying to engage communities.
RASCOE: What is a hyperscaler?
MAISANO: Oh, hyperscalers like Meta or...
RASCOE: The big tech companies.
MAISANO: Right, the big tech companies.
RASCOE: And the hyperscalers have not really been focused on community. That's what you're saying.
MAISANO: Right, and that's because they've had maybe a little bit more of an arrogance about them, which is not surprising. And, you know, they've said, oh, we're bringing this in, and it's good for you, and we'll give you the money, and they've done secret deals in some cases, where - you know, or nondisclosure agreements and things like that. All those things create uncertainty. All those things create worry in communities. And they just haven't done a good job of being a good neighbor - right? - because they've never had to. And that's one of the lessons that they could have learned earlier and going in.
Now, people who are developers - they engage the community more because they're familiar with that process, right? But everybody is being impacted by - you know, by the guys who don't do a good job. And I think there's a second piece to the data center question, which is a larger issue than just citing projects in your neighborhood or your community, right? It's how much is AI going to change the way we live, right? And that's not a question that a site or a community can answer.
RASCOE: But are you also saying that they need to put some money out there to make people feel better?
MAISANO: You're paying landowners, right? So you're always going to have that for their land. But, you know, economic engagement and impacts are a huge piece here, right? Part of the reason people want to do this is because they're a rural community that doesn't have a lot of economic opportunities in some cases, and they see this as a big way to fund schools - right? - to engage in development of better roads and better infrastructure, to...
RASCOE: Is that like buying support? Is it kind of like buying support?
MAISANO: An opponent would look at it that way, but this is just the reality of developing projects in communities, right? You want to add community benefit. You want to add community value.
RASCOE: Right now, the opposition to data centers seems bipartisan, which was also different from fracking, which became very partisan. You know, Republicans for...
MAISANO: Yeah, you know what? I don't necessarily agree with that. I think...
RASCOE: Oh, you don't? OK.
MAISANO: Oh, no. Opposition to projects - no matter if they're wind projects, if they're gas pipeline projects and things like that - in the communities, especially, they tend to be across a party lines. I do agree with you, though, that with the data centers here, we're seeing more bipartisan opposition at - for example, what puts Kathy Hochul and Greg Abbott on the same page, right?
RASCOE: Yeah, that's what - yes. Is that tough for data centers, to have the governor of Texas and the governor of New York both raising concerns?
MAISANO: It is. But remember, it's because it's a political season right now, right?
RASCOE: Where do you think we'll be a decade from now when it comes to data centers? Like, do you think the controversy will have died down?
MAISANO: I don't know because I don't know about the larger impact of AI. That's a huge cloud over all of this stuff. I think from the siting side, it won't be a big issue - right? - because as you site more and more projects because there is demand for these projects - you know, we've seen this with development of wind projects. We've seen this with development of oil and gas and pipelines.
You know, as developers engage more, they get better at it, and they know what can - you know, what can get a project to the finish line, and they try to do those things because it's - not only is it a recipe for success, but it's the right thing to do to become a neighbor for these communities.
RASCOE: That's Frank Maisano. He is a senior principal at Bracewell. Thank you so much for joining us.
MAISANO: So happy to be here with you. Thank you so much.
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