In the early 1900s, wolves were removed from Yellowstone National Park after they were declared a menace to elk, deer, sheep, and antelope. The wolves were seen as a problem rather than an essential balancing force in the ecosystem.
Removing the apex predator made economic sense because ranchers sought to extract more value from their livestock. The ranchers were not wrong. Wolves were absolutely an impediment to growth and profit. A legislative decision enabled the removal of wolves, after which ranchers were able to extract more value at the expense of the ecosystem in ways that were difficult to predict at the time.
After hunting Yellowstone’s wolves, the herd animals like deer proliferated and caused severe damage to the natural environment. Waterways changed, multiple species left, and food pyramids collapsed. Data centers are the deer, consuming vast amounts of freshwater for cooling and placing great demands on the region's electrical grid. AI and data centers benefit at great cost to the regions where they are built.
- Massive data centers are gobbling up resources across the U.S.—and you may be paying for it
- Data Drain: The Land and Water Impacts of the AI Boom
- Large data centers can consume up to 5 million gallons per day
Today, the proliferation of data centers threatens not only our modern ecosystem but also our social and economic systems. Big Tech is advocating for its own interests at the expense of communities, drinking water, and the electrical grid. At the federal level, forces are seeking to remove barriers to data center expansion, just as ranchers advocated removing wolves.
- ACCELERATING FEDERAL PERMITTING OF DATA CENTER INFRASTRUCTURE
- REMOVING BARRIERS TO AMERICAN LEADERSHIP IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Fortunately, there are recent cases where activism and citizen participation play the role of the wolves by advocating for policies that deter data center expansion,
- New Brunswick rejects data center plan following public backlash (2/21/26)
- AI boom sparks backlash: NJ communities rush to ban energy-hungry data centers (4/29/2026)
- Governor Sherrill Announces Comprehensive Plan on Data Centers (5/27/26)
- US Data Center Moratorium Tracker
- Americans Oppose AI Data Centers in Their Area
- Why are communities pushing back against data centers
The wolves were a balancing force that was protected by regulations until the rules were changed to permit extracting more value at the expense of the ecosystem. Today, citizen activism and participation are the balancing structures under attack as regulations change, allowing AI to extract more value at the expense of human systems.
The fundamental problem is that investors and governments are putting vast amounts of capital in data centers that consume critical resources rather than first generating resources that can be used more broadly, including for data centers.
I am not arguing that data centers are bad. Instead, I believe that the equilibrium between creative and extractive value is grossly out of balance, and that only by re-establishing balance will the greatest value be created for all stakeholders in the human, business, and technical systems.
Our current approach to data centers is “borrowing” limited resources from the community today with no plan at all to ever pay that back.
- When watersheds are drained or contaminated, local communities don’t get them back.
- When the power grids are strained, local communities foot the bill to increase capacity.
- When noise can be heard miles away from a data center, residents have their peace and sanity taken from them for the foreseeable future.
There is another example in our collective history where we faced an equally large challenge and found a more viable path to solving it. We’ll look at that next.
This is part 2 of a three-part series
1. AI Is a Payday Lender
2. Wolves of Yellowstone
3. Reentry: Lessons from Apollo