Maryland Green Party Calls for Data Center Ban

The Maryland Green Party joins the growing call for banning the construction of new data centers in Maryland. The party urges a ban on permitting and construction of new facilities designed for storing and processing data, particularly in support of the artificial intelligence industry. 

The Green Party stands for environmental justice. The platform of the Green Party of the United States notes that "all people have the right to live, work, learn, and play in safe and healthful environments; and that people have the right to influence decisions that affect environmental quality in their communities." Data center construction violates both of these rights. 

Data centers are incredibly recourse intensive, sucking up huge amounts of water and power and erasing any progress made on reducing fossil fuel emissions. More growth in data construction and their 24/7 operation to fuel the AI industry will exacerbate the already deadly climate crisis.  

Data center projects tend to be built near rural communities already struggling with access to resources. These communities are especially susceptible to the demands of Big Tech companies looking for cheap land and communities desperate for jobs, even low-paying ones. Data centers divert power, water and other essential resources from these communities, forcing residents to pay even more for overpriced, privatized utilities. Large, so-called "hyperscale" data centers can be more than one million square feet in size, severely impacting both small communities and dense urban areas. 

Maryland leadership under both Democratic and Republican administrations are working hand-in-hand with some of the world's wealthiest companies to support their move into AI technology by promising them cheap land, streamlined permitting requirements, and tax incentives to build new large-scale data centers. Governors Hogan and Moore have enticed new data center construction in Maryland with the promise of jobs and access to high-tech industry, but most of the benefit of this construction leaves the communities they are built in and ends up in the pockets of wealthy stockholders and CEOs. The communities that live near these facilities are rarely consulted and the construction and 24/7 operation of these data centers are detrimental to everyday life in already stressed rural areas. 

Because the construction and operation of these data centers is environmentally catastrophic and violates key tenets of environmental justice that the party is built upon, the Maryland Green Party calls for the ban of new data center construction in Maryland.