Nothing says “grassroots community transparency” quite like an exclusive, sold-out luncheon held at a stadium club. This Friday, the Lubbock Chamber of Commerce is hosting a totally unbiased, definitely-not-one-sided discussion at the Texas Tech Club to educate us simple folks on what data centers are, how they definitely won’t collapse our fragile power grid, and how much of our precious West Texas water they intend to suck dry. The best part? The entire event is being underwritten by Google. I’m sure the tech giant has no ulterior motives here and just really cares about our local infrastructure.
The panel features an absolute all-star lineup of people who definitely worry about their monthly utility bills, including George P. Bush, Texas Tech System Chancellor Brandon Creighton, LEDA chief John Osborne, and a Google representative to make sure everyone stays on script. They’ve promised an audience Q&A, which should be an absolute thriller of hard-hitting journalism, assuming the “audience” consists of anyone other than Chamber of Commerce yes-men and local developers looking for a handshake. If you wanted to go ask a real question, too bad—the in-person-only event is already completely out of RSVPs.
Because Lubbock never misses an opportunity for a public showdown, former mayoral candidate Stephen Sanders is throwing a pre-game party outside. He’s organizing a “Protect Lubbock: Stop the Data Center Drain” protest right outside the stadium’s northeast end zone starting at 10 a.m. It turns out some people are actually a little anxious about giant server farms draining the area’s water and power.
But hey, look on the bright side: if these data centers do end up crashing ERCOT and plunging us into total darkness this summer, at least our phones will be dead, so we won’t have to look at the emails reminding us we weren’t invited to the meeting in the first place.
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