If you want to judge whether energy consumption is a waste, you have to consider the value of what's consuming that energy.

Keeping the internet running? A global storehouse of humanity's collective knowledge available to almost everyone around the world for free? The ability to communicate in real time with your family on the other side of the world, or coordinate protests in every major city in your country, or host a live meeting that would have required fifty people to fly cross country into a single zoom room?

Yeah, data farms could become more efficient and sustainable, as could we all. But I don't begrudge the power they spend one bit. 2% of global energy consumption is low for the benefit.

Compare to Bitcoin, which accounts for 0.5% of global energy consumption, and benefits no one and nothing...

tbh i don't worry too much about datacenters because they can be built under the land, under ice, alone in the desert full of solar panels and so on. the heat in the winter can also be used to heat houses if it's in the city..

the sad part is that most of that energy is used for bullshit tasks for surveillance capitalism.

Anyone remember those floating server farms microsoft was working on? The sea water cools it and you can get power from offshore wind.

Fun fact you can place them in international waters.