legality of the datacenters aside, I wonder why countries don't at least demand that they're totally carbon neutral or free. it's possible today. it's not like it's sci-fi.

USA is partly a petrostate so regulatory capture is a problem. Negative externalities are not paid for by the polluters. To mitigate the climate catastrophe it would be important to ramp down fossil fuel production in a big hurry.

In Europe this is covered by the emission trading system (EU ETS) and datacenters have to share the same shrinking emissions quota as other industries.

I think most ways of obtaining carbon neutrality are a little bit BS, that's why.

An alternative is what Google is theoretically aiming for: being carbon-free. But they've already started using language describing it as a moonshot or idealistic goal so seems likely they'll abandon that

https://sustainability.google/reports/247-carbon-free-energy...