> We saw Erin Brokovich and then proceeded to block the building of literally everything

These kinds of generalizations are so ridiculous as to be completely useless. You keep saying that we're blocking "everything"... what? Nobody is claiming that we need to stop building (in your words) "literally everything". This is called a "straw man".

> But it turns out there's a middle ground between "Mass cancer and death" and "total ban on new things."

Yes, and environmental impact studies move us away from the "mass cancer and death" while still allowing "things" to be built.

> what about Datacenters is uniquely bad

- Excessive water consumption which is especially bad in areas that experience droughts

- Excessive electricity consumption which strains power grids which have not had time to adapt (also causing wildly increased bills for local residents)

- Continuous operation which exacerbates the above issues (compared to "factories, malls, golf courses, pools, etc" which largely operate for only a portion of the day)

- More land use, making the nearby land uninhabitable due to noise as well as other environmental impacts for local wildlife

> Or do you not like the idea of resource usage at all, even if residential and renewable? Are we afraid of wasting the sun's precious energy? I'm struggling to understand.

I'm struggling to understand where on earth you got this? It seems like you're just inventing arguments to debate against. I never said anything like this.