On Friday, Amazon pledged to donate more than $1 billion over the next five years to communities surrounding data centers.
In a press release, Matt Garman, CEO of Amazon Web Services, said communities would decide how to prioritize funding on “education, job training, energy affordability, water and energy preservation, and local priorities.”
Laying out other community commitments, Amazon also promised to ensure that data centers do not increase energy bills or drain local water supplies. Regarding the latter, Amazon promised to be “water positive” by 2030, while stating that 75 percent of projects have already met this goal.
By implementing these commitments, Amazon seemed hell-bent on convincing Americans that the growing backlash against data centers is based on lies. Echoing Donald Trump’s claims that foreign disinformation campaigns are fueling widespread protests, Garman urged that calls for data moratoriums must end or else US border AI could fall behind China’s.
According to Garman, American rivals are trying to “trick us into slowing down,” and Amazon’s commitments are aimed at reassuring Americans that everything is fine and that we should instead move forward, as Trump endlessly advocates.
However, advocates at Stand.Earth, a global nonprofit that has been fighting for environmental protection in communities hosting data centers, told Ars that Amazon is the one being “misleading” by spreading “corporate propaganda.” Seemingly in crisis mode, as billions of dollars in data center projects have been blocked across the country, Amazon’s pledged donations represent “a failed attempt to control the damage its data center construction has already caused,” Stand.Earth said.
Most problematic, Stand.Earth suggested, is Amazon’s plan to support a power plant that experts expect to become the largest source of climate pollution in the United States. Amazon’s data center commitments clearly make no mention of the power plant and barely address pollution, other than promising to rely exclusively on backup generators that use the lowest possible emissions.
