US President Donald Trump tried to bring down the cost of diesel in the US by making a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin for a fresh supply of the fuel. However, he failed to move the needle on prices, and news of the deal has sparked a furious backlash from both sides the aisle. Adding to the hurt, now another hot button election issue — the data center boom — has emerged among the deals Trump has been cutting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Trump announced his diesel deal with Russia on October 9, shortly after a long phone call with Putin. The news was quickly unveiled as a thinly veiled attempt to distract attention from a waiver Trump also granted to Russia, relieving the country from a new round of sanctions in a bill recently passed by Congress and signed into law by Trump himself. Go figure.

The diesel deal also served to distract the public gaze from other dealmaking with Russia, some which involve investments in Russian oil assets around the world. Evidently a collaborative agreement on data centers is also part of the mix, and therein lies a problem for Republican candidates for office this year.

Data centers are nothing new under the sun. They’ve been around since the 1940’s. However, in earlier years they were relatively modest facilities concentrated in cities. They blended into the urban landscape while taking advantage of existing power, water, and transportation networks. Now they have scaled up and punched into suburban and rural areas, too, demanding more energy and more water, upending bucolic landscapes and sparking furious protests in communities across the US.

Source link