Data centers: NGOs demand a moratorium as digital capital gets thirsty

Environmental NGOs are calling for a "moratorium" on the expansion of data centers in France and across Europe, franceinfo reports, citing France Inter. They are mobilising in several countries on Friday 6 and Saturday 7 November, under the slogan "Stop aux centres de données polluants" ("Stop to polluting data centres").

That is more or less all the report tells us. It does not specify which organisations are behind the call, what consumption figures are at stake, which sites are concerned, or how public authorities and operators have responded. We will not invent them. What follows is our reading, not an established finding.

Let's start with the material side of the subject. A data centre is not a cloud. It is a building of concrete and steel, packed with servers, which gulps down electricity, needs cooling and depends on metals extracted somewhere. Commercial vocabulary, meanwhile, does everything to erase that somewhere. The "cloud" floats. The mine, the groundwater and the high-voltage line stay firmly on the ground.

This is exactly what Marxists call the "metabolic rift". Accumulation demands an ever-growing flow of energy and materials, and passes the bill on to the ecosystems and populations who have benefited least from the system. Digital technology is no exception. It is even its shop window: the immaterial as promise, the material as blind spot.

Who pays, then? Today we do not know in detail, because the report gives us no data. But the question arises with every new site: who sees their electricity bill or their local grid come under strain, who is asked to save water while a facility cools down, who decides? Too often, households are told to switch off their boxes while the red carpet is rolled out for the sector's giants. Making the subscriber feel guilty is convenient. It spares us from talking about who owns the servers.

The word "moratorium" has the merit of being clear: first stop, then count, then choose. It is a demand for planning, running against the logic of a market where each project is judged in isolation, according to its promoter's profitability. Why keep building ever more capacity? For which uses, and useful to whom? A data centre hosting public services and another fuelling the race for commercial AI models do not weigh the same, and nobody should be forced to confuse them.

It will be objected that digital technology creates jobs and sovereignty. Perhaps. All the more reason to debate it democratically, with public figures, rather than letting confidential contracts decide. It would also be dishonest to pit sector employees against local residents: the useful dividing line does not run there, but between those who decide on investment and those who bear its effects.

This weekend's mobilisations will show whether the idea takes hold. One truth the "cloud" will not dispel remains: you do not cool an industry with slogans.