Elon Musk’s Grok AI is causing pollution that’s poisoning the black population in Memphis

Ezekiel 25:17

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I see nothing problem with this, Elon is just giving back since so many black people buying Tesla.:wow:

Keep buying Tesla brehs
 

DamienWayne

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Very callous response



the supercomputer sits right above the water supply of the entire city. eventually it will poison the entire supply. this is way bigger than this small area. the goverment of memphis knew this but allowed it anyway when a bunch of other cities said no. due to concerns of guesss wat? Pollution
 
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parallax

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Dumb ass mayor talking about “they have 30 generators but they said they only going to use 15”.

Someone need to investigate that nikka, guaranteed his pockets getting lined.
when something thisbig is being done thats this harmful? you know someone high up is getting greased
 

bnew

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Elon Musk Obtains Permit to Spew Pollution​




"I am horrified but not surprised."​


/ Artificial Intelligence/ Ai Pollution/ Elon Musk/ Grok

Allison Robbert / AFP via Getty / Futurism


Image by Allison Robbert / AFP via Getty / Futurism

In the city that built the blues, Elon Musk's xAI data center has been given permission to keep polluting the air with fumes from burning methane gas — which it had already been doing so without authorization for a year.

As Wired reports, Memphis' local health department has granted an air permit for the xAI data center, allowing it to keep operating the methane gas turbines that power Musk's Grok chatbot and Colossus, the gigantic supercomputer at its heart.

In Boxtown, the historically Black neighborhood in South Memphis where xAI's data center is situated, Musk's unfettered pollution has ripped the band-aid off a wound that had barely begun to heal. As Capital B News reported earlier this year, the neighborhood was once home to the Allen Fossil Plant, an electrical facility that left pits of noxious coal ash and a lengthy legacy of environmental racism behind when it was forced to close in 2018.

In the year since the data center opened and Colossus went online, the smog from Musk's gas turbines has been veritably choking out local residents in a district already struggling with heightened asthma rates due to its proximity to industrial pollution.

"I can't breathe at home," Boxtown resident Alexis Humphreys told Politico earlier this year. "It smells like gas outside."

Given that context, local activists are furious that xAI was granted a permit at all — especially because it appears to violate the Clean Air Act, a landmark federal law that regulates the kind of emissions that the xAI plant has been leaching out for a year now.

"I am horrified but not surprised," conceded KeShaun Pearson, the head of the Memphis Community Against Pollution, in an interview with Wired after the permit decision came down. "The flagrant violation of the Clean Air Act and the disregard for our human right to clean air, by xAI's burning of illegal methane turbines, has been stamped as permissible."

"Over 1,000 people submitted public comments demanding protection," he continued, "and got passed over for a billionaire’s ambitious experiment."

The new permit, as Wired notes, grants xAI the right to operate 15 turbines. According to aerial footage from the Southern Environmental Law Center, which is planning to sue the Musk-owned AI company for violating the Clean Air Act, there are as many as 35 on the site of the xAI data center — and with its track record of flagrant law-breaking, there's a good chance all will be turned on.

Between the SELC's suit and the permit's year-long expiration date, there is time for Musk's massively-polluting data center to be reined in — but until that happens, Memphians will keep being choked out in their own homes thanks to their government's decision to put one billionaire's profit margins over its own people.
 

bnew

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Google President Praised MAGA Speech Slamming ‘Climate Extremist Agenda’

Google President Praised MAGA Speech Slamming ‘Climate Extremist Agenda’​


Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told an AI conference that data centers should be powered by coal, gas, and nuclear. Ruth Porat said his “comments were fantastic.”



By Geoff Dembicki
onAug 19, 2025 @ 06:01 PDT


Series: Tech vs Climate, MAGA

google-AI-fossilfuels-1.jpeg
Credit: DeSmog

This article is being co-published with The Lever, an investigative newsroom. Click here to get The Lever’s free newsletter.

At a recent artificial intelligence conference in Washington, D.C., Google’s president cheered on Trump’s interior secretary after he slammed Silicon Valley’s support of the so-called “climate extremist agenda” and pushed to expand the use of “incredibly clean” coal plants and other fossil fuels to power data centers, according to a previously unreported recording.

Following the speech by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Ruth Porat, president and chief investment officer of Google and Alphabet, told conference attendees that “I thought Secretary Burgum’s comments were fantastic… ecause I think it is very clear that to realize the potential of AI, you have to have the power to deliver it. And we have underinvested in this country, and to stay ahead, we need to actually address it head-on.”

Porat was speaking on a panel about how AI is “rewriting America’s future,” alongside Big Tech leaders including venture capitalist Delian Asparouhov and Kevin Weil, the chief product officer for OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT. During the panel, Porat also discussed a Google white paper advocating for U.S. investments in natural gas and nuclear to power the industry’s energy-hungry data centers.

Porat’s remarks, captured in an April video of the influential 2025 Hill & Valley Forum, suggest Big Tech now is prioritizing fossil fuels for data centers over its climate commitments.

Google and other major tech companies as recently as a few years ago led the corporate world in acknowledging the seriousness of the climate emergency and proposing concrete actions to limit Silicon Valley’s carbon emissions. Porat’s company has for years positioned itself as a climate leader in the tech industry. Among its many promises? An ambitious 2020 pledge to power all its operations with carbon-free energy by 2030.

Yet Porat’s comments at the Hill & Valley Forum, and her subsequent praise in July for the Trump administration’s “energy abundance” agenda — which supports oil, gas, and coal while severely penalizing renewables such as wind and solar — signal that, at a time when climate action is under serious threat from Republicans, the country’s largest tech companies are wavering in their support for the cheapest, cleanest, and lowest-carbon energy sources.

That’s reflected in Google’s carbon emissions, which soared nearly 50 percent between 2019 and 2024, according to a company environmental report. An independent study from the NewClimate Institute, a German nonprofit, warned in August of a “crisis” for the tech giant’s ability to meet its climate targets, stating that “data centre expansion and higher artificial intelligence (AI) usage have rapidly increased Google’s electricity demand and absolute [greenhouse gas] emissions.”

Google didn’t respond to a media request about Porat’s comments.

“Climate Extremist Agenda”​


Founded in 2021, the Hill & Valley Forum is an organization that brings together prominent tech executives and venture capitalists with federal policymakers. This year’s event, which took place in late April, featured the likes of Palantir CEO Alex Carp and billionaire venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, alongside politicians including Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson.

The opening remarks were delivered by Burgum, a former North Dakota governor with close ties to the fossil fuel industry. As interior secretary, Burgum oversees management and conservation of federal land. Previous reporting showed that in 2024, months prior to being nominated by Trump for the position, Burgum hosted a private dinner for oil, gas, and coal executives.

Burgum, a Republican, used his speech to criticize Silicon Valley for having supported “the climate extremist agenda,” which he defined as the idea that “a degree of temperature change in the year 2100 is the thing that we should drive every policy in America.” Burgum added: “I’ve always been a little offended by that.”

Echoing common climate-denier talking points about the inability of climate models to predict future temperature rise, Burgum questioned “how a group could take a spreadsheet and extrapolate [climate] data for 90 years, 80 years, now 75 years and say ‘this is absolutely what’s going to happen.’”

He then positioned coal as an energy source that can power Big Tech’s data centers. “Any coal plant running in America today is incredibly clean,” he claimed without evidence.

U.S. power plant pollution is at its highest levels in three years due to a recent surge in generation from coal.

Burgum concluded by stating that accelerating production of American oil, gas, coal, and potentially some nuclear would be key to realizing Silicon Valley’s AI agenda.

“That’s the Trump plan, and that’s what we’re doing right now,” he said.

Google Leader On Burgum’s Vision for AI: “Fantastic”​


Porat, the Google president, expressed no qualms with Burgum’s speech when she was asked about it on a panel later that day, instead stating that his “comments were fantastic.” Porat then elaborated that Google and the Trump administration were in agreement about needing to scale up nuclear production and modernize the electrical grid.

Five years ago, Google CEO Sundar Pichai warned that “we have until 2030 to chart a sustainable cause for our planet or face the worst consequences of climate change.” He outlined a plan to power its data centers by doing “things like pairing wind and solar power sources together, and increasing our use of battery storage.”



But at the Hill & Valley Forum, Porat outlined an energy agenda much more favorable to fossil fuels. During the panel, she touted a recent Google white paper that didn’t once mention wind or solar, even though they generally remain the cheapest form of power generation worldwide. The document instead called for federal investment in “affordable, reliable, and secure energy technologies, including geothermal, advanced nuclear, and natural gas generation with carbon capture (among other sources).”

Others at the conference voiced direct skepticism of renewable energy, including David Friedberg, co-host of the popular pro-Trump tech podcast All-In. “To scale up energy, it’s not about solar, it’s not about wind, those might have been nice from a narrative perspective, but scalable energy production requires these next-gen systems and we have to unlock that,” he claimed during a panel about reindustrializing America.

In reality, last year, nearly 93 percent of new power additions worldwide came from renewable sources.

Trump’s AI Action Plan​


When the Trump administration unveiled its AI Action Plan in Washington, D.C., in late July, the event was presented in the form of a live podcast hosted by Friedberg and his other All-In co-hosts, as well as the founders of Hill & Valley.

“We need to build and maintain vast AI infrastructure and the energy to power it,” the plan reads. “To do that, we will continue to reject radical climate dogma and bureaucratic red tape, as the Administration has done since Inauguration Day.”

The plan claims that it will ensure free speech in AI systems by eliminating “references to misinformation, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and climate change.” It further constricts federal spending to developers of the type of AI models, such as ChatGPT or Elon Musk’s Grok, “who ensure that their systems are objective and free from top-down ideological bias.”

Some climate groups were quick to condemn the proposal. “This U.S. AI Action Plan doesn’t just open the door for Big Tech and Big Oil to team up, it unhinges and removes any and all doors,” KD Chavez, executive director of the national advocacy group Climate Justice Alliance, said in a statement.

But if Google has any concerns about the anti-climate AI policies being pursued by the White House, the company isn’t showing it. At a mid-July AI event in Pennsylvania, Porat heaped more praise on the Trump administration.

“Mr. President, thank you for your leadership and for your clear and urgent direction that our nation invest in AI infrastructure, technology and the energy to unlock its benefits so that America can continue to lead,” she said.
 

At30wecashout

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I distinctly remember mentioning environmental justice for black folks being a tangible. Data centers are popping up all over to power AI and data storage and that requires tremendous amounts of power and water to use. People woth sense and political sway won’t want it near them. Guess who will suffer downstream effects :francis: I’m tired and im not even 40 yet. I can just say I know how people get radicalized.
 

boogers

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they're building one between my suburb :mjpls: and the city

people are already upset about the rock quarry and all the explosions. shyt rattles peoples homes and knocks out the power sometimes. company doesnt care, theyre in with the good ol boys who run the state. they get to do whatever they want, screw everyone else

i hope one day the people of memphis can burn that shyt to the ground, hopefully with all the upper management locked inside :ufdup:
 
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