1. United States
2. Wisc.
3. Letter

As your constituent, I call on you to support a national moratorium on the approval and construction of new data centers. The rapid expansion of data centers across the United States, driven by the generative artificial intelligence (AI) and crypto boom, presents one of the biggest environmental and social threats of our generation. This expansion is rapidly increasing demand for energy, driving more fossil fuel pollution, straining water resources and raising electricity prices across the country. All this compounds the significant and concerning impacts AI is having on society, including lost jobs, social instability and economic concentration. The harms of data center growth are increasingly well-established, and they are massive. They include: * Enormous electricity consumption: A tripling of data centers in the next five years would result in data centers consuming as much electricity as about 30 million households. * Unsustainable water consumption: A tripling of data centers would require as much water as is used by 18.5 million households – simply for cooling the computer servers. * Contribution to climate change: 56 percent of the electricity used to power data centers is sourced from fossil fuels. * Skyrocketing electricity costs: Electricity rates have increased 21.3 percent from 2021 to 2024 – drastically outpacing inflation – driven largely by the rapid build-out of data centers, something that could continue to escalate over time. * Job losses: According to an AI executive, AI could negate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs in the next five years and spike overall unemployment by up to 20 percent. The rapid, largely unregulated rise of data centers to fuel the AI and crypto frenzy is disrupting communities across the country and threatening Americans’ economic, environmental, climate and water security. I urge you to join our call for a national moratorium on new data centers until adequate regulations can be enacted to fully protect our communities, our families, our environment and our health from the runaway damage this industry is already inflicting.