Advocacies available from Laudato Si' Movement Texas Chapter
The resources below aim to guide you on the key points on the impact of AI and Data Centers to our ecosystems which encompasses the basic necessities for clean and accessible air, land and water, peaceful environment. This is an invitation to read, reflect, and take actions before the data centers come into your neighborhood, there is an enough deliberation for the basic natural resources to be protected, and that the mental health of the people is also safeguarded where the people can have access to quiet and peaceful neighborhood.
Data. Center: Energy Use and Production
Data Center: Noise, Light and Heat
Reflecting on the Data Centers and the Technology Footprint
Virginia is the number one in terms of the number of data centers followed by Texas. While it is important to realize that data centers have already been in our midst from the start of technology as the data centers are the storage of our digital data, it is important that the data centers that are being discussed in the most recent time is the massive data centers that consumes significant energy, land use, and water for cooling. Given that these data centers are machines, there are noise and air pollution that come with this infrastructure. Apart from the impact to the environment, it is important to recognize the mental health of the people who live near the massive data centers. This is like having to manage the noise coming from the building, the generators and the back-up power supplies, etc.
Before any data centers can occupy the land, consume the water, air and land, there are questions that must be asked, There are also a question of how do you use the AI right now. How is your technology footprint is already impacting the need for data centers?
- Who are in the frontline?
- What are the impacts to our environment of AI and Data Centers?
- How is your use of ChatGPT and other AI functions need more Data Centers? What is the limit to these functions?
- What organizations are involved in the data centers? How is your technology footprint makes use of their applications?
Article 9. At the same time, Bartholomew has drawn attention to the ethical and spiritual roots of environmental problems, which require that we look for solutions not only in technology but in a change of humanity; otherwise we would be dealing merely with symptoms. He asks us to replace consumption with sacrifice, greed with generosity, wastefulness with a spirit of sharing, an asceticism which “entails learning to give, and not simply to give up. It is a way of loving, of moving gradually away from what I want to what God’s world needs. It is liberation from fear, greed and compulsion”. As Christians, we are also called “to accept the world as a sacrament of communion, as a way of sharing with God and our neighbours on a global scale. It is our humble conviction that the divine and the human meet in the slightest detail in the seamless garment of God’s creation, in the last speck of dust of our planet”.Article 16. Although each chapter will have its own subject and specific approach, it will also take up and re-examine important questions previously dealt with. This is particularly the case with a number of themes which will reappear as the Encyclical unfolds. As examples, I will point to the intimate relationship between the poor and the fragility of the planet, the conviction that everything in the world is connected, the critique of new paradigms and forms of power derived from technology, the call to seek other ways of understanding the economy and progress, the value proper to each creature, the human meaning of ecology, the need for forthright and honest debate, the serious responsibility of international and local policy, the throwaway culture and the proposal of a new lifestyle. These questions will not be dealt with once and for all, but reframed and enriched again and again.Article 20. Some forms of pollution are part of people’s daily experience. Exposure to atmospheric pollutants produces a broad spectrum of health hazards, especially for the poor, and causes millions of premature deaths. People take sick, for example, from breathing high levels of smoke from fuels used in cooking or heating. There is also pollution that affects everyone, caused by transport, industrial fumes, substances which contribute to the acidification of soil and water, fertilizers, insecticides, fungicides, herbicides and agrotoxins in general. Technology, which, linked to business interests, is presented as the only way of solving these problems, in fact proves incapable of seeing the mysterious network of relations between things and so sometimes solves one problem only to create others.Article 54. It is remarkable how weak international political responses have been. The failure of global summits on the environment make it plain that our politics are subject to technology and finance. There are too many special interests, and economic interests easily end up trumping the common good and manipulating information so that their own plans will not be affected. The Aparecida Document urges that “the interests of economic groups which irrationally demolish sources of life should not prevail in dealing with natural resources”. The alliance between the economy and technology ends up sidelining anything unrelated to its immediate interests. Consequently the most one can expect is superficial rhetoric, sporadic acts of philanthropy and perfunctory expressions of concern for the environment, whereas any genuine attempt by groups within society to introduce change is viewed as a nuisance based on romantic illusions or an obstacle to be circumvented.Article 60. Finally, we need to acknowledge that different approaches and lines of thought have emerged regarding this situation and its possible solutions. At one extreme, we find those who doggedly uphold the myth of progress and tell us that ecological problems will solve themselves simply with the application of new technology and without any need for ethical considerations or deep change. At the other extreme are those who view men and women and all their interventions as no more than a threat, jeopardizing the global ecosystem, and consequently the presence of human beings on the planet should be reduced and all forms of intervention prohibited. Viable future scenarios will have to be generated between these extremes, since there is no one path to a solution. This makes a variety of proposals possible, all capable of entering into dialogue with a view to developing comprehensive solutions.Article 103. Technoscience, when well directed, can produce important means of improving the quality of human life, from useful domestic appliances to great transportation systems, bridges, buildings and public spaces. It can also produce art and enable men and women immersed in the material world to “leap” into the world
Action Centers:
https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/2026/06/12/stop-data-centers-coalition/
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2026/04/why-are-communities-pushing-back-against-data-centers/
https://www.datacenterresponsibility.com/
https://www.datacenterresponsibility.com/whatyooucando
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/data-center-moratorium-may-2026
https://actionnetwork.org/forms/stop-data-centers
https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/tell-our-decision-makers-put-people-over-data-centers
https://naacp.org/campaigns/stop-dirty-data-centers
