For decades, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have used climate alarmism to advance the crude, but effective political tactic known as doomerism.
By doing so, the DSA and groups like the Sunrise Movement have created a generation of neurotic “doomers” who are fraught with despair, anxiety, and general gloom.
According to the Meriam-Webster Dictionary, “Doomer refers to a person who is extremely pessimistic, whether in general or regarding a particular issue (such as AI technology or the climate), often to the point that they believe nothing can be done and that efforts to solve problems are futile.”
Doomerism is dangerous for society because it promotes a sense of desperation in which all measures to stop the supposed existential crisis must be used to save humanity. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
For a while, climate alarmist propaganda worked very well in spreading doomerism, particularly among the youth.
But after years of dire predictions that never came close to coming true, Americans began questioning the doomerism associated with climate alarmism.
By not buying the doomerism hype hook, line, and sinker anymore, Americans also began to question the desperate measures they were told were necessary to avert a climate catastrophe.
Eventually, Americans wised up and realized that they were being gaslit into believing that the world would end unless they went “green.”
Although it was egregious that so many fell for the climate alarmist doomerism rhetoric, it is good to know that at least for the time being most Americans have seen the light.
However, just as Americans are waking up to the fact that the world is not on the verge of a climate calamity, many are now falling for the latest doomerism folly: AI and data centers.
In late March, the doomerism die was cast when Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14) “announced the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Data Center Moratorium Act.”
“Congress has a moral obligation to stand with the American people and stop the expansion of these data centers until we have a framework to adequately address the existential harm AI poses to our society. We must choose humanity over profit,” said AOC.
In June, the DSA launched a nationwide campaign “against data centers,” which they claim has already resulted in moratoriums across the country.
Nearly all 200 DSA members running for political offices in the midterm elections have embraced data center moratoriums.
DSA member Angie Nixon, running for U.S. Senate in Florida, says data centers threaten society “while a handful of billionaires reap the profits.” Hence, she supports, “No new construction of data centers before there are real federal guardrails put in place.”
DSA member Brad Lander, running for U.S. House in New York, goes a step further, saying that unless we put “serious protections in place to address the risks posed by AI to our economy, environment, democracy, and humanity,” and impose Bernie and AOC’s federal data center moratorium, “there is a non-negligible chance that AI could lead to human extinction.”
The conflation of data center development with AI is going to wipe out humanity is both smart and deceitful.
Most Americans, more than 70 percent based on Gallup polling, “oppose local construction of AI data centers.”
Like climate alarmism, data center doomerism is based on straw men arguments that lack rigor, let alone imagination.
Consider the much ballyhooed “water” problem. Years ago, some data centers consumed large amounts of water because they used open-loop cooling.
But innovation, ingenuity, and technological progress, byproducts of the free enterprise system, have solved that problem with the invention of closed-loop cooling systems.
The doomerism mindset is limited and biased by its inherent nihilism and negativity.
The opposite of doomerism, which is what I lean toward, is the optimistic belief that human progress and flourishing will continue to address and solve problems as they come.
Whereas the doomerism worldview rests upon a dismal, static, zero-sum society full of self-imposed scarcity, the freedom worldview embraces hope and possibility.
Chris Talgo (ctalgo@heartland.org) is editorial director at The Heartland Institute.
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