Dear Editor: In 2025 The MAGA/Republican Congress dismantled incentives for 21st-century renewable energy and prioritized 19th-century fossil fuels on an insane march backward.

New hyperscale data centers to host artificial intelligence (AI), cryptocurrency and surveillance servers will strain our electricity grid and spike energy demand. The electricity grids and generation to support them will require massive new fossil-fueled plants (and their pollution), water and land, and risk a potential economic bubble that will crash our economy if they fail to become profitable. But even if successful, the profits will go to out-of-state tech-bro billionaires and leave pollution in their wake.

The horizon looks increasingly bleak. We see AI taking our jobs and the wealthy getting richer while the middle class disappears. We see criminals laundering their gains via cryptocurrency, and an authoritarian state terrorizing and controlling us with massive stores of surveillance and personal data.

Instead, let’s come together to work for a future where children have it better than their parents and grandparents. I expect those in Washington, D.C., to prioritize a sustainable future, not an AI nightmare and climate collapse. New hyperscale data centers, if constructed at all, must be powered by renewable energy.

Tell your representatives in Wisconsin and Washington, D.C.: Don’t let Wisconsin residents subsidize risky hyperscale data center projects. Instead, please fight to make Wisconsin a safe, healthy, sustainable and affordable place to live.

George Perkins

Madison