Trump’s energy secretary vows to ‘roll over’ data center critics

President Donald Trump’s energy secretary, Chris Wright, sounded like a full-on supervillain when he essentially vowed on Tuesday to steamroll critics opposed to the construction of new data centers.

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Ample evidence has shown there is broad, bipartisan opposition to data centers, which can drive up energy costs and pollute surrounding communities. I recently wrote about one such project that has garnered backlash, a proposed data center on the campus of Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee.

Wright, who has absurdly claimed that climate change is actually good, is no stranger to making unpopular and noncredible assertions. And that’s important context for his comments at an Amazon Web Services conference this week.

While discussing alternative energy sources, the former Big Oil executive told the audience that the Trump administration is going to do “intelligent things, Amazon-thinking things and data center-thinking things.” He also made the unsubstantiated claim that data centers help lower energy costs, while portraying the administration and Amazon as partners in a fight against critics.

“‘It’s going to take away your jobs and harm your communities’ — these are the things everyone is saying,” Wright said. “And right now, in the polls, they’re winning. They cannot win — and they will not win.”