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Welcome to Your Daily Dot where Dot will share tips, advice, and stories on how we can make our world better. |
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All Dear Dot illustrations by Elissa Turnbull. |
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Dear Reader,
Dot has heard that money talks. But today Dot salutes a Pennsylvania farmer who talked back. And what that farmer said was something along the lines of nope. No way. Not today. Not ever.
Let me back up: Data Centers are gulping up land around North America (stay tuned for a Bluedot story in the works about how communities can push back when data centers come knocking). And when those data centers are built, they continue to gulp — consuming massive amounts of water and power and spewing out pollution.
Nonetheless, their offers can be tempting, especially to those farmers who are really struggling right now.
So when a data center company contacted 86-year-old Mervin Raudabaugh, dangling $15 million in exchange for his 261 acres of Pennsylvania farmland, well … one could forgive him for grabbing it. But that’s not how Mervin Raudabaugh rolls. He didn’t see his future paved with gold, he saw a past that meant something to him. He saw land that would be destroyed. “I told [the data center company] no, I was not interested in destroying my farms,” he told a reporter. Instead, he transferred the land into a trust, earning $2 million (which is no small potatoes) and ensuring that, if the land is ever sold, it will only be for agricultural purposes.
And Mervin isn’t alone in his principled stance. Farmers across the U.S. and elsewhere are turning down offers from data center companies, sometimes in the tens of millions of dollars. In this era of greed, Dot is delighted to celebrate Climate Champs who know that land, left as it is, holds more value than any cash.
Terra Firmly,
Dot
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