Where I live there's been a long running saga around flaring: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/c6wk2ml6gwzt
replyWhen it's lit at night you can see it from up to twenty miles away. Closer in you can hear it. Things have gone back and forwards on mitigations, fines, industrial disputes, and in the end the plant is closing.
When we lived in Edinburgh our flat had a fantastic view north - which included the spire of Fettes College and occasionally the flare from Mossmorran - which together look quite like Barad-dûr and Mount Doom...
replyI have a basic understanding of the economics behind flaring, but from the outside it seems like such a waste of energy & hydrocarbons!
replyLikewise, a lot of the complaints people have about data centers are engineering choices. If companies can get away with it, they'll do it the cheap way.
replyWhat could be needed is internalization of external costs. If you release chemicals that cause problems, charge the polluter, and send the charges to those affected.
replyOn a global scale this breaks down, because governments value the lives of non-citizens orders of magnitude below the lives of their own citizens. The US will spend millions to save one expected life at home; it will avoid spending thousands to save one expected life in a third world country.