Book Brew 175: Nobody's Talking About the Golf Courses or Lawns

I spent close to a decade working for the National Recreation and Park Association, which meant spending a lot of time with the people who manage golf courses, you know, the ones dealing with irrigation systems, water bills, environmental compliance, and the unglamorous reality of keeping 150+ acres of grass alive year-round.

My mom worked in finance and accounting for a country club that had two separate golf courses. She saw the numbers up close.

So when I see the wave of outrage about AI data centers destroying the environment (specifically the water consumption angle), I did what a good Questionologist does when something gets loud on the internet.

I questioned it and then looked it up.

The Numbers Nobody Is Posting About

Some of the data I came across:

• U.S. golf courses collectively use somewhere in the range of 500–550 billion gallons of water/year.
• A single 18-hole course can use anywhere from 30 million to over 2 billion gallons annually, depending on climate and location. In arid regions like Palm Springs, a single course can consume up to a million gallons per night.
• U.S. residential lawns use up about 2 trillion gallons/year
• Read that again. It says TRILLION
• U.S. data centers use an estimated 17–20 billion gallons/year.

Those are some big numbers, so to put that in a form that's easier to hold in your head:

• Even if data center water consumption triples by 2030, it would still amount to only 8% of the water used by golf courses in the United States.
• Golf courses currently consume more than 12 times as much water as every data center in the country combined.

Yet, nearly 70% of Americans oppose building data centers in their communities. A great case of NIMBY…

Nobody is out there protesting the back nine or that well-manicured lawn. I cringe every time I take the drive from VA to PA to visit family and see these massive lawns that do nothing, meaning no one is growing food or even allowing some great flowers to help keep the pollinators alive (if the bees die, we die).

Why This Happens (And Why It Matters That You Notice)

"Humans are naturally irrational and driven by emotions, which cloud judgment. Emotional bias leads to distorted perceptions of reality, resulting in poor decision-making” - Robert Greene

Despite my soapbox so far, this isn't really a post about water.

I really just want you to think about how narratives get built by the media, and what happens when you skip the step where you check whether the narrative is accurate.

The "AI is destroying the environment" story is a clean, compelling story. It has

• a villain (Big Tech),
• a victim (the planet),
• and a very satisfying target for outrage (the thing everyone is already a little nervous about anyway).

What it doesn't always include is context.

Data centers are not just AI. They are:

• The internet.
• The platforms you use to post about how terrible data centers are.
• The streaming services you watch for hours on end every day.
• The cloud storage running your remote business.
• The emails you send daily.
• The video calls you hop on.

All of it runs on data center infrastructure.

Alanis Morissette would say, “Isn’t it ironic?”: when you log on to express concern about AI water consumption, you are using the very thing you're complaining about to do it.

I am by no means saying that data centers have no environmental footprint, because they for sure do. Even a small data center can place a concentrated burden on local infrastructure and natural resources. Location matters. Water source matters. Cooling technology matters. These are real and legitimate concerns worth having.

Do Your Own Research (And I Mean Actually Do It)

"Be radically open-minded... Seek diverse perspectives, and be willing to change your mind when new information arises. Surround yourself with smart, independent thinkers who challenge you." - Ray Dalio

I know "do your own research" has become a punchline. It's been co-opted by people who use it to mean "find a YouTube video that agrees with what I already think." Don’t fall into an echo chamber.

When something gets a lot of attention, and the story is very clean, and there is a very obvious villain, slow down and put your questionologist hat on:

• Ask what's being left out.
• Ask what the comparison points are.
• Ask who benefits from you being alarmed about this specific thing at this specific moment.

Then go find the actual numbers…not some TikToker’s viral video of the “numbers”.

Be willing to look before you repeat something as fact.

The internet infrastructure that makes your life possible is worth understanding, even a little bit.

Ponder This

1. What's one thing you've repeated as fact online that you realize now you never actually verified?
2. When a story feels very clean and the villain is very obvious, what's your process for checking whether the full picture is more complicated?

Books/Newsletters

• Principles - Ray Dalio
• The Laws of Human Nature - Robert Greene