22-05-2025
Elon Musk's New Supercomputer Is Belching Smog Into A Black Neighborhood
ElonMusk's'Colossus,' a $6 billion supercomputer utilized to power the tech mogul's various AI projects, has fully materialized at a formerly abandoned facility in southwest Memphis, Tennessee. Preservationists and Memphis residents are protesting its existence, claiming that the pollutants it emits are poisoning the environment and harming citizens who live in it. One resident told NBC News that she started smelling the factory's fumes from her residence two miles away soon after the system was built.
Anything named Colossus probably requires an enormous amount of energy to function — and this beast is no different. The supercomputer is powered, in great part, by gas turbines that emit nitrogen oxides and formaldehyde, among other air ozone-depleting pollutants. Musk's company has promised not to exceed the allowed limit of contaminants, but that's hard to believe.
The Tennessee Valley Authority has been criticized over the past year or so, according to several sources, by climate groups for struggling to match xAI's energy demands at the expense of taxpayers to fund almost $1 million worth of power upgrades.
Another thing residents are rightfully pissed about is being seemingly kept in the dark during the building of Colossus. It appears the secret may have been much easier to keep quiet, considering the AI computer is housed in the predominantly Black, working-class community of Boxtown. Shelby County, where Boxtown is located in South Memphis, has already received an 'F' grade for its poor air quality, according to the American Lung Association. Musk is apparently skirting environmental protections in an already vulnerable community.
While I go on and on about our current administration's disregard for environmental protections and Musk's uncanny greed, let's take a second to zoom in on historical patterns of the environmental racism that rages on.
Air pollution can trigger a myriad of health issues, ranging from asthma to lung cancer, that disproportionately affect Black Americans in the U.S. Our communities are, and always have been, the most likely to be exposed to higher concentrations of harmful particulate matter in the air, which pose major respiratory health risks. A recent study by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), found that Black and and Hispanic Americans, 'on average, bear a 'pollution burden' of 56% and 63% excess exposure, respectively, relative to the exposure caused by their consumption.'
Historically redlined neighborhoods — starting in the 1930s when the federal government enforced discriminatory housing practices, such as Boxtown, have always experienced higher levels of air pollution. For decades, Black, brown, and immigrant populations were denied access to resources such as mortgage loans and insurance. They were also often kept out of new suburban areas and forced to enter urban housing projects designed to contain and oppress them.
The fact that the residuals of redlining still plague us does not shock me. As a young Black woman who grew up in a working-class neighborhood in New Orleans, I saw the lack of resources my community experienced firsthand. There was limited access to diverse and fresh food options, but an abundance of fast food, liquor stores and loan shops.
Loads of trash overtake drained canals and empty lots in New Orleans East. Tires and junk lay at a nearby condominium site after Hurricane Katrina, where tire companies and other residents left their waste. The site remains a public dumpster.
And I'd be remiss not to mention that my beautiful home city lies at the end of an 85-mile stretch of land alongside the Mississippi River dubbed 'Cancer Alley' because of its adjacency to literally hundreds of fossil fuel and petrochemical plants. 'Black residents in southeastern Louisiana bear a disproportionate cancer risk from industrial air pollution,' as reported by the EPA and ProPublica, 'with children at one predominantly Black elementary school having been exposed to a dangerous carcinogen at levels 11 times what the EPA considers acceptable.'
We did not chase these air pollutants. They are in our neighborhoods because our lives are deemed less valuable.
Still, we find a way to persevere and make the most of the cards we've been dealt. And as another harmful pollutant-spewing institution fights its way into one of our neighborhoods, Black residents' voices must be heard.
