People also stupidly watch soccer games such as World Cup, go on meaningless vacations, eat out when they can cook at home, argue nonsense on online forums such as HN. Sure those activities aren't "encouraging more consumerism and more CO2 output"?

They denied climate change even before the data center boom. Poor argument, even if the target you want is on the side of the field you’re aiming at.

I feel like this would be much less of an issue if the datacenters were all fully solar+battery powered.

But if the forests burn down, that makes more tree-free land to build more datacenters!

(/s, it's a joke, like this one: https://i.imgur.com/CMsAp8v.png )

hello from California -- in 2017 three thousand homes burned (Santa Rosa) .. the damage totals are easy to look up.. The skies over San Francisco were so black that the sun was barely an orange dot. I am fully sympathetic to the people in France and elsewhere. This part of the world suffers from wildfire also.