Article is about health impact and explicitly not about carbon emissions. It also strongly implies “we don’t want you to pay, we simply don’t want you here”. You can’t accuse me of arguing against a strawman when I’m addressing the article while you’re bringing in something else only loosely in the same category.
> Article is about health impact and explicitly not about carbon emissions.
Yes. But air pollution is a negative externality that is not priced in for polluters/consumers, in exactly the same way as CO2.
You could argue that the case with air pollution is even more straightforward than with CO2, because those damages and costs are fully shouldered by the local population (unlike the consequences of climate change, which is probably gonna be felt more acutely in countries like Bangladesh, and thus less of a problem from a US citizens PoV-- note that this is not an argument I endorse).
> It also strongly implies “we don’t want you to pay, we simply don’t want you here”.
This feels like conjecture to me. The message of the article to me was "Tech giants operate data centers for hundreds of billions, but they are not paying for the consequences of their emissions which are mainly felt locally (costing billions)". That is not "we don't want you here" to me, but instead a "you should be responsible for the consequences of your actions".
I'm not exactly sure what your actual positions is. Are you arguing that industries/consumers should be exempt from paying the actual price for things (including external costs), because this (indirectly) subsidises local industry? And where do you draw the line? Because surely "the local gold extraction industry may freely pollute rivers with mercury" is across that line?
