Join Beyond Plastics on Thursday, May 7 at 4 PM PT/ 7 PM ET for a free educational webinar to explore plastics’ impact on reproductive health. We’ll hear from Louie Psihoyos, the Academy Award-winning filmmaker and director of the new documentary film, The Plastic Detox, with Eric and Julie Isaac, one of the couples that is featured in the film that had tried to conceive for five years, Shanna Swan, Ph.D., one of the world’s leading environmental and reproductive epidemiologists and a professor of Environmental Medicine and Public Health at the Icahn School of Medicine, and Judith Enck, former US EPA regional administrator and founder and president of the nonprofit advocacy group, Beyond Plastics.
Data centers are growing like a second coal industry. Each one may consume a city’s worth of water and electricity - mostly generated by fossil fuels. For example, people in Memphis are breathing polluted air thanks to Elon Musk’s Colossus data center and his Grok AI. In the climate crisis, vulnerable people worldwide will die because of data centers. Through the sheer dominance of their owners, these machines are also becoming a second government of the United States - or replacing the one we thought we knew. DOGE, Pallantir, and OpenAI promise to surveil us, deport us, and send drones to kill unwanted humans. This “techno-state” brings us to the threshold of dystopian sci-fi.
So, we will convene in Washington, DC, the heart of the modern Techno Goliath State, and expose how their data centers are destroying our environment and threatening our democracy. We will begin with a tour of the tech oligarchy where speakers will expose how they are driving the techno-state. Finally, we’ll conclude at the Data Center World Conference, the cabal of industry executives and political enablers, for a rally where we will raise our voices to demand a MORATORIUM ON NEW DATA CENTERS.
We anticipate the action at the Data Center Conference will end at approx. 12:30 pm and be followed by a lunch in Mount Vernon Square (tentative location).
Volunteers are needed; please consider volunteering for an action role listed to the right.
There is also a possibility that we will follow up lunch with a mock people’s assembly on a data centre at Apple Carnegie that will debate a moratorium on data centers. Rally attendees will have an opportunity to sign up to stay on site after lunch and either participate in, or support, the people’s assembly. More details to follow.
Mortara Center for International Studies (and on Zoom)
Thea Riofrancos is an associate professor of political science at Providence College, a strategic co-director of the Climate and Community Institute, and a fellow at the Transnational Institute. Her research focuses on resource extraction, renewable energy, climate change, the global lithium sector, green technologies, social movements, and the Latin American left. She is the author of Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism (W.W. Norton, 2025) and Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador (Duke University Press, 2020), and the coauthor of A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal (Verso Books, 2019). Her publications have appeared in scholarly journals such as Global Environmental Politics, World Politics, and Perspectives on Politics, as well as in media outlets including The New York Times, Financial Times, Foreign Policy, n+1, Dissent, and more.
In this year’s lecture, “Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism,” Thea Riofrancos explores whether “green capitalism” will save us from the climate crisis. Clean technologies and renewable energy are certainly growing sites of capitalist investment, with government policies playing a key role in making these sectors profitable. But the supply chains that produce the technologies pose vexing dilemmas for the energy transition. These dilemmas are most dramatic at the extractive frontiers of green capitalism: where the natural resources needed to manufacture electric vehicles and build windmills are extracted. In this talk, we will unpack these challenges through the lens of lithium, a so-called “critical mineral” essential for its role in decarbonizing one of the most polluting sectors: transportation.
Location: Hotel Washington
515 15th St NW
Washington, DC 20004
Craig Rucker appears 4 times. James Taylor appears 3 times. Steve Milloy and Anthony Watts appear 2 times.
8:45 – 9:40 AM
Breakfast Keynote
8:45 — Opening Remarks: James Taylor
9:00 – Lee Zeldin, Administrator, U.S. EPA (Craig Rucker: Introduction)
Break 9:40–10:00
10:00 – 11:30 AM
Panel 1A · DOE Climate Report – The Authors Speak
Panel 1B · Wrong Again – Failed Climate Predictions
Judith Curry, Ph.D. · Ross McKitrick, Ph.D. · Benjamin Zycher, Ph.D.
Moderator: Craig Rucker
Break 11:30–12:00
Steve Milloy · Marc Morano · Douglas Pollock
Moderator: Sterling Burnett
12:00 – 2:00 PM
Lunch Keynotes
12:00 – Will Happer, Ph.D., Princeton / CO2 Coalition
1:00 – Gov. Patrick Morrisey, West Virginia
1:40 – Frederick Seitz Memorial Award → Peter Ridd, Ph.D.
2:20 – 3:45 PM
Panel 2A · Beyond CO₂ – Other Possible Climate Drivers
Panel 2B · Problems with the Temperature and Climate Records
In this conversation, leaders across Third Act and our guest Erica Chenoweth, Director of Harvard’s Nonviolent Action Lab, will share strategic approaches for the road ahead—from protecting free and fair elections to ensuring local voices are heard as data centers loom over our communities. We’ll explore how accelerating the buildout of renewable energy can help shield Americans from the power consolidation and price shocks we’re seeing today. Participants will leave with a clear framework for understanding this moment—and how we can build power together as the midterms approach.
The Committee offers an opportunity for Members to make programmatic requests for specific
funding levels for agencies and programs funded through annual appropriations. Members also
have an opportunity to request bill language or report language encouraging or directing a
specific action by the federal agencies.
The Member Request deadline for Transportation and Housing and Urban Development is March 27, 2026 at 6:00 P.M.
Members must post CPF requests on their website on April 17, 2026
Demonstration of community support for a project is crucial for determining whether it should
receive funding.
The Committee offers an opportunity for Members to make programmatic requests for specific
funding levels for agencies and programs funded through annual appropriations. Members also
have an opportunity to request bill language or report language encouraging or directing a
specific action by the federal agencies.
The Member Request deadline for Transportation and Housing and Urban Development is March 27, 2026 at 6:00 P.M.
Members must post CPF requests on their website on April 17, 2026
Demonstration of community support for a project is crucial for determining whether it should
receive funding.
The only account under this subcommittee accepting requests is Department of Health and Human Services—Health Resources and Services Administration—HRSA-Wide Activities and Program Support, specifically Health Facilities Construction and Equipment.
General Questions can be directed to our member services team at
[email protected].