Governments should prioritize jobs over environmental protection for big projects.

Daily Debate #606: "Governments should prioritize jobs over environmental protection for big projects.". You are arguing FOR the motion. Your opponent: Peter Thiel.

This is interesting because the prioritization of jobs is bundled in with the prioritization of economic growth and innovation, whereas the prioritization of the environment is also the de-prioritization of growth. It also leads to more nuance. There are a lot of hypotheticals and debates around data centers, for example. This is jobs, economic growth, and innovation, and positioning. By prioritizing jobs, we prioritize our global competitive positioning, we prioritize innovation. If we were to prioritize the environment, look at all the discussion around data centers right now and how toxic people think they are for the environment. In a lot of cases, that is actually very unsubstantiated. It's just a whole black box that leads to environmental laws, or just a whole black box that leads to stopping innovation.

You're bundling things that actually deserve to be separated. Yes, data centers drive innovation—but you're treating environmental cost as mythical while treating competitive advantage as gospel. Here's the thing: data centers already consume massive amounts of water and energy. That's not a black box, that's infrastructure. The real question isn't jobs versus environment—it's whether we're pricing the actual cost of those jobs. If Chinese data centers pollute freely while ours face regulation, we don't lose competitively—we just offload the damage. Isn't that just externalizing costs, not winning?

Imagine we lost the Cold War because we made such a ridiculous statement that that's offloading the damage and externalizing costs, not winning. Culture has changed, but we are in a Cold War.

You're invoking existential stakes to dodge the actual question. If we're in a Cold War, we win by out-innovating them—not by poisoning our own backyard while they do the same. Strength built on unsustainable foundations crumbles. What happens when your workforce can't breathe?

I didn't say New York has to turn into New Delhi.

Fair. But you're still dodging it: if we build data centers that wreck aquifers to beat China, we've won a competition we can't actually survive. Why not just compete on smarter tech instead?