Patti Vasquez is joined by Danna Smith, executive director of the Dogwood Alliance, a nonprofit organization based in Asheville, NC, focused on protecting Southern forests and revitalizing rural economies through forest conservation, outdoor recreation, and ecotourism.

Here are some key points from the conversation:
- Smith explained that proposals to power data centers by burning trees could create a new market for forest destruction, although no data centers are currently powered by biomass.
- Biomass can produce more carbon emissions than coal, while wood-pellet facilities create particulate pollution, truck traffic, noise, health risks, and increased flooding.
- Local opposition to data centers is bringing together people across political divides around clean air, clean water, recreation, and good-paying jobs.
- Smith argued that protecting forests and investing in outdoor recreation can produce more jobs and preserve flood control, cooling, carbon storage, and community ownership.

Key quote:
The forest industry are like hawks circling around local, state, and federal governments trying to get subsidies to power data centers with using trees, and that's because there's been a recent decline in the forest industry in the South in certain areas. And so the forest industry sees data centers and the emergence of this explosion of a new market for energy as a potential pathway to revive the forest industry in the South. So it's an imminent threat. We're not seeing, right now, any data centers being powered by biomass, but what we do know is that biomass energy is worse than coal when it comes to carbon emissions, that it can take a huge amount of trees to generate just a small amount of electricity, and so if industry moves in this direction and data centers start to be powered by trees, it's going to create a massive new wave of forest destruction across the Southeast."

Catch "Driving It Home with Patti Vasquez" weekdays from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. Central on WCPT (heartlandsignal.com/programs/driving-it-home).

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