For a sense of proportion: datacentre water use

I like this chart, from Andreas Heuser and Phil Whittington's excellent piece making the case for datacentres.

Nobody has a sense of perspective on industrial-scale water use. 

Disappointing - Updated

The ACT Party has announced a new policy that would:

• Remove the existing Permanent Resident visa category;
• Require all Resident Visa holders to receive a 5 year travel facility, replacing the current two-year initial travel condition;
• Require all Resident Visa holders to be physically present in New Zealand for at least 730 days within any rolling five-year period, with exemptions for those working overseas for NZ employers, accompanying family-members, military personnel serving overseas, those with a citizen-spouse, or other compelling humanitarian reasons.

I have questions. 

• Are existing Permanent Residents to be grandparented to that status, with the category only closed to new entry? Or do we all lose Permanent Residence?
• If existing Permanent Residents lose that status, are we punted into the resident category or does something else happen?
• Many countries forbid dual citizenship, or make dual citizenship really hard. Some will withdraw your existing citizenship if you take up citizenship in a second country. Anyone who is a citizen of one of those countries and is resident in NZ would be forbidden from splitting time between the two countries without taking up NZ citizenship, which would mean the loss of that other citizenship. Would this count as a humanitarian reason for an exemption? How much red tape will be involved in getting that kind of exemption? What would be the associated regulatory burden both on those required to jump through the new hurdles, and those required to process the paperwork?
• The Active Investor Plus visa provides a path to residence in which those investing at least $5 million can be eligible for residence with 21 days' presence over three years, or by investing $10 million and spending 105 days here over five years. Investors in that pathway, who will have invested millions of dollars, are promised that they can obtain Permanent Residence after meeting those requirements. They are not listed as an exemption. And you have promised to abolish the category that formed the basis for their investments. Many of them will be managing investments across multiple countries, and New Zealand's general not being giant jerks to migrants pitch has been part of the deal. Will you provide them with a grandparented right to the Permanent Resident visa category? If not, will you compensate them for any losses if they liquidate NZ investments where you've broken the deal? 
• To what actual problem is your proposed policy the most cost-effective solution, and do you really think the benefits exceed the cost? There are going to be a whole pile of unintended consequences if you go ahead with this. 

Update:

An ACT Party spokesperson has provided a few additional details. What they have in mind is not as bad as the worst-version.

The policy is not retrospective, so existing Permanent Resident Visa holders would not be affected.  Nobody who already holds a Permanent Resident Visa would be moved onto another visa, required to reapply, or subjected to the new 730-day requirement. ...

The Active Investor Plus Visa is exempt, so the existing arrangements for those investors, and future ones in the same category, would remain.

I still really do not like any of this. But at least it is not retrospective. And at least those coming through the Active Investor Plus category will not be affected. I don't know whether they'd achieve that by voiding the days-test for residents who came through that pathway, or by closing the PR pathway to everyone but those coming through specific channels. 

Conditional on there having been some decision to create a wider differential between residence and citizenship, I think it would have been better to also maintain a PR channel for residents whose passport-country forbids or makes dual-citizenship onerous.