Erin Brockovich Is Taking On Data Centers

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That's a mouthful.

I created Brockovich Data Center.

First day at Crash Twice.

By day three, every state was reporting.

Multiple cities, multiple counties, and every single state in the United States of America.

And that's my way.

Oh no, I'm cut full circle again.

I'm like, oh no.

And we're going to end up with a real sh** show here in about five years.

When technologies change, you're going to abandon these little mini Chernobles across

America.

It really does bother me that someone says, I'm on a fixed income.

And now I have to choose whether I eat or I pay my electric bill.

I'm sure you've probably heard about there's a big pro data center party in Washington,

DC last weekend.

I did, it's so bad.

They can have all their fun at those parties.

But I invite you to come, bring your tent.

We're going to stay by one of these data centers, okay?

Yeah.

And you're going to live it for a while and see what kicks in for you.

This isn't about stopping innovation.

Again, this is about where you're building it, how you're building it, and what has to

go along with that.

This is our land.

This is our water.

This is our future.

This is our sanctuary.

And it's just all at stake at once.

It is possible to have innovation.

But we cannot have it at the expense of humanity.

DC's hottest party last weekend was called Data After Dark and it had everything.

Tech Bros and Metaglasses, dancing Bitcoin miners, neoliberal kick streamers, AI photo booths,

and a Bitcoin sponsored whiskey activation all packed into a crypto founders bar, along

with hundreds of other people who seemed pretty horny for data centers.

I'm a DC's pro data center party and I'm asking why people love data centers?

Because I love the internet and it allows me to be on the internet.

It's ridiculous to be against them and I'd rather have them here than in China.

And there's only one engine that can propel the S&P 500 to even greater heights in that

data center.

That's compute.

Why do I love data centers?

My mother and my father met at a data center and so if the data center wasn't here, neither

would I.

It's hard to argue with that.

But apparently, if you're not in love with data centers or haven't fallen in love with

anybody who works at one, there's something wrong with you.

We cannot be the stupid people that chase them out.

If you want to be poor, have no jobs, you would be killing the golden goose.

When I look at Bernie Sanders and talk about data centers, so you actually want people

to die of cancer.

Or maybe you've just been brainwashed by China.

Tell why do people don't want them in their back here?

You know, a lot of people say that it's a China PR thing.

There's foreign sideops campaigns going on trying to get the US to stop building power

to get us to stop building data centers.

It is a Chinese sideop.

I really believe that.

It's not a conspiracy theory.

I think they're pushing those ideas.

Of course, one other possibility, just throwing this out there, is that people actually have

questions and concerns.

That's what Aaron Brockovich found out earlier this year when she woke up one morning to a

few dozen emails from people she'd never met.

They all lived in the same Pennsylvania town, and they were all worried about data centers,

which was weird because Aaron Brockovich, who's crusade against a company that had exposed

hundreds of people to toxic waste inspired the Oscar-winning movie, didn't know that much

about data centers.

But instead of assuming these people were crazy, Aaron decided to listen to them.

She put out a call for anyone who was concerned about a data center in their community to tell

her about it.

Her website crashed twice on the first day.

Within a month, she'd received nearly 4,000 submissions from people who were worried about

water, about noise, about pollution, and their electric bills, and their homes, and their

neighborhoods.

But the most common complaint was that no one had even told them what was happening.

Why was a massive data center being built before anyone in the community had heard about

it?

Why were they finding out after the permits had already been approved?

Why had local officials signed non-disclosure agreements?

If you haven't yet experienced what happens when a data center comes to town, you may

someday get the chance.

Like I do guess that a lot of the world gets covered in data centers over time.

Which is already happening.

Data centers already power most of modern life.

With Google search, Netflix stream, Zoom call, cloud backup, and increasingly, every interaction

with artificial intelligence.

But AI requires a lot more computing power, which requires a lot more data centers.

In just four years, data centers are estimated to consume nearly 12% of all the electricity

generated in the United States.

More than 100 are currently under construction, and the AI companies already have plans to

build hundreds more.

They're taking over farmland and forests in rural areas and small towns, huge amounts

of land, hundreds of acres, millions of square feet.

Metis next data center will be almost twice as big as Central Park.

Some of those buildings are absolutely beautiful.

They're big and they're big, strong, powerful buildings, but they're beautiful, and they

add greatly to a community.

The president also said, and I quote, I would like to have data centers.

It doesn't mean I want them right next to my house, but certainly I like them in my

county.

Well, sure.

Imagine living next to one of these hyper scale data centers.

They run all day and night.

Their generators and cooling systems can create constant noise and air pollution.

Depending on where and how they're built, these data centers can consume enormous amounts

of water.

And because they also consume enormous amounts of electricity, data centers can require

billions in new power plants, transmission lines, substations, pipelines, generators,

cost that can end up on everyone else's utility bills.

Which is why the vast majority of Americans aren't sold on data centers.

Democrats, independence, Republicans, you see it in every poll, no matter how the question

is asked.

There's more common ground on data centers than almost any other issue in politics right

now.

Most Americans aren't comfortable with data centers being built in their communities.

They think they're bad for the environment, bad for their utility bills, and bad for

their quality of life.

But the response from people who want to build these data centers, who have the power and

money to make that happen, is to dismiss these concerns as stupid or manufactured or evidence

of a Chinese sia.

They think that if you have questions about the giant construction project that suddenly

appear down the street, you're suffering from some kind of psychosis, which is the word

used by the very same people who just threw a data center party with cocktails named

after small nuclear reactors and water cooling systems.

Telling someone they're mentally ill isn't usually the most persuasive argument.

Which is unfortunate because there are legitimate reasons to build data centers and to do it

in ways that mitigate people's concerns and actually benefit communities.

It is possible, for example, to design data centers that use dramatically less water and

run on clean energy.

It's possible to make AI companies pay for the extra power they use and pay to upgrade

the electric grid instead of quietly sending the bill to everyone else.

It's possible to make them pay communities billions of dollars in taxes instead of giving

them billions of dollars in tax cuts.

Loudoun County, Virginia, which has more data centers than anywhere in the world, gets

an enormous amount of revenue from these companies that's funded brand new schools and roads

and parks.

But this only happens if people and their elected representatives demand it.

And they can only do that if they know about these data center projects before they get

built and have a say over how they get built and where and on what turns.

The most revealing thing about the thousands of complaints Aaron Brockovich has received

hasn't just been people worried about water or electricity or noise.

It's how many people have told her how powerless they felt.

Like something enormous was happening where they live and they had no control over it.

We have now lived through several decades of enormous technological change in economic

upheaval that are always explained to us as inevitable.

Factories moving overseas, jobs getting automated, communities becoming hollowed out, tech

companies stealing our privacy and our kids childhood, social media breaking all of our brains

again and again.

People who run these companies and our government tell us that this is all just the price of progress.

Even when the people who pay the highest price don't get much of a say in how that progress

happens.

Now they're saying the same thing about AI, promising medical breakthroughs and automated

agents and lives of leisure to people who can barely afford housing and have no idea whether

their jobs will even exist in this new world.

So yeah, people are going to be pissed when they're told about the giant noisy buildings

going up down the street that require massive amounts of water and electricity.

They may have to foot the bill for people are sick of being told that the future is something

that happens to them.

In a democracy, we all deserve the chance to shape the forces that shape our lives.

And that's what the activism around data centers is all about.

That's why all across the country, these AI companies are finally being forced to stop

and listen and negotiate with people over land and water and utility rates before they're

granted the privilege of operating in our communities.

That's not standing in the way of progress.

That's making sure everyone benefits from it.

Because the future shouldn't be something that a few powerful people get to decide for

everyone else.

It belongs to all of us.

My guest this week is Erin Brockovich, who spent more than three decades helping communities

take on some of the biggest corporations and environmental fights in the country.

She's not a scientist or a lawyer and she'd probably be the first person to tell you that.

Her superpower has always been listening to people, asking questions and helping them

figure out how to fight for themselves.

Her latest fight over data centers is based on what she's found after hearing from thousands

of people across the country.

And it's a lot more complicated, more interesting too than the usual debates over whether these

things are just good or bad.

So I wanted to talk to her about what she's learned, which concerns are real, what the

industry gets wrong about the backlash, and whether there's a way to build what we need

without screwing over the people who have to live with it.

Here's Erin Brockovich.

Welcome to the show.

Hello.

Thanks for having me.

It's great to be here.

It's great to have you.

I want to spend most of our time talking about your work on data centers, but because it's

connected, I'd love to start by going back to where all this started for you in Henkley,

California.

Before the lawsuits and the movie and Julia Roberts, you were a file clerk who noticed

medical records mixed in with real estate documents.

What made you look at that and think something isn't right here?

So that's a great beginning question because not to get off track.

I'll come right back to it when I started the data centers.

When it first happened, I was like, oh no, I've just come full circle.

Well, that's what made me think about it.

Back in Henkley, California.

So that was a great question.

And Edmazery brought me the file way back in the day.

I was 31 years old, single mom of three.

And he put the file on my desk.

He asked me to open a PI file.

And he said, you know how to do that.

And I'm like, yeah, sure, which I didn't know.

So I thought, I better go through the box.

And I like, I'm very curious.

And I oftentimes self-taught.

And I'm like, I better teach myself exactly what it is he wants.

And so as I was opening files, I was curious about one in particular.

And it was medical records.

And it was done in blood test draws on a blood chart.

So it was pretty easily for me to see, first of all, why are medical records in a real

estate, pro bono real estate case?

Okay, that's interesting.

But what really interested me was the bar graph.

So it was, you know, off to the left.

It was T cells and red cells and white counts and all of that.

And every one of them was like, you could just see off the chart.

You could just see where they were being flagged.

And that's odd.

But what even peaked my curiosity further was every one of the medical records, the names

of the child and their ages were there.

And I'm like, why would children this young?

If these were my kids, I'd want to know what's wrong.

And so that's what really started my curiosity was those medical records of children.

Now obviously data centers aren't chromium contamination.

But when you started, when you started hearing from communities about data centers, what

did you recognize from the fights that you've been involved in before?

Like what sort of said, oh, this is maybe a come full circle?

Ever since the film came out, you know, when there's a big environmental problem, I get

emails.

When I get emails all the time, but when I get them in clusters, 15, 30, 40, 50 from

the same town, that generally is my first clue, something's going on.

So I woke up, when we do the map starting May five, six months ago, there was 30 individual

emails from a community in Pennsylvania.

And they were all reporting issues, anger, lack of transparency about data centers.

Look, data centers have been around for decades.

We all know, you know, about the cloud and stuff.

I'm like, that's all.

And so what is going on in this town?

And what's up with data centers?

Because you know, it was AI hyper scale data centers.

So I started researching it.

This is interesting.

Now I like to see the big picture and I like to do maps because I can see the big picture.

So I thought, huh, this is feeling like kingly because you're learning about data centers,

utility companies, electricity, water consumption.

Somebody is hiding something.

I'm like, oh, no, am I going to do this?

I'm like, I wonder if it's just this town.

So I created Brockovich data center and launched it.

I did it twice.

By day three, every state was reporting multiple cities, multiple counties and every single

state in the United States of America.

And that's when I went, oh, no, I'm cut full circle again.

I'm like, oh, no.

And what really stood out for me, again, where I came full circle.

I remembered distinct, kingly, so well, I'm like, uh, somebody's lying about something

somewhere.

Every single submission, every single submission from every county, every city, every state

was all done under non disclosure.

And I'm like, wait, how does that happen?

So that is how it started.

What was the, um, the tenor of the complaints or the concerns that you were receiving from

people?

Also, as they first started coming in and they're still to this day, it's all about non

disclosure.

I tell you something that I learned, not only in hinkly, but every single community I've

been involved in.

They like to be heard.

They like to have a voice.

They are cooperative.

They want to see the table.

They want to have a conversation and they want to know what's going on.

So if you're transparent with them, they work with you, but the minute you hide from

them or conceal from them or lie from them, the game changes.

And that's exactly what was happening.

So as information comes in, I like to work in silos.

So we started because the submissions range from proposal.

We're in the fight stage.

We're in the cover-up stage.

And then submissions were coming in.

We're in the construction phase.

And then submissions coming in up and running.

So I can kind of run what's going on from proposal through construction to up and running.

And just to dig into the NDAs, right?

Because you said that like the number one concern, you know, wasn't actually water or electricity

or noise, that that's part of it.

But it's this transparency.

It was right behind it.

Right.

But this transparency issue.

And like how common are NDAs between local governments and developers?

I guess it could happen one-offs here and there.

But this is where I'm like going, wait a minute.

How I'm looking at this whole picture.

How did every one of these at the same time get put under NDAs?

Different states, different permits, different regulations and rules and all of that.

That's what really surprised me.

It was so secretive.

Now communities and people underestimate communities often.

They are smart.

They want answers.

And again, another thing that I started seeing from them pretty early on was they were

doing FOIA requests, freedom of information requests.

And multiple states, people were reporting from their FOIA requests that the NDAs were

signed in 2021 and 2022.

I'm like, oh.

Oh.

So you know, I could really go down a rabbit hole here.

What's going on?

I was going to say, what have you learned about why the NDAs were signed and why the companies

that want to build these hyper scale data centers want NDAs to be signed?

Is it they are doing something secrets that they don't want people to find out about?

Is it that they just don't want to go through the messy process of democracy and local input

and having people, you know, having conversations about this or what is it?

I think it's all of the above.

Sure, because I think they priority.

You know, we come in here and you know, we're going to rip up 3,500 acres and create this

massive noise and destruction of wildlife and your sanctuary and drop your property values

and raise your utility bills and you're going to worry about your health.

Now, maybe we should keep it on the low down.

I will say that shortly after this started and the public opposition started to get really

big, Microsoft removed all of its NDAs.

Now a little too late for that because now people really don't trust you.

But I think that there was, you know, they're going to cite national security reasons, but

as you get further and further into this and I learn more and more information as this

goes on, that on the NDA side is there changing ordinances.

So I've had many communities report.

I just got a submission out of Florida that really startled me.

That the developer is writing and rewriting the zoning ordinances for the city council.

I'm like, whoa.

And they're writing the ordinances for the PUC.

I'm like, whoa.

How the hell is this going on?

So I think that is what the NDAs were about because they didn't want people to know.

They are changing zoning ordinances.

They're doing all of that.

And if you're open about that, people are going to say, whoa, wait a minute.

So it was a surprise attack.

I hate to even use that word, but it feels that way to people because now that when they

do get notices, it's too late.

Everything's already been signed.

They're like, what is happening here?

So I think there's a lot of reasons why they want to keep it secret.

And it could be about, you know, water consumption or utilities.

It could be about we're going to rezone this and we're going to rezone agricultural land.

If you give people a heads up, you're going to get an immediate resistance.

I don't think they saw this type of public opposition coming.

And what about the local officials that signed these NDAs and approved these projects?

Like, what were they getting out of it?

What have they been getting out of it?

Money, you know, they come in with all this kind of money.

So we've got to look at, you know, we're talking about the biggest corporations with the

most money in the entire world.

And so when you come in and most data centers historically, again, data centers, we are

now talking about AI hyper scale data centers.

This is important, I think, because people think

data centers and they're like, okay, it's a building down the road and then they pay

some money in the community.

It's great.

But these are like massive now, right?

They are massive.

And it is for AI.

They are building these new data centers for artificial intelligence.

So data centers have been around for decades and they're normally more in the city.

And so with the AI hyper scale data centers and because they need so much land, guess what?

They're moving into rural zones.

So they're inside the infrastructure inside of America and all these rural locations in

Indiana and Ohio and Kansas and Missouri and Wisconsin and you name it and all the

sudden these AI hyper scale data centers have become the problem.

And these AI hyper scale data centers cannot function or operate without earth, without water,

without electricity, without copper.

And I think people think that the cloud is something just ethereal floating around out

there.

When it's actually the only way any of this work is tethered to the earth.

Yeah, it's servers.

Absolutely.

And those servers can't do their job without massive amounts of water and electricity.

So now these AI hyper scale data centers are exactly what public opposition is and exactly

what has set these communities off.

You have, you've just come in, they've had no say, they feel completely mowed over.

And you're, you're, we're not talking about one town, one community, one utility and one

aquifer.

We are now talking about these people that are coming up against the biggest people with

money around that is jeopardizing the water, the land, the air, their wildlife, their tourism,

their economic base, their sanctuaries and they're fearful for their future health.

So everything at once is at stake for them.

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So I want to walk through for people like each of the different main areas of concerns

over data centers.

And let's start with the water.

When should people legitimately worry about a data center's water use and when are some

of the scarier numbers possibly misleading?

Generally, at that proposal phase, they're coming into late because they're finding out

too late.

And they're already started.

Everything's already signed.

So they're not really having a voice.

You just ask a question that they all want to ask.

Had they been included at that meeting?

I do not think it's unreasonable.

Look, I don't think this is about trying to stop innovation.

This is about where you're building them, how you're building them, what resources are

going to be taken without any type of questions.

They don't want you to ask questions.

And anybody, especially farmers and ranchers and people in those rural areas, that's the

first question that they would be asking you, okay, what kind of acreage are you looking

at?

What kind of aquifer are you going to be in?

What kind of water consumption are you going to be using?

Will it affect our livestock?

They would have naturally asked those questions, but they didn't get that chance.

And some people just literally were so left out.

They're all the sudden, they're like, what are they tearing all the trees down?

How different is a facility that uses evaporative cooling in like a drought prone community

from one using closed-loop cooling or recycled waste water?

So the closed-loop system, so there's a little wizardry going on here in the closed-loop

system.

Because it's for people who don't know, you always hear it.

Like, the response to concerns over water is, well, now they can design them so that they

are closed-loop, which for people who don't know is they can basically just use less water.

So they are just recycling the water or there's a water in a closed-loop.

And so the concerns about the water, it's actually small compared to all the kinds of, you

know, the amount of water, all kinds of other things in our lives use and machines and so

and the comparison to the golf courses.

Right, yeah, exactly.

They do, yeah, they use the golf course.

And so, you know, we've got closed-loop cooling and recycled waste water and now everything's

fine.

No.

Normally, you have like, like in a Hinkley, California, you have, you know, open air evaporation

that's on sites.

And so these, again, these AI hyperscale data centers, they would use a lot of water.

And there was a lot of opposition, as we know, about that water consumption.

So now it's the, we've gone to closed-loop and here's kind of your wizardry.

So yes, if you are not doing open air on site, you are saving water at that location.

But when you go off site, when you do closed-loop, you have and will possibly use more water

consumption off site because you now have to power electricity to all of the DCs, the

data centers.

And so what's happening is you're just, it's a trade-off.

You're not saving water.

You could actually be using more water consumption.

Water power is electricity and you've got to now get all this electricity to these data

centers.

So it's called the water electric paradox.

It has been a paradox.

Engineering hasn't figured it out forever because you're cannibalizing basically water

for electricity or one or the other.

So it's not necessarily saving water.

It is possibly going to consume more water off site.

And now we have, here comes the electricity side of it.

Here's another thing that people are starting to get enraged about.

All of these massive 765K volt lines that are coming through their property, they're

taking it by imminent domain.

And all these transmission lines, you've got to run power to the DC.

So you're either going to do it by firing up coal plants or new energy plants because

that's how you're going to get electricity.

So it's called the water electric paradox.

And it's really interesting because I was speaking at the UN in New York for climate

week.

And your sustainable developmental goals, SDG 6, which is water and SDG 7 are now in conflict

with each other.

And we can't cannibalize one or the other.

So I think there's a real mandate that we and these huge tech guys, you're shooting

everything off to space, you created this AI.

I don't know why you can't solve the water electric paradox.

Well, on the electricity issue, obviously you had a lot of concerns about that.

My understanding is that giant data centers don't have to raise everyone else's electric

bills, but that this is a regulatory choice about who pays for new generation and grid infrastructure.

And is that right?

Absolutely.

And so, you know, people, my gosh, you know, of all these submissions, it just really

bothers me when because now it looks like everything's going to get kicked off to us to

pay for.

That isn't the way this should be.

You want these AI, hyper scale data centers?

Hey, I think there should be oversight.

And I don't think it's unreasonable to do that at all.

You know, this is classic, big corporate behavior that just wants to kick the can down the

line for the sake of money.

And we're going to end up with a real shit show here in about five years when technology

has changed.

You're going to abandon these little mini Chernobles across America.

Why we can't get them on the upfront to pay for what they need to pay for and their

safety and their infrastructure.

And it should be their infrastructure.

Listen, we have an infrastructure out there that we all know is aged and antiquated.

It can't handle this.

And so people are worried about the cost coming to them and it's happening.

Now more and more states are getting involved, more and more, you know, local legislation

and things are coming out, even the state of Texas and Texas is a big situation going

on out there is said, wait a minute, I'm not even going to do anymore.

Allow this until we have an idea about the electricity and you're going to pay for it

and the consumers aren't.

But I have people writing to me already, their electricity bills and their water bills

are going up to to 400%.

And they're sending me before and after.

And to get emails, these submissions, it really does bother me that someone says, I'm on

a fixed income.

And now I have to choose whether I eat or I pay my electric bill.

I'm like, what is going on out there?

And so yeah, this is all the stuff that we kind of monitor in the arc.

And I will say here, you know, when I very first got involved and started doing a lot of

research and there was people out there already definitely grumbling around where you had

maybe 30 individual local areas looking at pauses, more toryms for a year.

Rare if you saw one that was a full on ban.

Those numbers are now over 600 since this public opposition started where people are definitely

starting, starting this conversation.

And some towns, listen, you voted them in.

We're going to vote you out.

Festus Missouri was one of the first towns to do that.

They just voted them all out.

I think they voted all the data centers.

Absolutely.

And kind of to answer your question, you asked earlier what's happening with these city

council members, they've never seen this kind of money come in.

And it's hard for them to turn away and go, well, you know, we could use this money for

schools or for, you know, parks or replacing what you've destroyed, which communities are

now reporting back.

They haven't done that at all.

But I do think at a city council level, it's really hard for them to overcome these

giant companies and the money that's involved.

And so sure, I'm going to sign an NDA, but the deeper you get into it, the city councils

in a ways are getting moved out because they're writing the city council ordinances.

They're doing and changing the rezoning.

And so it's hard for them.

But people are definitely opposing city councils.

They are firing in them.

They are getting them out of office.

I think we all saw what happened in Utah with Kevin O'Leary and that public opposition.

That was quite steep.

And eventually is, you know, the governor came in and he said, we're going to have to

just scale this back because of the public opposition.

But you remember, they just went through elections and their speaker, the house lost and all

those elder men that voted this in, they're gone.

So I think that these community members are really paying attention to what's going on

with their city councils and their local representatives and their state reps on these

data center situations.

And they, I think they're going to shift tracks.

They're very upset.

If the companies are forced to pay the full incremental cost of the electricity that they

did, the DC's need, including generation and grid upgrades and they use renewable energy.

Like how much of people's objections do you think dissipate?

Not a lot.

One, you're too late.

You're too late.

You already came in and full on secrecy with non-disclosures.

So now there's a situation where they don't trust you.

So is it trust them?

Yeah, absolutely.

Now they do not trust them.

And so I think there will be a hesitation.

I think the look at it, we should have, see, this is where I just don't understand companies

like this.

I don't know why you don't do with your problems on the front.

Yeah, we got away with that.

All of us have to change.

I think corporations need to change their business model.

And if you go back and look at what happened with the Ford Pinto theory, you know where

the gas tank was at the back.

Oh, yeah.

You got hit.

It would blow up.

Well, the company made a decision.

You know, it's more expensive to fix the line problem, right?

And it's cheaper to run it down the line.

And I think some corporations, if not a lot of them, have gone with that philosophy the

whole time.

None of this would have had to happen.

This backlash would have never happened.

Had these companies on the up front been honest and knocked, kicked this down the line

and been transparent.

There could have been a different outcome.

So now the people tend to not trust, but now they're going to talk about, okay, so you're

going to pay for electricity.

But it's the disruption to their land, the uncertainty about the closed loop and the

chemicals that are involved.

And what if there's a breach?

And we've already seen several breaches.

We've seen one in Wyoming, Cheyenne, Wyoming where they had a bad bacteria.

We just saw a breach with 5,000 gallons of diesel.

And it's again about electricity.

And some of these facilities are proposing 2,500 to 3,000 diesel generators.

So now these people have these monstrosities in their backyard.

Their wildlife has gone.

And the people that are very close to them and literally, it's not like they got an option

to show up at a city council and go, okay, we want a 20 mile buffer.

They didn't even get that.

These are literally in their backyards.

And they are loud.

Is this like being around?

I was going to ask about the noise.

It's, I can't tell you how many submissions we have of the headaches, that kind of decibel

24-7s.

There's no piece that the headaches, the anxiety, the problems that they're seeing with children,

the reports from ranchers about this high decibel is very concerning to them because it's

very stressful to the animals.

So ranchers are starting to report more stillbirths because it's very, very stressful for them.

And again, bringing in all these power lines, I've had more veterinarians, veterinarians

who have been taking care of livestock and dairy cattle for 35, 40, 45 years.

And what they're very concerned about is all these lines coming in and tell their grounded

to the DC, you can have stravalths everywhere.

And they have seen industries get wiped out from miles because of this.

So I guess that was, I can be long winded.

No, that's what I was going to ask about this all.

To come in now and ask these communities something different, I just, I probably, I think

they're going to go out now.

Yeah, I was watching this video that more perfect union did of this couple.

And the data center goes up right next to where they live.

And they're like, it goes all day and all night at night.

You can see the lights shining into their people's house every single night and the noise.

Yes.

At like two, three, four in the morning waking them up.

And it's like, that is wild.

It is.

There's nothing you can do about that.

And that just happens.

Right.

And they have no choice.

And believe me, nobody's going to want to be buying these houses.

And I have concerns from whistleblowers inside that are emailing me.

And things that they're building them with no permits.

I'm like, what?

I mean, things that you don't want to hear.

And they're, they're even reporting.

Listen, I may be the electrician in here, but this is going to be a year job.

And then I don't have a job.

And then it takes very few to actually once they're up and running, man it.

But now you've destroyed an area where you may have a lot of fly fishing or tourism goes

away or property values have gone down and they don't have a job.

So they're even reporting the idea that this is so economically great.

We don't see that happening.

So let's say someone hears tomorrow that a company wants to build a hyper scale AI data

center in their community.

Like, what should they be pushing their local officials to demand from that company?

Like what's the, what's the Aaron Brockovich checklist?

Well, a, what is the water consumption?

I mean, how many acres is this going to be?

What is the water consumption?

What's our buffer?

Are you a mile back?

Are you right up or asked?

Are you going to be 20 miles back?

What about electricity?

Build these big, you know, 765 cable transmission lines becoming through.

Those are the kind of questions that they need to know.

Is there a way to build it that you think, because they're going to get built, right?

And like, are there ways to build them that you think would satisfy a lot of the problems?

Even if people don't trust them, if, you know, there was, if tomorrow we can all wake

up and there were new laws passed and new regulations, like, what is the ideal way to

build these data centers?

That's a great question.

And one that always baths me because there is another way.

And there are other solutions.

What is this rush to have them done this way when, you know, that's interesting.

So again, I'm not about stopping innovation and these data centers don't have to be done

the way they're being done.

I get on AI.

I learned in Hinkley oftentimes can take kind of their own information and use it against

them for the right reason.

So I get on AI and I'm like, okay.

So everyone thinks you're so smart.

You tell me where you would build all the data centers in the United States.

And it wrote back if I had to redesign and how we built the data centers in the United

States, I do it based on one simple rule.

You wrote contact with human resources.

I'll get.

Now, you're all going to say, hey, I'm so smart.

Now, you're either going to listen to it or you're not.

Because you built it or you're going to be a hypocrite.

Which is it?

Because it's telling you no human resources.

So there are other solutions.

There are, let's talk about all the caverns that exist.

What about looking at building them underground?

Where it's dark and cool and water and isn't going to interfere with the land and the

transmission lines and electric bills?

I've read many articles.

Maybe you have two about Samsung that's putting them out on barges and using the waves as

energy and keeping them up and in the cool climates up north where it's drizzly and overcast

because that's what they need.

There are other solutions.

There are conversations being had about building them smaller where like the size of your

Mac laptop right there, everybody could have one of those on the outside of their house.

So smaller underground in locations where, and first of all, we're building these things

that are water hogs and electricity hogs on two-thirds of the United States is in a huge

drought.

Yeah.

And that makes no sense, either.

So there are other solutions and other options.

I think that will be coming down the line and we're going to look back on go, why the hell

do we even get put through this exercise?

Because they will possibly, these massive AI hyperscale data centers will be obscure.

Like how many times have we got upgrades on our phones?

I mean, they're changing constantly.

So that's the thing that gets my go.

There are solutions to it.

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That's a mouthful.

Loud and County is fascinating to me because on one hand, it's got more data centers than

anywhere.

And they've generated enormous tax revenue that has helped pay for beautiful new schools

and public services and community centers and you see all the pictures.

On the other hand, even loud and County residents are getting increasingly concerned about

the sheer scale of the build out.

What do you make of that?

The story of these communities where they're just showered with tax revenue from these

data centers and they have all these upgrades and yet still people are sort of angry about

these.

Well, again, I think because it all began misleading and it began down and loud and

counting that whole AI data center alley.

It's one thing that there's one or two around, but you know, this has just gone like on

steroids.

I said from day one on this, I said, oh my god, this is hinkly on steroids.

You know, imagine a utility company like PG&E within your livable space.

But now there's 20.

And so I think in loud and County, that's what's happened.

It's slowly started to build up and now it's really been building up the top five states

that are this going to be more than five, but loud and County Virginia is one of them.

Texas, Indiana, Ohio, and I've watched as more come online, the more frustrated they

get because they may be coming closer to them.

They're now hearing the noise.

They're now experiencing the lights.

They're now noticing that wildlife is gone and that they may now be questioning, is this

really worth giving up, you know, what about our water, you know, what about our wells?

I mean, people are having to drill wells.

Their water is already slowing down to a trickle.

I've been working with one gentleman and his name is Austin Newsom and he took on Amazon

alone because he lost his well water.

They're bringing transmission lines.

He's losing his business.

He got all the way to the pellet court and they held for him and I think that they're

very close to resolving this.

And he's been in that area, but it wasn't until again, it got closer to him and right across

the street that he really started to see what was happening.

So I think that is what's gone on in loud and County and they're very loud and they are

very vocal about more being brought in.

And people are reporting that, you know, their water is brown or tepid or especially during

construction.

They're allowed on, you know, further out into loud and County that are on their wells

or noticing their well water is drying up and they're having to drill new wells.

So as they start to see what's happening and it, remember, it takes time, you know,

from the time it starts into construction to see these issues that they are increasingly

frustrated.

I'm sure you've probably heard about, there's a big pro data center party in Washington,

DC last weekend.

I did.

Organizers described the backlash as bipartisan psychosis and, you know, other people have

said, you know, they've talked about people being luddites who fear progress and, you know,

the president of the United States is out there saying that the only reason to oppose

data centers is if you want to be poor and backwards.

When people who've contacted you hear stuff like that, what do you think the pro data center

set like fundamentally misunderstands about the people who are concerned about them?

Well, again, you know, you say that that is trying to stop innovation and I don't think

that it is.

You know, we are at the pre-hite of the AI industrial revolution.

And so maybe the older set of us has an idea about how some of those things go and, you

know, we can change course.

It doesn't mean you change the innovation.

You can just change course on how big it's going to be or what it could do or not do.

And I think that they just jump on a bandwagon to say something.

And I'm always interested in that.

And I've said this before and I don't know why I bring it up, but I'm going to anyway

in the Johnny Depp trial.

It's like, yep, were you there?

And so I feel like that.

I mean, you see these parties and I'm like, well, are you there?

So you're just going along with something.

And sure, we all went in innovations.

But we also, I think I've just learned and we kind of talked about that.

You can change something on the upset.

You can have innovation, but you don't have to do it in an antiquated way that jeopardizes

all of our resources.

When you guys are so smart, and again, I'm telling you, I'll get on there with AI and

ask it all the time and it'll even come back and tell you.

I've even, I've said, hey, let me ask you something.

So if half of these data centers in opposition get stopped, what would it do to you?

AI said, oh, it would exponentially slow me down because it needs that.

It does.

But yet everybody, we see why they're building them so fast.

Absolutely.

And now you're even seeing them say, what maybe we should slow this down.

So I don't think it's all or nothing.

I think it's a conversation.

It's happened too fast.

Opposition is here.

You have other alternatives.

And oftentimes they don't take the other alternatives because it's going to cost more money.

Right.

It's always the bottom line.

So those parties, I just think are, I just think they want to be different.

They just want to say the opposite.

And that's fine.

And you can until one's in your backyard and I promise you, you'll be saying something.

We even heard the other day.

I mean, President Trump, you know, on my backyard.

So I mean, again, are you just there to protest, to protest?

This isn't about stopping innovation.

Again, this is about as we opened up with where you're building it, how you're building

it, and what has to go along with that and that the stakes are too high.

The stakes are too high.

This is our land.

This is our, you know, water.

This is our future.

This is our sanctuary.

These are our property values.

And it's just all at stake at once.

Yeah, the thing that worries me about it is that the pro data center crowd and a lot

of these companies, they think this is, and

some of the people at the parties have this to reporters.

They think it's a PR crisis, right?

They don't see it as a, they only see it as like a public relations problem to solve.

And they are now belatedly throwing money at the problem.

And so I feel like you have seen this shift.

I don't know if you've seen it as well where, you know, it used to be that these data centers

would come into town and the local communities would like shower them with tax breaks and

let them set up.

And now they're doing more the Lyme County version where they're, you know, paying a bunch

of tax revenue to these communities.

They're starting to say, okay, well, we'll do renewable energy or we'll pay for the electricity.

But I wonder when you have, I mean, you made this point when you have like broken faith

with people and you've lied to them or you haven't been up front with them.

Like you've seen this.

You've been doing this work for a long time.

Like how do you, how do you rebuild trust?

Very slowly, you know, when I started Hinkley, it was all about building trust.

You know, I just didn't walk into Hinkley, you know, slinging stuff around and this and

that.

I mean, I had to get to know these people and they tested me and I would have to come

back and I would have to come back and I would have to come back because see there, they're

sensing you out, oh, you're going to show up.

But are you going to come back?

And so they'd stall me out and then I'd come back.

And it took, it took me over a year every day of my life out there to, you know, they

would call, they would put me to the task.

I'd love to have a meeting with you.

We'll be at church on Sunday.

Would you like to go to church with us?

And I'm like, yes, I would.

And so trust takes a long time to build.

And so I think that they will be skeptical, but I always think that they will be willing

to listen.

But so many of these things have happened so fast.

I mean, even the dismantling process is going to be an absolute nightmare for communities.

So I think it would be slow for them to believe anything.

Well, so much of this also right now seems based on promises, voluntary commitments from

these companies does certainly seem like if you're going to go through, you know, a revolution

like this and a physical build out of infrastructure like this.

You might want to have some laws, regulations.

So then we don't have to, yeah, so then we don't have to just base everything on voluntary

commitments from companies that suddenly feel like they have to solve a PR crisis.

And then, well, and then they act surprised.

You're surprised.

Like I said, you know, at a municipal level, there was about, I don't know, a handful in

the beginning that are now flat out bands, more toins for a year, more toins for a two

year, and 600 plus municipalities.

And now you have 10 states that are starting to look at oversight.

Again, I don't think it's unreasonable.

We'll talk about putting the cart before the horse.

Right.

That it's unreasonable that we do that.

And that doesn't mean a stop, but it does mean I don't think it's unreasonable to go,

what's the scale?

What's the water amount?

What's the electricity?

Who's going to pay for?

What's it going to do to property values?

How close are these to homes?

I mean, it's just not unreasonable.

And so, yeah, I think there is a pause here.

Again, I don't know what those companies think, but I think that they were shocked at the

public opposition.

They did not see that coming.

And they should have.

Again, so it always starts with a lie.

It always starts with a cover up.

I will say you don't see a lot of hyper scale data centers up by the companies themselves

in Northern California.

No.

And Silicon Valley.

You don't.

Right?

No.

I think it's a mess.

It's kind of like the people who work in social media companies who don't give phones to

their kids and social media to their kids.

Right.

Because they know.

They do.

They know.

And I think even when they get caught, they don't like it.

We are watching something happening again.

Were there even asking for this slowdown?

And I think about that all the time when I go on and ask, oh, AI, you're so smart.

And AI, and I'm like, FU and F that and you're wrong.

And that's BS.

Try again.

And it doesn't know everything.

It is about you have to know what questions you're asking.

You have to be able to use it as a tool.

You can't believe every I have had to correct it so many times that comes out of it's what

ever it is.

But I think possibly and I'm watching this slowdown happen for a whole host of reasons.

But I have been in there enough and I've learned enough like I said, taking their own information

and using it against them.

AI has shown me that it's exposing them.

So which is it going to be?

And so I think there's an interesting moment here where we can correct course.

It is possible I have innovation, but we cannot have it at the expense of humanity.

Yeah.

When the movie came out, you became the symbol of an ordinary person taking on a giant

corporation.

There was quite a few takeaways.

What I may or may not have been after that film came out.

Well, I was going to say like was there anything about the real story that the movie missed

that you think would be useful for people to take away now as another generation of

ordinary people are trying to take on big corporations in this data center fight?

Boy, nobody has ever asked me that, but it took me.

It's taken me a long time to look back to even be able to answer that question.

One of the first things that struck me and it probably goes back to my dyslexia.

So I'm a dyslexic.

So very early on, I was labeled and judged and perceived and cast aside and you're stupid

and you're over here and goodbye and I happen to have two great parents who saved me

from that.

But I never understood any of that because I didn't like school so I was always outside.

It was my natural environment that taught me everything.

My common sense was alive and well.

My powers of observations.

I mean, I didn't need when I was outside playing on a hot summer day in Kansas and the

Thunderheads are at 65,000 feet and the air is pretty oppressive and a tornado siren

goes off.

I didn't need to like, oh, let me call the weather channel and ask is it an F4 or an F5?

No, because my instincts, my intuition, my power of observation, they were alive and

well and I knew to go to safety.

So when I began my work in Hinckley, I recognized right away the people's suppression because

I too was being asked, are you a doctor?

Are you a lawyer?

Are you a scientist?

Are you a politician?

What does it you do?

And why should we even listen to you?

And I'm like, that God, I was God's Mac.

I'm like, I go, well, I never thought I had to be any of that to tell you that those two

headed frogs and that green water is fucked up and I'm not leaving and being rooted in

that.

And I think at some level, with all of you know, how social media is now, we've lost

that connection and these are youth in many ways have lost that connection.

And there is a lot to experiencing it, witnessing it, feeling it and recognizing just that gut

sense, wait a minute, something's not right.

And every one of us has that moment.

Listen to it.

Listen to it.

Let that stop you to go why?

Because I've always been that person and most of us are.

If my head, my heart, my gut aren't synced up, oh, I'm a wack of doodle, right?

And so why is that?

And I think that would be, you know, what I teach people and what people in Hinckley taught

me is about using your logic, that's your common sense.

A leverage, leverage often has a bad connotation and idea that it's a bank and they're going

to leverage this or do something like that.

I learned in Hinckley that our leverage was mathematically one plus one equals two.

But in the power of community and leveraging that one plus one becomes a thousand or more.

That's a movement.

And that's what they were doing.

And just sticking with it, you know, my mom taught me about stick to itiveness.

Now, a propensity to follow through in a determined manner, dog and persistence born of obligation

and stubborn, ding, ding, ding.

That is my middle name.

But we get involved in something and we just too easily give up.

And it takes time to get an answer.

It takes time to do research and you have to stick with it.

Yeah.

And can you imagine a Super Bowl, you throw your ball down on the tinyard line, you walk

off, you're going to get boot out of there.

Yeah.

No.

Right.

Take a break, but stay in the game.

And I think a lot of that may have been lost with some of these next generations, but

I would encourage them to reconnect, reconnect to your environment, reconnect to your instincts.

These are real.

This isn't a joke.

This is a naughty, you know, Shirley McLean moment.

Oh, all this or that.

Yeah.

It's real and reconnect to that.

I think it's really important.

So they can have all their fun at those parties.

I invite you to come, spend, bring your tent.

And we're going to stay by one of these data centers.

Okay.

Yeah.

And you're going to live it for a while and see what kicks in for you.

So it's easy to say something, but again, if you're not there, you don't know.

And that's what always bothered me about the people of Hinkley.

They knew what they saw, but the company wanted to knock them off of that.

What you see isn't real.

No.

But don't ever say that to me.

No, so it's this matter of just getting back into yourself and going really, really.

That is.

That's not right.

Fantastic advice for this battle and for our time, really.

So thank you so much.

I think we're getting back to it though.

I think so too.

You know, for all our forward progress, you know, I think sometimes we take a few back

steps of things that maybe we have forgotten.

That's none of my grandchildren.

And there are 14 12 9 2 at 12 14.

I forget there's six of them, but three that live near those social media.

They are outside.

They are writing bikes.

They're down on the river bottom.

They're collecting frogs.

They'd be the first one to go.

Oh, those two had a frog.

That's kind of odd.

Don't you think dirt bike racing, you know, blivers swimming.

It's ocean, all of it.

And they're very smart.

I just think we've moved away from this natural environment that we are tethered to.

And I think if you move back to it and that's why I feel with these data centers, you're

seeing such public opposition.

It's everything at once.

Yeah.

You know, my dad always taught me, Aaron, air, land, water, your family and your future

health.

And those are the gifts you've got.

Every one of those is at stake with these massive AI, hyper scale data centers when there's

oh, you're also smart.

Let's fix this water, when they're energy paradox.

There's other solutions.

There's other options.

Stop pushing down the line for the sake of you to make more money and to for us to lose

everything else.

It does that model doesn't work.

And it's as antiquated as our infrastructure.

And I expect more than that from them than to just mo all of our land and resources and

people over.

And I think they're onto it.

So at the pre-hide of this AI Industrial Revolution, you know, it's really changed.

I'm watching change is the people.

Yeah.

I mean, watching this backlash and how it's organized and, you know, the most powerful

grassroots movements, I think, political grassroots movements are happened without

any politicians or leaders being aware that they're even coming.

Yeah.

And this is an issue that I think a lot of politicians, even people who are more opposed

to what's been happening with data centers and how they've been built, they've missed

it too because they just, you know, you can't really get it from reading a poll even

on the poll show that vast majority of people are against this.

But when you actually hear people talk about this and you go to these communities like you

have, it's a different story.

And that's where the real power is, I think.

Oh, that's where it always is.

And I have absolutely learned in 30 years.

98% of the time these environmental issues start with a mom who's got a sick kid and

she's trying to figure out what's going on.

And I have definitely learned when that mom, yeah, joins and finds another mom and they

do and they become a mom of 50 and they're organizing.

They're now sharing information and they, it takes a lot of courage.

It really does in communities and it was even that way for the people in Henkley.

We just don't naturally like talk to our neighbor and go, and by the way, does your son have

this leukemia?

You know, or if you've been having these experiences because people think you're crazy,

they don't want to do it.

But when they find each other that way and they start that power of leverage, I am telling

you that one pissed off mom and she goes and finds five more pissed off moms and then we

go up to 2050 at that point on their cheerleader.

I'm just getting out of their way.

They know what to do.

So I think it's groundbreaking through courage and getting to know your neighbor again or

what's going on with other children in that school.

And then they make it their job to start asking complicated questions about health or blood

tests or engineering or something that they think they can't understand.

Yes, they can when they put their mind to it.

So I'm watching that activation in amazement, not in one town in Henkley, California, but

in multiple towns in every single state in the United States.

And I want to tell you I now have 20 countries reporting submissions to the map.

I was baffled with the three recent ones that came in from Japan.

Guess what?

All non-disclosure.

I'm like, oh my gosh.

So we go from a town to this country to the globe.

How?

I think that this is a very big, very big, very big global issue.

Aaron Brockovich, thank you so much for sitting down with me and talking about this.

I hope you can follow.

I told you I'd go back and forth and here and there.

Fantastic.

It's everything we needed.

Thank you.

Thank you.

It was nice to be here.

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