Erin Brockovich Is Taking On Data Centers

Erin Brockovich (0:01)

I created Brockovich Data Center. First day, it crashed 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 we're going to end up with a real sh** show here in about five years when technology has changed, 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.

Jon Favreau (0:39)

I'm sure you probably heard about there's a big pro data center party in Washington DC last weekend.

Erin Brockovich (0:44)

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?

And you're going to live in 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.

Jon Favreau (1:28)

D.C.'s hottest party last weekend was called Data After Dark, and it had everything. Tech bros in meta glasses, dancing Bitcoin miners, neoliberal kick streamers, AI photo booths, and a Bitcoin-sponsored whiskey activation, all packed into a crypto founder's bar, along with hundreds of other people who seemed pretty horny for data centers.

SPEAKER_3 (1:49)

I'm at D.C.'s pro data center party and I'm asking why people love data centers.

Erin Brockovich (1:53)

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

SPEAKER_4 (1:56)

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, and that's data center, that's compute.

SPEAKER_3 (2:08)

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 be.

Jon Favreau (2:15)

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.

SPEAKER_5 (2:23)

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.

SPEAKER_6 (2:30)

When I look at Bernie Sanders and talk about data centers, so you actually want people to die of cancer.

Jon Favreau (2:36)

Or maybe you've just been brainwashed by China.

Erin Brockovich (2:39)

Why do people don't want them in their backyard?

SPEAKER_5 (2:41)

A lot of people say that it's a China PR thing.

SPEAKER_7 (2:43)

There's foreign PSIOPs campaigns going on, trying to get the US to stop building power, to get us to stop building data centers. It is a Chinese PSIOP.

Jon Favreau (2:52)

I really believe that.

SPEAKER_7 (2:53)

It's not a conspiracy theory.

Jon Favreau (2:54)

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 Erin 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 Erin Brockovich, whose 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, Erin 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. Every 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 percent of all the electricity generated in the United States.