Bernie Sanders and Erin Brockovich Take on Data Centers

26:31We do want young people in the process. Absolutely. And I run around the country trying to do that. But we need people who are prepared to stand up for the working class of this country, to protect our environment, to protect our constitution, to end bigotry, et cetera, et cetera. So to me, I don't look at it as generational. I look at it as ideological. Which side are you on? Are you on the side of the working class of this country? And as you may know, we just had some elections in Michigan the other day, which I think indicate that maybe the American people are in agreement. We certainly did.

27:05And we had on Abdul al-Sayed a couple of weeks ago, and he was heading toward what seemed like a 10 or 15 point victory and he won by one point and he underperformed with working class voters and voters of color despite a very populist message. How do you interpret that? Well, let me tell you something. I would look at it again, David, in a slightly different way. I happen to think that his victory was the most extraordinary and impressive political victory in the modern history of the United States of America. Don't get it twisted. I love America. I know exactly what America did for me. I saw it with a front row seat to what my life should have been but for America.

27:53But I love America enough to understand that America ought to be America for all of her children. Now you tell me, you studied these things, right? All right. And I want your opinion. Think back. You tell me of a candidate, a major candidate in the big race, primary, Senate primary, who took on the entire leadership of his own state, state of Michigan, Democratic leadership. Took on the Democratic leadership nationally here in Washington. Took on$70 million of super PAC and special interest funding. Okay. took on various levels of bigotry because he happens to be a Muslim, and he won the election.

28:39I have never seen a candidate take on all of that opposition and win an election. So to me, it was an extraordinarily impressive victory. Now, I got to tell you something about polling in Michigan. When I ran for president in 2016, literally the day before the election, We were told all about, Bernie, you're 20, 30 points down. You can't win. You know what? We got out of Michigan. We won someplace else because we thought we could lose. Ended up, we won. We had to hold a press conference someplace else to announce our victory in Michigan. I don't know what goes on with polling in Michigan. But please do not underestimate.

29:19I'm not underestimating at all. But I'm asking a very specific question about where he performed best and where he underperformed. Yeah, and that's fair. But I think what you're going to see is, you know, he was up against a popular governor. The governor came out against him. But it's similar to New York City. I mean, Mamdani did great, but black voters actually, did he underperform with them? Well, we will see what happens in the general election. I suspect that you're going to see a very strong coming together. And Haley Stevens, by the way, was very gracious in her concession speech. She was.

29:53And she understands, as I do, that now is the time that we come together to defeat the most dangerous president in the history of the United States. And I think, without any doubt, the black community will be there, the Latino community will be there, the working class community will be there. And to the degree that I can be of help to Abdul, I certainly intend to do that. Senator Sanders, I appreciate your time. Thank you so much. Thank you.

30:19Senator Bernie Sanders. You can read a terrific piece about his early life in political evolution by staff writer Jill Lepore at NewYorker.com. And of course, you can subscribe to The New Yorker there as well. NewYorker.com. We'll continue on the movement against data centers in a conversation with the activist Erin Brockovich. She joins us in just a moment. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour.

31:16Transcription by CastingWords Just, you know, real.

31:46Get started at Vanta.com. I'm Jesse Sefchak. And I'm Shilpa Oskokovic. And we're senior test kitchen editors at Bon Appetit and the hosts of the Bon Appetit Bake Club podcast. Bake Club is Bon Appetit's community of confident and curious bakers. We love to bake. Some might even call the two of us obsessive. And we love to talk about all the hows and whys and what didn't work that come with it. Every month, we publish a recipe on BonAppetit.com that introduces a baking concept that we think you should know. Then you'll go bake, send us any questions you have. And we'll get together here on the podcast to talk about the recipe.

32:24And this month, we're making plum cheesecake karpatka. It is a spectacle of a giant Polish dessert, and it is so fun. Head on over to BA.com and come and bake along with us. Send us your questions, pictures, and any thoughts to bakeclub at bonappetit.com or find us on Substack. Join us here on the first Tuesday of every month as we debrief about our latest bake. Find BA Bake Club wherever you get your podcasts. Happy baking.

32:58This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. The name Erin Brockovich has been synonymous with a fighter taking on big polluters. And, of course, many of us remember her from the film, which dramatized a landmark case against a California utility, Pacific Gas and Electric, which had poisoned the groundwater in a small town. Julia Roberts played Erin Brockovich. These people don't dream about being rich. They dream about being able to watch their kids swim in a pool without worrying that they'll have to have a hysterectomy at the age of 20. like Rosa Diaz, a client of ours, or have their spine deteriorate like Stan Bloom, another client of ours.

33:37So before you come back here with another lame-ass offer, I want you to think real hard about what your spine is worth, Mr. Walker, or what you might expect someone to pay you for your uterus, Ms. Sanchez. Then you take out your calculator and you multiply that number by 100. Anything less than that is a waste of our time. By the way, we had that water brought in special for you folks. Came from Well and Hinkley. Erin Brockovich has been involved in other major cases against polluters since then, and she runs a research firm that consults for lawyers. Earlier this year, she began receiving emails from people worried about the construction of AI data centers, something that's happening at a frenetic pace all over the country.

34:24Erin Brockovich. Hey. How are you? How are you? Good. Good. How are you? I'm good. You making some good trouble? I didn't set out to do that, but apparently, yes. Yes, you did. Who are you kidding? I really, it was a total surprise to me. Erin, it's been 30 years, 30 years. Oh, my God. I know. We're going to start this way. It's been 30 years since a certain legal case about groundwater contamination changed your life and the lives of a lot of other people and inspired the movie that we know you by. And you've been filing lawsuits around chemical pollutants for years thereafter. Now you're involved with data centers.

35:07You're involved in this for a fairly brief time, right? Just for a few months. And you're collecting information. This is the beginning of your process. How would Could you assess what the opposition is to the construction of data processing centers? How much pushback has already begun against the tech companies on this? A lot. This is, in my 30 years, I've never really seen the people show up like they are at a very local level. just down in Florida and they got a moratorium. The city council meeting went on for 12 hours. And it just, it was an overflow. And every city council meeting now, you're just seeing this huge overflow of people.

36:04When I started the map, when a community reached out to me. Explain what the map is. so it's pretty simple it's called brockovich data center but it's a map where people who have data centers being developed proposed or up and running in and around the country can report their issues to the map and it comes to me in a submission you know i go through 12 000 and i read each one So for me, it was a visual to see the bigger picture. What does the map look like? Well, with all the red dots now, it's getting pretty hard. It's getting pretty hard to see. It's just coast-to-coast data centers. It's coast-to-coast data centers.

36:54And so... That's pretty incredible. It's very incredible. And it's actually really very concerning. You know, they're building in many drought-restricted areas. and I don't know that people always understand. And, you know, listen, this has been a huge learning curve for me. And I'm learning from the people on the inside, the workers, the people, the city hall and everybody, the amount in the consumption of water, it is almost staggering. And the bigger hyperscales can use anywhere from one to seven, possibly eight million gallons of water per day. Now, what does a data center do in terms of the environmental drag on a community?

37:45So what they're reporting is, and this is not just a few towns here or there, it's just everybody has the same report. A, during the construction phase. These are not small facilities. There are 2 ,200 acres. There are 3 ,000 acres. There are 4 ,000 acres. And the first thing that they get extremely upset about is the destruction of the land. You're talking rural land. So all the trees, all the vegetation, all the farmland, all goes away. It's disruptive to their sanctuary. It's disruptive to the wildlife. People are definitely reporting changes in the wildlife, the absence of wildlife, dead wildlife, and they find that very concerning.

38:37And in the construction phase, wells can often get damaged. The construction for people that are there will tell you it's almost violent. You can feel the ground shaking. So all your water can get very turbid. People have lost their well pressure. Their wells have been damaged. They're having to drill for deeper wells. And the gentleman that I reported on, Austin Newsome is his name, and he's in a litigation. But his house is unlivable at this point. Why is that? Because now the water, you can't drink the water. You can't bathe the water. The water pressure is too low. He's got young children and they just can't, I mean, they can't live without water and they can't now drink their water.

39:23And I'm really surprised at the number of reports, consistent reports from varying states on these large data centers is the 24-7 humming, the decibels, how far they go out, how disruptive it is. It's just a nonstop, almost buzz, hum in their ears 24-7, and they're finding it extremely disruptive, creating a lot of anxiety. More and more information is coming in now by submission. People now reporting their utility bills. You know, a water bill that was$30 is now almost$300. Why has it gone up so fast? because of all the energy that has to be required to build these huge data centers. So the locals are paying the bill.

40:14Correct. And they're starting to send in their before and after electric bills. So on the map, we kind of will list stats of the number of people that have reported how many have now reported electrical issues and water bill increases. And that is definitely on the rise, but I have one woman and she says, you know, I'm on a fixed income. So now it's, do I pay my electric bill or eat? We are, and I am seeing some reports, and this is where I'm going to start going out to these ranches, to these locations, with these communities to see exactly what's happening. But they're starting to report, They're noticing that they're seeing more stillbirths in the cows.

41:00So there are a lot of things. Stillbirths that are demonstrably the fault of data centers? Do we have any evidence of that? No. What they're saying is since the data centers came in and began up and running with this constant noise, it seems that they're now noticing more stillbirths. So we'll stipulate that that's going to require more research to figure out if there's any relationship. Oh, my gosh, yes. Yeah. Absolutely. But let me ask you this. What laws, if any, are being broken in the construction of these data centers, whether it's in rural areas or near closer to suburban areas? I'm definitely getting reports from people working inside and from the counties and the cities that there was inappropriate permitting, inappropriate zoning.

41:46That is definitely a big issue for everybody at the city council level, how they got in, how they came in as a pretense of a warehouse. They were a data center, that type of thing at a very local level. I'm not quite sure what you mean by inappropriate. Are you suggesting that government officials are profiting in some way by giving permits, building permits, and the like? Well, according to many communities at their local levels, they're showing up. They're changing zoning ordinances. Some are building without the appropriate permits. And yeah, I think it's very difficult for city council members when these big tech giants come in and they offer, you know, they want money for the city.

42:35So they're getting money for that. And the people had no say in that. And they're also saying the money that they did receive wasn't changing their environment. So that seems to be the crux of the problem. Who decides, who gets to decide about the construction of a data center and then who profits and how, if there is one, and then what effect on the public health there is. Am I right? Yes. And the big issue is non-disclosure. Nobody was informed of anything. There was no city council meeting for the ones that are being proposed now that they know there was a nondisclosure, but now they're having city council meetings.

43:15So they're asking local government officials to sign NDAs about arrangements between tech companies and the purchase of real estate? Yes. Everyone's been reporting that. It's been a nondisclosure agreement that a city council level who are in charge. You've got to go to the local council to get your permits to build and zone, and they're changing zoning ordinances, are signing non-disclosures. Aaron, you've got Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez trying to put together a AI Data Center Moratorium Act. How prevalent is that in American politics? In other words, how much support do you see out there for this kind of moratorium?

44:05So, well, there's federal, there's state, and there's local. When we started, the moratoriums were starting to come. And maybe 12 weeks ago, maybe over 100 local counties and cities in multiple states had put on either pauses for six months, moratoriums for at least two years. because now as city council and states have seen the pushback from the people, they're like, let's wait because now city council wants to know more information. And we have seen some flat-out bans. We had one here in California in Monterey Park where they flat-out ban it. We've now seen 300 municipalities with moratoriums and or bans.

45:02We've now seen 14 states that have come in with possible, you know, state oversight, and we just saw New York completely ban them. So it's kind of growing in regards to the moratorium and what kind of, we just have no information. I mean, everybody in any leadership is like, wait a minute, you got to tell us what you're doing. Who's going to pay for the electrical? What is going with the water? What is going to be your water consumption? What size of land mass do you need? And so now you are seeing, as you said, Bernie Sanders and AOC looking at some federal oversight. And I'm watching that get some momentum.

45:50Does the political debate break down along party lines or is it bipartisan? It's bipartisan. I'm definitely seeing that. That is pretty well known as everyone's starting to talk more and more and more and more and more about the data centers. Do you think it'll be a campaign issue in the midterms and in the presidential election in 2028? I do. Well, possibly, yes. So I don't know if you watched the situation, and I watched with fascination, the situation that happened out in Utah. And the people just showed up in huge numbers, so much so, and they were so upset about the size of the facility, the damage it could do to the Great Salt Lake, Utah is already in a huge drought.

46:42In fact, Aaron, the president of the state Senate in Utah just lost his seat over this issue. Yes, I do think this could be a very important thing for the leaders. And I really, I've always been this way. And ever since I began my work in Hinkley, I've just never understood it. When you have issues so important to the people, why on earth you don't listen to them or completely disregard that they're showing up and they're like, we don't want this. Have a conversation with this. And that's one thing I've learned in community after community after community for 30 years. Communities are willing to cooperate.

47:31Communities want to have their voice heard. They want to have a seat at the table. They are willing to compromise. But what they won't deal with is the lie. And that this is, again, I feel like I've come full circle. That young girl that showed up in Hinkley, California, what was really motivating the community and their frustration was, you lied. I didn't know. And that's the exact same thing that's happening here. This feels like the 90s to you again in some way. It does. I just feel full circle and I'm watching. You know, Hinkley was one town, one utility, and one aquifer. This is every town, every utility, every resource across the country.

48:25I think the stakes are really high for the people and what's really got their goat, if you will, in everything. And I've had mayors call me. I've had city council members call me. I've had California legislation call me. And I'm getting the same reports. Other city council members who are now not in office, this was an absolute secret. Have the AI companies reached out to you to say, hey, Aaron, well, you know, we understand your concern, but we're really not so terrible. We're doing X, Y, and Z to, you know, ameliorate the situation or anything. Do you ever hear from the corporate side where they try to get you to come on over and understand their point of view?

49:14No. Never. I have to laugh at that. They're like, oh, oh, shit. They're not that stupid. No. So, you know, that's interesting because I did get a text from somebody who said there was a data center executive out of Dallas. It's somebody that I work with, would like to have a meeting. Will you take that meeting? Here's the thing. Sure, with the people. You don't have to have a meeting with me. You have to have a meeting with the people. With the community in question. Backyards are being their life turned upside down. And I'll be happy to show up for a meeting with all of them. Erin, I wonder, do you use AI yourself?

50:03No, not much. I get curious. I use it out of curiosity. And when I do talk about AI, I encourage people. Remember who you're talking to. It's a machine, okay? It is a tool that could be used for good purposes. I don't think it's be all, end all. And I've always encouraged people, it's a tool. But you have to use your own brain. Vet your information. It's a tool. Use it for the good tool it is. You don't need to use it for anything else. So use it or don't use it. But the fact that to have this AI is at the expense, first of all, the big companies don't be appearing to pay for it. Now, we're watching a lot of things happen where states are now not giving them the tax breaks.

50:57They're starting to say, you have to pay for all the electrical. But for us, we the people, to now have to have water consumption issues, electrical bills going up, water bills going up, the loss of our sanctuary, our wildlife, everything and all the resources at once are at jeopardy. It's too much. The name Erin Brockovich is associated with class action lawsuits. Do you see a class action lawsuit in the offing here? Well, the case that I was involved in that everyone became famous for, Hinckley, was a direct action, not a class action. That depends. You could. There's a lot of diminution of property value.

51:43But I would see possibly in that, that's going to be up to all the lawyers to decide. It wouldn't be one national class. It could be state by state. But I see the lawsuits coming. You are seeing more citizens and communities that are organized hiring attorneys. I'm starting to see actually now in a couple of places where they've put on moratoriums, the city councils are now being sued by the tech giants. There's a couple of them out there for$100 million or more. That's going to be really hard for these small local cities to push back on that. So I think that you'll start to see more litigation like that.

52:25AI executives will tell you this is going to bring a lot of jobs, endless amounts of innovation. It's going to make everybody's life better. And you're, you know, yeah, again, there's difficulties along the way. How much do you trust, if at all, AI executives and AI innovators? I don't. I don't, and I don't think the people do. And you're showing all of them that you can't be trustworthy. If this is so great and so awesome, what's the nondisclosure agreement? If it's so great and so awesome, come out here and talk to these communities whose lives you are turning upside down. It's no different than P, G, and E, hiding the information and not coming out to talk to these people.

53:18Oh, behind your back, I'm sorry, I'm poisoning you. So there's not going to be a lot of trust with these giant corporations. So this is just about money then, in the end. For them? Sure. But for the people, it's their land. It's their home. It's their water. It's their resources. It's their sanctuary. It's the rivers and the creeks and the tributaries that all of us enjoy. And it's coming at like a mass invasion. We're not talking one or two. We're talking it's happening simultaneously across the country. And so there's not going to be a lot of trust with the people. Tell me your next steps. um well right now gathering more information i'm going to start going out to some of these communities i'm going to start going out to some of the ones that are construction up and running and in some communities are asking me to start coming to their city council members uh meetings and look i can't be everywhere at once but this is what i tell the people you're there you're showing up.

54:23And so on my Brockovich report, every week we're doing a story about this. We give a lot of tips to different communities, who they can network with, how they can join forces. And that's really important because it's really hard as one, and they are starting to make a difference. And the more of them that are together, the more support they are for each other. I've not ever seen this in 30 years. Erin Brockovich, thanks so much. Hey, thank you. Erin Brockovich. The mapping tool that she's launched is at BrockovichDataCenter.com. I'm David Remnick, and that's our program for today. Next week, Pod Save America's John Lovett joins me to answer your questions about the midterm elections.

55:14who just haven't had a moment in which a bunch of Democrats put their talents on display. We're missing the talent show. We need the swimsuit portion. You know, we need the whole thing. Get out there. And the talent portion. Let's see. Spin the batons. Do the juggling. Let's go. John Lovett. That's next time on The New Yorker Radio Hour. I hope you'll join us. See you soon.

55:41Comprehensive. Witty. Speculative. Critical. Insightful. Profound. Wide-ranging. Hopefully doesn't take itself too, too seriously. I'm David Remnick, and each week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, my colleagues and I try to make sense of what's happening in this chaotic world. I hope you'll join us for the New Yorker Radio Hour wherever you listen to podcasts. Thoughtful. Exquisite. Just, you know, real.

56:12I'm Jesse Seppchak. And I'm Shilpa Oskoukowicz. And we're senior test kitchen editors at Bon Appetit and the hosts of the Bon Appetit Bake Club podcast. Bake Club is Bon Appetit's community of confident and curious bakers. We love to bake. Some might even call the two of us obsessive. And we love to talk about all the hows and whys and what didn't work that come with it. Every month, we publish a recipe on bonappetit.com that introduces a baking concept that we think you should know. Then you'll go bake, send us any questions you have. And we'll get together here on the podcast to talk about the recipe.

56:45And this month, we're making plum cheesecake karpatka. It is a spectacle of a giant Polish dessert, and it is so fun. Head on over to BA.com and come and bake along with us. Send us your questions, pictures, and any thoughts to bakeclub at bonappetit.com or find us on Substack. Join us here on the first Tuesday of every month as we debrief about our latest bake. Find BA Bake Club wherever you get your podcasts. Happy baking.