Few people are famous enough to have a biopic. Environmental activist Erin Brockovich is one of them.
Brockovich became a household name for her role in the $333 million settlement against Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) over toxic groundwater contamination in Hinkley, California — one of the largest settlements in a direct-action lawsuit in American history.
Played by Julia Roberts in the 2000 film Erin Brockovich, Brockovich became an icon of consumer activism: a spunky California mom taking on a powerful corporation. It’s no surprise that she remains outspoken on pollution and environmental protection. But her latest crusade against data centers bears little resemblance to the environmental catastrophe that made her famous.
Brockovich has made the rounds of new and traditional media capitalizing on the growing backlash against data centers. From Theo Von’s podcast to The New Yorker’s Radio Hour, she is back in the spotlight attacking the infrastructure needed to power artificial intelligence and the broader technology economy.
Rather than engage the hard questions surrounding data centers — resource use, grid capacity and permitting — Brockovich is throwing fuel on the outrage. She is even employing tactics popularized by the scandal-ridden Southern Poverty Law Center and antifa, mapping where data centers are being built. She suggests these utility facilities pose an existential threat, putting our air, water and land in “jeopardy.”
This is what happens when activism becomes a career rather than a mission: you need a new villain. Hinkley was a genuine environmental catastrophe. People were exposed to contaminated groundwater, and Brockovich helped uncover a real corporate failure with real consequences for real families. That was a worthy fight that brought together Americans of broad stripes to stand up for commonsense environmental protections and corporate responsibility.
Brockovich’s data-center crusade attempts to replay the same script without the same case. Data centers are not secretly poisoning communities. They are critical infrastructure that can raise legitimate, but resolvable, questions about water use, electricity demand and local permitting — hardly the environmental menace Brockovich makes them out to be.
We’ve seen this movie before. Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 ‘The Population Bomb’ predicted a rise in human population would result in a mass starvation that never came. When all new growth becomes the next environmental catastrophe, eventually the word “crisis” loses its meaning.
Brockovich built her reputation by finding the smoking gun. She should be careful not to start manufacturing one.
From major names like Brockovich to less influential content creators, the impulse to constantly jump on the latest trend to bash new products, inventions or development is all-too-common. It’s easier to tear things down and target others than it is to build a better alternative or offer pointed critiques to refine a company’s offerings or a project’s design.
And Brockovich is falling into the same trap. Her extensive experience in environmental law and consumer advocacy could offer a sharp but measured perspective on how to address the various concerns facing data centers’ today. After partaking in years of lawsuits over pollution, Brockovich could turn her attention towards preventing these atrocities from ever occurring in the first place—commenting on EPA rulemaking, permitting and clean air legal reform, or other state-level measures.
But she’s never really done that. While other consumer advocates, like Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, have shifted focus to collaborating with corporations and shaping policy frameworks, Brockovich spent the past two decades joining lawsuit-after-lawsuit in a never ending outrage machine. And it seems she will likely keep that streak up and inevitably boost lawsuits against data center construction. After all, it’s the easiest way for her to remain famous.
It’s a sad path to see. Americans would do better if figures like Erin Brockovich seized on their fame to achieve meaningful change, not more clicks. Oh well.
Sam Raus is the David Boaz Resident Writing Fellow at Young Voices. Follow him on X: @SamRaus1.