2026 July 02 « Antinuclear

We’re up against forces that have all the money in the world’: Erin Brockovich on her battle against AI datacentres

What is certain, though, is that the land cannot withstand these centres’ immense demand for water. According to analysis by the Guardian, two-thirds of planned datacentres in the US are in drought-stricken areas. The larger centres need up to 5m gallons of water a day for cooling, equivalent to the average usage of 50,000 people. It is unclear what the plan is and whose needs will take priority between AI, agriculture and everyone else.

In 1993, she squeezed a $333m settlement from a Californian energy company in a scandal over contaminated water. Three decades later, she has a new target in her sights – and it’s global

Guardian, Mon 29 Jun 2026

When Erin Brockovich woke to find 30 emails from people from the same town, she realised something was going on. People email Brockovich all the time because of what happened in 1993, when she was instrumental in suing Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) on behalf of residents of the town of Hinkley, California, whose groundwater had been contaminated. The case resulted in a settlement of $333m – then the largest ever payout for a direct-action lawsuit. When she was immortalised by Julia Roberts in the 2000 film Erin Brockovich, she became the hero we didn’t know we needed, a modern day Joan of Arc. She had won against PG&E with no formal legal training.

The emails she received a few weeks ago were about datacentres. In April, she put a callout on her website asking for anyone with concerns about one near them to get in touch. Within a month, 3,862 people had replied. Tech companies have needed datacentres to power their technology “for ever”, she says, but the new ones being built to power AI? “This feels like Hinkley on steroids.”

This isn’t a story about AI, she says. “That genie is out of the bottle: it’s here, it’s an effective tool, you can use it or not,” Brockovich says matter-of-factly. This is about the massive structures being built to house the vast computing facilities AI requires. These datacentres, she says, stretch over “hundreds and hundreds of acres”. In May, Utah gave approval to a centre twice the size of Manhattan.

Some of the emails Brockovich gets from people near datacentres express genuine bafflement: “Why did I not know about this? How did this construction just start? Why am I now getting a notice from the city council that this has already passed when I didn’t even have a voice in it?” Others reflect concerns about the impact of the centres: “What about our resources? What’s happening to the water? Who’s paying for all this energy and am I going to foot that bill? What will the future impact on health be from these monstrosities? What’s going to happen to the wildlife?”

From the emails, Brockovich built a map of significant AI datacentres in the US that are either operational or under construction, overlaid with locations where community members have emailed in concerns. This open-source document is chilling: as of 24 June, 33 AI datacenters have been completed and are operational, 68 are under construction and 41 are proposed. And there had been 7,005 reports submitted through the online form, which is to say, all that is known about them is what people have seen. As a post on her Substack blog is headlined: “If data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?”

“It’s happening in every US state, multiple counties, rural areas, ranches, farms and neighbourhoods. People watch nature because they respect it, they need it. And they’re watching it being destroyed,” says Brockovich. She has heard from people saying: “I’m concerned this is where the bald eagles nest,” “I’m watching wildlife disappear,” “I’m seeing dead animals.” Some communities learn about a centre months after it has been approved; others don’t hear anything about them and watch as a vast building emerges.

“People are reporting bill spikes,” Brockovich says, reading an email from someone who says their monthly water bill went from $22 (£17) to more than $350 (£265). The threat of these centres is about more than money – it feels existential. “How will the water use disrupt the balance of nature? People are asking: “What will happen to us?”

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..After Hinkley, she worked on other environmental pollution cases against PG&E related to hexavalent chromium, the chemical that contaminated Hinkley’s water. More recently, she has focused on Pfas (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), “forever chemicals” that are a component in firefighting foam used heavily on US military bases. Pfas have been linked to health problems, including fertility issues and some cancers. In 2017, communities living near military bases reported worrying levels of these chemicals in their drinking water.

Brockovich’s renown is plainly the reason people email her when they have concerns. This is what led her to north-west Georgia last year, where staggeringly high levels of Pfas were found in the water and the wider environment. It was believed that they came from carpet factories that used stain-resistant chemicals. The major carpet factories say they complied with all regulations and no longer use Pfas. She is still supporting people there with their campaigns.

Unlike toxic chemicals leaking into water, nothing about datacentres is discreet. Signs that might be subtle one day – an absence of birdsong – the next day will be a centre up and running at full volume. “It really becomes about the noise, the decibels,” Brockovich says. People will write to her and say: “We’re going insane 24/7,” “It’s got to stop,” “It’s humming, it’s hissing, it’s buzzing.” She says: “It’s generators. It’s increased electric bills. It’s power surges.”

These structures are appearing without the consultation you would need to erect a new sports hall, as if people won’t notice. But people certainly will notice, because the buildings are vast. It feels like a step into post-democracy, which is a tech bro fantasy, a world in which laws and regulations have been obviated. The big tech companies seem to have blueprinted their fantasy and started building it.

Alternatives are now being mooted. “People are talking about putting them at the bottom of the ocean,” says Brockovich. “They’re talking about having barges and putting the datacentres there, using waves as the energy in cooler climates. Elon Musk wants to put them in space.” But with innumerable Earth-based datacentres already built or in the works, this feels like puff – the future you could have had, had you not sleepwalked into the one that has arrived.

For Brockovich, this is all a distraction. The first thing she wants is a case-by-case moratorium on approving datacentres. ( (She is collating these cases through her open-source mapping site and says councils vary in the action they are prepared to take, according to how surprised by, or receptive to, local complaints their officials are. Many states are only now stopping to consider whether there should be state-level regulation and oversight of datacentres – and, if so, what implications that would have for local decision-making and autonomy.

This takes time. Seventy-nine municipalities in the US have so far have issued moratoriums, many immediately being hit with lawsuits for breaking their original deal. Pauses have been introduced in Georgia, Maryland, Michigan and South Carolina – one introduced in Maine was then vetoed – but these are early interventions against tech behemoths.

When I ask Brockovich about the political climate – a president committed to AI and blatantly dismissive of environmental concerns – she is careful to stress that opposition to datacentres is bipartisan. She knows from her work fighting Pfas, though, that a change in administration can make an enormous difference to the success of these campaigns. In the final days of Joe Biden’s presidency, a clean-up operation was announced by the Pentagon. However, this plan has quietly been delayed by Donald Trump’s Department of Defense: in some areas, it won’t start until 2039.

Yet the nature of Brockovich’s campaigning is not to go straight to the top and demand policy change, but rather to build lawsuits from the ground up. Victory, to her, is won by way of a pragmatic to-do list. To start, she would go to local government and say: “I’d like to see an environmental-impact report. I’d like to see how you propose to power all this. Are you going to build your own power? Are you relying on our already strained resources?” She says: “Let’s get that information first and then have a town hall meeting where the people can be a voice in it.” She has a degree of confidence that the law still has teeth. “Lawsuits aren’t settling for $333m any more; they’re settling for billions,” she says.

Brockovich’s datacentre work goes beyond the US; she has been contacted by people in Australia, India, Scotland and Ireland. There is already a moratorium on any more datacentres in Dublin; even by 2023, such centres were accounting for a fifth of Ireland’s electricity usage. “This is a planetary thing,” she says. “It’s overwhelming. We have to have some courage to show up, and it’s difficult to do that when you’re up against forces that have all the money and all the intelligence and all the bandwidth in the world.” She, meanwhile, is “getting too old for this, by the way. I’m in my legacy phase. I have six grandchildren.”

She is smiling. All that may be true, but even if this is her final campaign, she won’t walk away until it’s over. She can beat this – she just can’t beat it on her own. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/29/were-up-against-forces-that-have-all-the-money-in-the-world-erin-brockovich-on-her-battle-against-ai-datacentres

July 2, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Macdonald Witch Hunt. Melbourne Uni cancels cardiologist – Israel lobby pressure

by Wendy Bacon | Jun 27, 2026 , https://michaelwest.com.au/witch-hunt-melbourne-uni-cancels-surgeon-israel-lobby-pressure/

The University of Melbourne has cancelled a prestigious lecture by eminent Australian cardiologist Professor Peter MacDonald after Zionist pressure. Wendy Bacon reports.

Eminent Australian cardiologist Professor Peter MacDonald, who was scheduled to give a prestigious lecture at University of Melbourne in July, has been ‘cancelled’ due to behind-the-scenes pressure from Zionists.

In April, Macdonald, who is a pioneer and innovator in heart transplant medicine, was invited by University of Melbourne and St Vincent’s Hospital to deliver the annual Memorial lecture in honour of surgeon John Clarebrough.

The lecture is delivered at the Surgical Forum, which is the premier event for the partnership between University of Melbourne and St Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne.

Second time cancelled

This is the second occasion on which Macdonald, who supports Palestinian rights and has attended rallies, has been cancelled due to pressure from Zionists.

Last year, he was on forced leave from St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney for seven weeks before the complaint against him by doctors associated with the Australian Zionist Healthcare Alliance ( AZHA) was dismissed following an independent investigation.

Macdonald was contacted but declined to comment for this story.

In early May, a Melbourne University staff member posted a promotion for the Surgical Forum on Facebook, where Macdonald’s name remained on the program until yesterday, when it was removed and replaced with St Vincent’s surgeon Dr Elizabeth Paretz.

A promotional brochure was produced and remains in circulation.

“Unnamed accusers” – invite withdrawn”

On June 12, more than a month after the lecture was first promoted, University of Melbourne Acting Head of Surgery Professor Justin Yeung and St Vincent’s surgeon and Adjunct Professor Matthew Read, who chairs the Surgical Forum, sent a letter withdrawing the invitation.

“concerns” were raised regarding remarks“

They informed Macdonald that “concerns” were raised regarding remarks attributed to you that have been “widely interpreted as antisemitic”.

After “careful” consideration, the organisers had come to the conclusion that the remarks could distract from the forum event. This suggests that those who made the decision understood that if they did not withdraw their invitation, Macdonald’s unnamed accusers would conduct a public campaign against him.

The accusers were referring to a 30-second question that Macdonald asked at a Palestinian Justice community forum last year, during which he said that, before he had been informed by the Australian government that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was responsible, he considered that Mossad could be behind some antisemitic incidents.

(Mossad itself acknowledges that it conducts extensive covert operations, including embedding agents in other countries, including Iran.)

No right of reply

Unusually, given the vague and anonymous nature of the allegations and the fact that St Vincent’s knew the 2025 allegations had been dismissed, the organisers gave MacDonald no opportunity to respond to his critics before making their decision.

Following the withdrawal of the invitation and before it became public, MWM became aware that the Forum organisers were informed that the allegations had been dismissed in 2025, and St Vincent’s removed negative and defamatory statements about him from its website.

They were also aware that during reconciliation week, Macdonald presented a ‘Grand Round’ at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney about his monthly visits to run a heart health clinic for the Aboriginal community in Condobolin in NSW for two decades.

This lecture was attended by the CEO of St Vincents Health, Chris Blake and was positively received without anyone publicly raising last year’s incident.

Despite the facts

Despite knowing all these facts, University of Melbourne and St Vincent’s refused to reverse their decision.

Their decision denies those who would have attended the lecture the benefit of Macdonald’s first-hand and up-to-date report of his research findings and his practice, which has saved thousands of lives.

The event would have proceeded smoothly if it had not been for the determination of unnamed Zionists or those influenced by them to silence and punish Macdonald.

Uni’s tepid response

MWM put questions to the St Vincent’s Foundation, which is responsible for the bequest that supports the lecture. We were told that no questions would be answered.

MWM also put detailed questions to Professor Jason Yeung, but received no answers.

We also put questions to the Interim Vice Chancellor, Glyn Davis, asking whether he or other members of senior management were made aware of these events, and, having been made aware, whether he would investigate.

We got the following response from a Uni spokesperson:

“After careful consideration, the lecture organisers decided to withdraw the invitation to the guest speaker. This will enable the lecture to run smoothly so students, researchers and the wider medical community can focus on the important topics which will be discussed.

“Each year, faculties, schools and our partner institutes hold hundreds of events such as this. The University supports and encourages the organisers to make the appropriate judgements to ensure they are delivered without any disruptions.”

As a result of the decision, those attending the lecture will not hear about the “important topics” which would have been “discussed.”

“Antisemitic” or anti-Israel?

So the situation goes like this: A person is invited to participate in a public university event. Some unnamed individuals claim that the invitee has previously made a remark that some pro-Israeli people considered ‘antisemitic’.

These complainants convey a message that they will create a public fuss if the event goes ahead. The invitee is given no right of reply and is ‘cancelled’.

It’s a laissez-faire attitude to political censorship and potential bullying if ever there was one.

MWM also asked the Interim VC Davis: Do you agree that to cancel such a prestigious and publicised lecture on the basis of anonymous allegations without even giving Professor Macdonald a chance to respond does not meet the values of integrity, justice and transparency on which University of Melbourne claims to conduct its affairs?

We got no reply, but the answer is obvious. It doesn’t.

Macdonald attack an AHPRA concern

This second attack sends a disturbing message to Australian health workers who are already alarmed by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency’s (AHPRA) joint statement with the Special Envoy for Antisemitism, Jillian Segal, that the regulator will apply the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism in its handling of complaints.

Over 1,400 health workers and 60 medical organisations have signed an open letter to AHPRA calling on it to reverse its decision. They warn that AHPRA’s new position will have a “chilling effect” on practitioners advocating for Palestine and have called on the regulator to reverse its decision.

Their concerns are similar to those of the British Medical Association, which this week voted to drop the IHRA definition amid growing concerns that “healthcare workers are being punished for having views on international conflicts

Pursuit of Macdonald

This second ‘canceling’ of Macdonald provides evidence that some of those who wanted his suspension from St Vincent’s last year did not accept the resolution of the incident in his favour. Macdonald’s seven-week absence from his patients at St Vincents for doing nothing wrong was not enough.

An organisation called the Australian Zionist Health Alliance (AZHA) has been a key player in both last year’s attack on Macdonald and the campaign to get APHRA to adopt the IHRA definition.

The Alliance was formed in August 2025, and since early last year, it has been attacking APHRA for failing to take action against antisemitism.

Dr Jeremy Goldin is one of AZHA’s members. He is a sleep specialist at St Vincents Private Hospital and a Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne.

Goldin was one of three named members of the Alliance Against Antisemitism in Health Care (AAAHC) who signed a letter calling for Macdonald to be immediately suspended and investigated following his comment at the Palestinian Justice Forum.

Goldin has welcomed APHRA’s decision on his LinkedIn account, on which he regularly reposts items supporting Israel, including a description of findings that Israel is committing genocide as a ‘fantasy.’

MWM asked both AZHA’s Public Affairs Officer, Sharon Stoliar, and Goldin if they had played any role in raising concerns about Macdonald’s planned lecture at the University of Melbourne. We received no reply from Stoliar, whose involvement in well-funded far-right political organisations, including the astro-turfing group Minority Impact Coalition, was revealed during last year’s Federal election.

Goldin responded, “You’d have to check with the University of Melbourne on this.”

Children and War event junked

Last September, another member of AZHA, Dr Doran Samuell, was involved in stopping a Grand Round on Children and War being held at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne. In light of this week’s shocking UN Commission of Inquiry report, which found that Israel deliberately kills children, that cancellation is a glaring example of a poor decision to cancel.

According to Australian Jewish News, AZHA has been in overdrive collecting material for the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion.

It has developed an AI tool that uses prompts to help health professionals to prepare submissions and evaluate them against the IHRA definition. The AZHA considers promoting boycotts of Israel, chanting ‘From the River to sea, Palestine will be free’ or “lack of Zionist voices in senior or diversity leadership roles” as examples of antisemitism or anti-zionism.

This week, the Medical Association for the Prevention of War (MAPW) wrote to AHPRA calling on it to reverse its adoption of the IHRA definition, which it described as “inappropriate, ill-conceived and divisive”. The IHRA definition … introduces an element of risk for health workers who speak out in relation to Israel’s actions, despite the widespread condemnation globally, including by governments, of those same actions,” wrote MAPW.

“This covert attack on Macdonald highlights those risks.“

If a senior and highly respected professor can be silenced in this way, what chance does a junior Palestinian or Lebanese health worker or student have?