And in the middle of things stands someone you might only remember from a movie starring Julia Roberts as the main character.
Remember Erin Brockovich?
In 2000, Julia Roberts played Erin Brockovich, who was a legal clerk for the law firm Masry and Vititoe. In 1993 she became alarmed at the unusually widespread rate of unexplained illnesses in the town of Hinckley, California. She found out that Pacific Gas and Electric had been contaminating the ground water in the area with waste water they had been discharging to ponds that had no barrier to prevent it from seeping into the environment and eventually into the ground water. Thanks to Erin Brockovich’s persistent fight, PG&E was successfulley sued and paid the ‘largest settlement ever paid in a direct-action lawsuit in the US’ at the time (source: wikipedia)
Erin Brockovich continued fighting against pollution caused by companies and participated in other anti-pollution lawsuits.
In her latest fight she is supporting the resistance of many US Americans of all walks of life and political color against the widespread local damages caused by data centers.