They are emotional beings, thoughtful inclusive conversations think conditions and the changes we want to see become possible. So i want to hear from you, when we talk about climate you talk about it . More importantly what do you want to be talking about, with whom . Join theconversation, even make your own video. Invite your friends to join you. Lets talk climate. Live stream discussion, excited to be here with you and Erin Brockovich. Id like to acknowledge that interlock people who inhabited these lands for 10,000 years. We love to hear from you so share your questions in the comments of the live stream or to and at us using our handle at climate one. Hope everyones staying safe. We recording todays conversation for the climate one radio show and podcast which drops every friday. This subscribed wherever you get your pods read my guest today is an environmental icon. Erin brockovich became a household name when her film about some fight for a small town wasreleased 20 years ago. It tells the true story of a single moms fight to get Justice Julia roberts played the topand relentless paralegal who brought pg and e, pacific gas and electric to its knees. If you dont dream about being rich, they dream of seeing their kids swim in the pool without worrying about the have to have a hysterectomy. Shes on a new case in midland texas. Your like water batman. Cancer cluster is getting the attention of wellknown environmental advocate Erin Brockovich. How is she getting involved in the crisis, how did you first find out about it. From the community, about a year ago they contacted me. We will like airpollution, we will find our way. Erin brockovich, welcome to climate one. Its nice to be here and i want to share with everybody up north and the whole state of california and oregon and i hope youre staying safe and well and its a rough time so i hope everybody is taking care ofthemselves. You were saying before we came on if you had a son who had to evacuate in oregon, how areyou and your family doing . Im in southerncalifornia. I was part of the wolseley fire so we have a northern carol california fires , and then the wesley fire and even today when it gets smoky, im in this kind of mode so my senses are like up and im very alert. We are very very smoky area the air quality is not good. Were definitely watching whats happening up north in oregon and its worrisome. Its sad. And i hope everybodys just paying attention and taking care of themselves. Matthew is fine right now oregon is taking it pretty hard. You write about how fossil fuels are disrupting where people live, how they live and ive been thinking about Climate Changefulltime for 13 years. Its Something Different about when we got to breathe it into our lungs and id like to hear how experiencing Climate Change is different than anticipating Climate Change. Thats an excellent question and because we are experiencing it, because its not an isolated situation in one country or one part of the state. Its now just becoming everywhere. And seeing is believing. I think Climate Change has been something thats difficult for people you cant really see it. We think of climate and its air and where is it . It reminds me when i was out in hinckley and i was looking at the twoheaded frog and the green water and that visual meant everything to me. So i talk about climatechange a lot. And i had a picture that was sent to me two days ago up in chico at noon, it was dark but yet it was orange. Itwas a moonscape. If you dont know what Climate Changes, that picture shows you. And we are visual. Most of us are and whats happening for all of us, weve seen the fires in australia. We certainly experienced them on the west coast. And i let people know if you can think of it as a weather phenomenon because you can almost visualize a tornado or a hurricane or a fire and what the Climate Change and the Global Warming has done and i let people know because they dont always see it. Somebody asked me but what does water have to do with Climate Change and im like, okay well thats an excellent question. Ill try not to be frustrated because im likeoh my gosh , climate is water and that is something that i hope you visualize. Part of whats happening here is weve been in this draft so we have less water. We talk about it in the book and Johannesburg South africa, they were literally going to have no water so Climate Change is about to much water. Not enough water, no water. Routes, flooding. And the conversation is really gearing up and its always been there but i believe the conversation is getting bigger because its affecting everyone and they are actually visually experiencing and seeing a result and it can be suffocating and its frightening and the losses can be great so i just hate to say it. The movie twister and i dont know who saw it, but bill paxton is waiting, watching the storm coming and one of his workers comes up and is referencing, you can see it , he says my gosh, its coming and bill paxton in that moment stops and he says its already here. So i think its becoming real because its tangible. Its touchable. Youre runningfrom it. Your breathing it your swimming in it. You could be drowning in it. I think its here and i know that sounds dramatic but it is dramatic. And im often struck with Rachel Carson and again, i quote this in the book superman is not coming but she talked about how man has this fateful power to alter nature. And thats a battle that will not be won by us and instead of trying to continue to alter that, rather we look to ourselves and master and alter our responses, our solutions and our actions. And it just amazes me that she said this in 1963 and what was happening in the 60s and where did we not hear or heed a warning and how we get better at that because Climate Change will be about our response, our preparedness, are defending ourselves and not just thinking that because you cant see it that its not going to happen. Does that mean the power is inward because so much of climate and environmentalism is about changing peoples minds, changing other people, changing other parties, other states so am i hearing you say that look inward first for power and change rather than shaming Oil Companies or republicans or things like that . Absolutely. It would be foolish for us to think whether you are republican or democrat you can or cant be involved in this issue or that industry or the fossil fuels. This will be something that collectively, weve got to drop that period and Work Together and i think that the threat or fingerpointing for the name pointing, all of that isnt serving any purpose other than getting two sides to stand down and i want to find a way to break through that. We all are going to haveto have a seat at this table. And heres the thing that i think is frustrating, we do have the technology and companies can step in here and work with the people so its an inward moments where youre like, im not going to engage in this but i am going to engage in how i can get you to come together to Work Together for a situation on this planet that will affect us all. It doesnt matter what your Party Affiliation is. It doesnt matter if your industry or we as a community. Whats going to matter is we recognize it and stop with the namecalling, Somebody Just put the sword down and lets work collectively. We have to be collectiveon this issue. For the entire planet which is the entire human species. And our country recently has had a real reckoning with the embedded racism, Structural Racism in our country today and in the past. I like to ask you about in 2017 upon the nation filed a lawsuit against 25 oil and Gas Companies operating wastewater injection sites near their homes in oklahoma, a state that very dear to you. Whats that case about and what it significance . I think the biggest significance as we definitely see these communities that havent been heard or that were not listening to them. They feel suppressed and oppressed and socioeconomic factors and theres a whole list of reasons why they dont have access to computers for school or education that they been underestimated and set aside but theyre starting to collectively find their voice. And upon the nation was terribly affected by the earthquakes that were coming from the fracking and left them forgotten so i work with the law firm wrightson luxenberg that had gone out there to representthem. And we see these issues playing themselves out. Tracking is, theres so much that people dont know about fracking and we talked about that in the book. The book is so important because i feel were able to talk in a laymans term so that you can understand it because once we understand it and we get it, we will take action. And upon the nation was terribly devastated and the water has been impacted and they feel very forgotten and were in a moment where theyre speaking up. Theyre speaking out, were all starting to see it. Ive seen it on the ground for 20 years and its very hurtful and what happens is somehow they get convinced that their voice wont matter and theyll back off for a while and out of fear and feeling left and less than and how theyve been treated and that just simply has to stop and again, likeClimate Change. You have to see and that has been my gift to be on the ground and to be able to be with them and see and touch and no this is happening and their voice, theyre starting to find that and theyre starting to, theyre also getting support. That is very key. That they have the support of us or the support of the community. So they were very impacted and that lawsuit is still ongoing to try to get recovery for them because they were devastated by the pollution caused by fracking. How have you benefitedfrom White Privilege . All my gosh. Ive beenblessed in so many ways. I was born and raised in the lawrence kansas and i was blessed to enjoy the freedom of the outdoors, certainly at the time blessed to have clean water. Access to good health. Education. Ive been beyond blessed and every day in my line of work when i do go out there and see that especially when i was blessed with clean water and clean land and clean air and we all deserve that and my father was the one that taught me. He was a republican man from kansas and he ran a pipeline and i know he saw things and he taught me that the greatest gifts we all have, everybody is clean water. Clean land, our air to breathe, our health and our family. You write about how you used the same water down by the creek. That was very sweet. One day laurie popp turned down the tap in her home in Southern Arizona and brown water came out. Hows that a cautionary tale . Its a big one. For a whole lot of reasons. I always have to collect my thoughts or i could sit here and talk for the next two hours about this oneissue. In the book we share a collage of photos that come in from every single state in the United States and multiple cities and green water, im telling you ive not been wrong on. You could argue with me about that all day and im going to tell you know, i can tell you right about 1 pm what color is going to be. It has a color in water and then we see the brown waters and the dirty waters. The black waters, often times we have oil and gas issues. We have tax farms that are leaking and they come into their backyard. People on well water but generally across the board, were seeing these watercolors because we are adding ammonia to the system. And were not treating the dirt appropriately as the municipality. Whats worrisome about those photos is generally often in there is lead area that we have 18 million miles of pipeline of lead pipeline that we need to address our infrastructure. So regarding that color of the water, its telling us several things. Infrastructure issue, pollution issue, bacterial issue, led issues and that the water is not being treated appropriately at the municipality. The best way to explain it and i have clearly learned because i go through this when you Start Talking scientific im like , i cant deal with this. And i see communities do the same thing. They almost lost over, oh number what . It took me a year to learn to say this. I was like, we were in a meeting and robert both paul is one of the greatest water experts around and im not kidding. He was talking about organic matter i could just see the audience go, what is that . To organic tomatoes,thats what i think. So i said bob, what is organic matter and he said dirt and so everyone is like, that i get. Dirt i get. As water comes in it has dirt in it. And they have to add chlorination because we dont want to have e. Coli outbreaks and things like that but what a lot of people dont know and heres the big message. We need to know our water. We need to understand water and when we do, it changes everything. So organic matter and chlorination create a very toxic compound known as trihalomethanes. When we cant keep our ph and control the appropriate filtration system, but we all want to dothat because we all want to do things cheap and take these shortcuts. We cant take shortcuts on water so adding ammonia to the system can reduce chlorination less effective and then we have the whole situation happening in the Distribution System which most people dont realize is unregulated. A lot of stuff goes on in their. But when the water becomes corrosive and you have lead pipes, causes the pipes to pitch and all the iron and the manganese leaks out. Thats often what youre seeing when its coming out of the pipes but coming with it is the lead. So the lead is a huge issue and if we could change adding ammonia and follow the Safe Drinking Water act and guidelines for filtration, we would save infrastructure which is in great need of repair. We all know were going to have to do something about our infrastructure and we would have less lead contamination and less legionnaire outbreaks. Definitely seeing more legionnaire outbreaks. Were definitely seeing more lead contamination. Working on the lead and copper rule, that congressman dan kilby is that amazing with that in flint michigan and this was a policy written a long time ago that said you could test for land and water once every four years and average the sample. What . Weve been missing a whole lot of stuff going on so for the person that sees that color of water, generally that is one of the number one causes of why youre seeing that discoloration of water and we really need to get back to spaces. We need to on the upfront take care of our infrastructure , safety and people first. We have a question from listener david romano who asks about artificial search replacing grass on plainfield and lead is a concern there from some of those things that are made from old tires. Your take on artificial turf as a replacement to natural gas. Thats a great question. Ive had many soccer moms come to me kids have been on artificial turf and the pcvs and the lead and the mercury and a whole lot of issues going on and off gassing and children and those playing football or soccer down on the ground with cancer. So it is, theres some big studies going on. Unaware of these communities and im workingwith them. This is going to be one of those situations where theres going to be some lawsuit that will push back on that had a can be very dangerous. And im really so glad somebody asked that. That was out ofthe blue. You are correct and we just be better off playing on good old natural grass. So there are issues and i think thats something many universities and schools and as we learn more and we talk about this more, that we will stop doing that. There are a couple hundred people listening, if you have questions you can write them in the Comment Section on the live stream. Were talking my guest today on climate one is Erin Brockovich, shes the author of the new book supermans not coming, our National Water crisis and what we can do about it so speaking about water, a lot of people we talked about water. How is electricity, how is Electricity Generation and water bring, people dont realize that nexus thats very important. The hydro dams. A lot of power plants are located near water forcooling. From pollution, and as you said mercury, hydro dams. Weve been in a lot of that with electricity and water and the issues they cause. Weve been successful in some communities stopping that. Other communities not it can become absolute an issue and we do talk about that. In 2003 you and edward mastery, your legal collaborator then filed suit against Beverly HillsUnified School District for allowing contractors to operate a cluster of oil wells on campuses. You claim 300 cancer cases were tied to the wells but the judge ruled the claims were unproven and the School District was reimbursed or half 1 millionin legal fees. Your thought on that because some people will point that as a case where overreaching perhaps or financial incentives. The case was a proven. There was a lot of arguing with science on that. And i had that conversation with the attorneys because the issue for me was energy and the cooling towers that fit right on top of that campus and heres the ball field so we definitely have an oil derrick and the oil derrick when they talk about that is and was a problem. Beverly hills School District has recently come back to me and asked me to help because theyve removed the oil derrick. We were right about that issue. Theres a lot of Directional Drilling thatgoes on. Its like the whole world under their. And the number of kids coming from everly hills high in a timeframe of about 10 years is way more than 300 area its over 1000. So i dont make this stuff up. We need to look at these patterns and these n