Collusion between the U.S. Government and Wall Street to deprive Native Americans of their treaty-guaranteed property goes back to the beginning of the country. Over two and a half centuries, that collusion has comprised both brutal coercion and devious subterfuge, ethnic cleansing coinciding with kidnapping and religious persecution.
While alienating indigenous property in the past entails many broken promises and treaties between the United States and American Indian tribes, the failure to prosecute corporate criminality on Indian reservations in the present is a symptom of the demise of the rule of law in the US that undermines the U.S. Constitution and protections that guard against corporate corruption of governance at all levels. As indigenous governments in the United States assert jurisdiction over their resources under national and international law, the corrupting influence of Wall Street threatens not only Indians and their sacred grounds, but democracy itself.
As Jewell Praying Wolf James writes in his August 2013 special supplement to Whatcom Watch, The Search for Integrity in the Conflict Over Cherry Point as a Coal Export Terminal, the Lummi Indian Tribe ancient village and burial ground at Cherry Point is in the way of progress. As such, Pacific International Terminals, its financial backer Goldman Sachs, and Edelman — the world’s biggest public relations firm — have their work cut out for them.
Having recently settled a $1.6 million lawsuit for illegally and intentionally bulldozing the ancient Cherry Point Lummi village of Xwe’chi’eXen — the first archaeological site placed on the Washington State Register of Historic Places — Pacific International Terminals is actively seeking to corrupt local and tribal elections, as well as influence members of Congress. While PIT — one of the largest marine operators in the world — was able to avoid criminal prosecution for desecrating sacred Lummi grounds, it isn’t leaving anything to chance when it comes to securing approval for its project on Lummi Reservation lands previously stolen by U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs agents on behalf of illegal white settlers.
History, as they say, has a way of repeating itself.
By Eric de Place and Clark Williams-Derry, Cross-posted from Sightline Daily, Source: Grist.org
Editor’s note: The coal industry is desperate to ship its product to Asia because demand here in the U.S. has dropped. Three coal export terminals are currently proposed for Washington and Oregon (down from six a year ago). Before they can be built, their environmental impacts must be evaluated. Climate activists have been calling for broad evaluations of the myriad impacts, while industry wants just narrow studies done. Today comes word that the environmental impact study for one of the proposed terminals will be wide-ranging and rigorous — a win for anti-coal activists.
Hot off the presses: The three “co-lead” agencies in charge of reviewing the proposed Gateway Pacific coal export terminal at Cherry Point, Wash., have published the scope of their review. The major takeaway is that it’s bad news for the coal industry.
The industry did win an empty victory with the Army Corps of Engineers, the sole federal agency at the table, which opted for a narrow scope of review. But in the end it doesn’t much matter. One of the other lead agencies, the Washington Department of Ecology, is going to require in-depth analysis of four elements that the coal industry had desperately hoped to avoid:
A detailed assessment of rail transportation’s impacts on representative communities in Washington and a general analysis of out-of-state rail impacts.
An assessment of how the project would affect human health in Washington.
A general assessment of cargo-ship impacts beyond Washington waters.
An evaluation and disclosure of greenhouse gas emissions of end-use coal combustion.
Of those, two stand to be particularly damaging for would-be coal exporters: rail impacts and greenhouse gas emissions. There’s not a lot of wiggle room with either of those elements.
First, burning the 48 million tons of coal proposed for export at the terminal annually would release roughly 100 million tons of carbon dioxide, a staggering figure that amounts to as much carbon pollution as every activity in the state of Washington combined. In other words, it’s a clear environmental disaster that would overshadow every other effort the state has made to reduce climate-changing emissions.
Second, moving that much coal to a terminal will create congestion throughout the region. There’s simply no way around the math. In Seattle, for example, both Sightline and the traffic analysis firm Parametrix have confirmed that new coal export shipments would completely close major center city streets by an additional one to three hours every day, 365 days per year.
What’s worse for the coal industry is that the expansive scope of review will likely create further delay and uncertainty, potentially scaring off investors. Just yesterday, in fact, executives from Cloud Peak Energy, which plans to mine up to 10 millions tons of coal a year in Montana and ship it out through West Coast ports, griped about the slow progress on coal export terminals during a sad-sack discussion of its weak second-quarter earnings.
Now that public agencies will be tallying the manifest pollution, health, climate, and congestion impacts of the Gateway Pacific coal terminal, there’s likely to be even more opposition to planned export terminals. Plus, given more analysis and a wider exploration of the proposal’s problems, opponents will likely find abundant opportunities to litigate, which would of course create even more delay and uncertainty.
So the bottom line of today’s announcement for the proposed Gateway Pacific coal terminal: long delays, high costs, more opportunities for public opposition, and a near-certainty of litigation. Coupled with the ongoing collapse in Pacific Rim coal prices, it’s not a fun time to be in the Northwest coal export business.
Eric de Place is a senior researcher at Sightline Institute, a Seattle-based sustainability think tank.
Clark Williams-Derry is research director for the Seattle-based Sightline Institute, a nonprofit sustainability think tank working to promote smart solutions for the Pacific Northwest. He was formerly the webmaster for Grist.
In my last post, I referenced a new report from Goldman Sachs analysts showing that the market for seaborne thermal coal (overseas imports and exports used to fuel power plants) is likely to fall from 7 percent annual growth to around 1 percent, and stay there for the foreseeable future. This is great news, in that it has the potential to render several new large-scale coal-extraction projects around the world — including export terminals in the U.S. Pacific Northwest — unprofitable before they are completed or, in some cases, begun.
However, this bit of good news should not distract from the larger picture, which is decidedly grim. As oil prices remain stubbornly high, the rapidly urbanizing developing world has turned to coal, which has been growing at a furious pace and is on the verge of becoming the world’s primary energy source. Even if its momentum is slowing slightly, it remains a world-crushing behemoth.
No one has been following this story more closely than energy analyst Gregor Macdonald. This is from his blog:
Yikes! As Macdonald writes, “Only a very small portion of the global public is aware that global coal consumption has advanced by over 50% in the past decade.”
What’s more, while coal’s hyper-growth may be slowing slightly, many of the long-term drivers behind it remain firmly in place. In particular, as developing-world urbanization pushes more global energy demand into cities, the balance of power (as it were) shifts to electrical grids, precisely where coal is strongest.
In China, coal expansion is slowing in part due to small, inefficient plants being closed, but as Michael Davidson explains (in a great series on energy in China), shifting to bigger, more efficient, longer-lived plants may lock in a coal “floor” in China for many decades to come.
It’s worth noting that the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) is somewhat more bullish on coal than Goldman Sachs. According to its 2013 International Energy Outlook, in the absence of strong climate policies, coal will grow … well, a whole sh*t ton. Climate Progress reports:
If business as usual continues for the world’s climate policy, the EIA’s mid-range projections show consumption of coal — the dirtiest fossil fuel in terms of carbon emissions — increasing by over a third by 2040. It nearly doubles by that time under the worst case scenarios. Specifically, the EIA’s “Reference Case” projects global coal consumption jumping from 147.4 quadrillion Btu of energy in 2010 to 219.5 in 2040. … But looking across the range of scenarios the EIA lays out, coal consumption could only reach 182.2 quadrillion Btu by 2040 — or go as high as 297.3 quadrillion Btu.
Even the low end of that range is scary as hell. When we talk about a decline in global coal’s growth rate, it’s crucial to remember that even a small percentage of a gargantuan amount is … a lot. When I ran the Goldman Sachs report by him over email, Macdonald pointed out that the analysts forecast growth in global coal demand from 5,564 million tons per anum in 2013 to 6,564 mtpa in 2017. That’s relatively slow growth, percentage wise, but in absolute terms it is 1,000,000,000 more tons of coal a year being burnt. “This is some serious BTU growth,” Macdonald says.
The global coal juggernaut is so large now that even a low rate of growth represents an enormous amount of new greenhouse gas emissions. Not only that, it represents an enormous amount of new momentum. If there is to be any hope in the long term, the trajectory of coal urgently needs to change. Concludes Macdonald:
A tonne of coal stopped right now by other means, other sources, and preferably renewables, is equal to many, many tonnes stopped in the future. Stop that tonne of coal today and you kill path dependence, beat sunk-cost decision making, and divert the Big River of global energy ten years from now. It’s critical to think in these dynamic terms, as the very large system lumbers forward, with its constellation of politicians, corporations, and myriad other dependencies attaching themselves to whatever system comes into being. Renewables create their own constituency, just like coal. Coal is not special. Change the river now, and you amplify what happens a decade from here.
If we can’t divert that river, if we can’t find some way of urbanizing the developing world with low-carbon power, we are well and truly screwed. Coal must be attacked head on, much more furiously than anyone has yet contemplated, if there is to be any hope of climate stability.
WASHINGTON — Power plants in the United States are burning coal more often to generate electricity, reversing the growing use of natural gas and threatening to increase domestic emissions of greenhouse gases after a period of decline, according to a federal report.
Coal’s share of total domestic power generation in the first four months of 2013 averaged 39.5 percent, compared with 35.4 percent during the same period last year, according to the Energy Information Administration, the analytical branch of the Energy Department.
By contrast, natural gas generation averaged about 25.8 percent this year, compared with 29.5 percent a year earlier, the agency said in its most recent “Short-Term Energy Outlook.”
With coal prices dropping and gas prices rising, the agency said it expected the use of coal to remain on the upswing, accounting for 40.1 percent of electricity generation through 2014. Natural gas would fuel about 27.3 percent.
Power plants are the single largest source of greenhouse gases that drive climate change. The growing use of coal is occurring against the backdrop of President Barack Obama’s announcement of a sweeping plan to reduce greenhouse gases, including curtailing emissions from power plants. His initiative has already sparked opposition from the coal industry, congressional Republicans and coal-state politicians.
Opponents say new regulations are unnecessary in part because utilities have relied more on natural gas, which emits less heat-trapping carbon dioxide than coal does. But the new data indicate that power plants will readily return to coal if the price of natural gas gets too high.
“Markets on their own may go in your direction for a period of time, but to ensure that we get reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in a significant, sustained way, you’re going to need government intervention,” said James Bradbury of the World Resources Institute, a Washington think tank.
The energy administration estimated that carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels would rise by 2.4 percent in 2013 and 0.6 percent in 2014, after falling about 3.9 percent in 2012.
“The increase in emissions over the forecast period primarily reflects the projected increase in coal use for electricity generation, especially in 2013 as it rebounds from the 2012 decline,” the report said.
In a speech last month, Obama directed the Environmental Protection Agency to propose rules by June 2014 to cut greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. A rule for new power plants is expected by September.
Coal-fired generation accounted for about 50 percent of the electricity produced in the U.S. about a decade ago. But a natural gas boom driven by hydraulic fracturing has pushed down prices, making natural gas more competitive with coal. By April of last year, coal and natural gas each produced about one-third of the country’s power.
Lower demand for coal drove down its average price, said Elias Johnson, a coal industry expert for the agency. At the same time, the price of natural gas ticked upward, buoyed by demand and somewhat reduced production.
Utilities, many of which have natural gas and coal plants, will probably toggle between the two fuels in the near term, burning the cheaper one more often.
“What is the least expensive form of generation gets dispatched first: renewables, hydro, then maybe nuclear and then coal or natural gas,” said Karen Obenshain of the Edison Electric Institute, a utility trade group in Washington.
Coal is not expected to grab a 50 percent share of power generation again because new regulations curtailing mercury emissions from power plants will probably shutter many small, older coal plants, said Mark McCullough of American Electric Power, one of the country’s largest coal-fired utilities. Even with such closures, the U.S. will probably fail to sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, a goal set by Obama in 2009, without a comprehensive effort to address carbon dioxide pollution.
Said Bradbury, “Electricity markets are very dynamic, and while there’s been a lot of press about the success story of the benefits of natural gas, it’s important to realize that that’s temporary and it depends on gas prices staying really low, and we’re starting to see there are these thresholds where utilities will switch back to higher-carbon fuel, like coal.”
BILLINGS- The U.S. House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee will meet Tuesday to discuss the expansion of coal production on public lands in the United States.
Montana Congressman Steve Daines, who serves as a committee member, revealed that Crow Indian Tribe Chairman Darrin Old Coyote will be testifying during the hearing regarding a recent agreement with Cloud Peak Energy and the hopes the tribe has for that partnership.
Committee members in favor of coal production expansion, such as Daines, plan on using testimonials to tout the benefits of coal production in the western part of the country.
An expansion could mean a change for Montana and Wyoming, as the Powder River Basin accounts for 40% o U.S. coal production.
Opponents say an increase in production might be detrimental to tax payers, as they say coal is currently undervalued.
The hearing kicks off at 2:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time in the Longworth House Office Building in Washington, D.C..
If you would like to watch the hearing, you can find a live stream at that time byclicking here.
Navajo Nation members launched a creative direct action Tuesday to protest the massive coal-fueled power plant that cuts through their Scottsdale, Arizona land.
After a winding march, approximately 60 demonstrators used a massive solar-powered truck to pump water from the critical Central Arizona Project (CAP) canal into barrels for delivery to the reservation.
Flanked by supporters from across the United States, tribe members created a living example of what a Navajo-led transition away from coal toward solar power in the region could look like.
Participants waved colorful banners and signs declaring ‘Power Without Pollution, Energy Without Injustice’.
“We were a small group moving a small amount of water with solar today,” declared Wahleah Johns with Black Mesa Water Coalition. “However if the political will power of the Obama Administration and SRP were to follow and transition NGS to solar all Arizonans could have reliable water and power without pollution and without injustice.”
The demonstration was not only symbolic: the reservation needs the water they were collecting.
While this Navajo community lives in the shadow of the Navajo Generating Station—the largest coal-powered plant in the Western United States—many on the reservation do not have running water and electricity themselves and are forced to make the drive to the canal to gather water for cooking and cleaning.
This is despite the fact that the plant—owned by Salt River Project and the U.S. Department of Interior—pumps electricity throughout Arizona, Nevada, and California.
Yet, the reservation does get one thing from the plant: pollution.
While plant profiteers argue it brings jobs to the area, plant workers describe harrowing work conditions. “We are the sweatshop workers for the state of AZ, declared Navajo tribe member Marshall Johnson. “We are the mine workers, and we are the ones that must work even harder so the rest don’t have to.”
These problems are not limited to this Navajo community. Krystal Two Bulls from Lame Deer, Missouri—who came to Arizona to participate in the action—explained, “We’re also fighting coal extraction that is right next to our reservation, which is directly depleting our water source.”
The action marked the kickoff to the national Our Power Campaign, under the banner of Climate Justice Alliance, that unites almost 40 U.S.-based organizations rooted in Indigenous, African American, Latino, Asian Pacific Islander, and working-class white communities to fight for a transition to just, climate friendly economies.
With the constant barrage of news headlines we’re confronted with, it can be very difficult to get a good fix on what exactly is going on these days, especially if you don’t know where to look. Most news providers are only interested in the latest trends (and, of course, whatever’s going to pay the bills). They ignore everything else.
In light of that fact, we wanted to put together a short briefing of important indigenous struggles that are taking place right now in Canada and the United States.
Note: If you know of something that isn’t on this list, please feel free to mention it in the comments below. All additional struggles will be added to the end of this briefing.
Last Updated: March 15, 2013
Mi’kmaq
Citizens from two different Mi’kmaq communities recently carried out an 11-day hunger strike to oppose the Made in Nova Scotia Process and the Made in New Brunswick Process, two framework agreements that follow a nationwide template in Canada that aims to extinguish Aboriginal sovereignty and title. Ultimately, the chiefs taking part in the process did not opt entirely, however, they did agree to halt negotiations until their communities can become better educated as to exactly what is at stake. The Mi’kmaq of Unamaki, meanwhile, are still attempting to deal with a proposed shale gas fracking development project at Lake Ainslie, the largest freshwater lake in Cape Breton.
Pit River Tribe
The Pit River Tribe Of California unanimously affirmed their opposition to geothermal and other industrial developments in the sacred Medicine Lake Highlands, located in Northeastern California . In a recent public statement, the tribe explained that “Geothermal development in such a sensitive hallowed place will despoil the environment and harm the Pit River Tribe.” Pit River has been struggling against geothermal development in the region since the 1980s, when the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) sold geothermal development leases to three corporations without consulting anyone.
Red Lake Anishinaabe
The Red Lake Anishinaabe Nation recently stood up to Enbridge Energy LP, a company that is openly trespassing on Red Lake Ceded lands in Minnesota, operating multiple pipelines without an easement. Through their ongoing protest camp, Nizhawendaamin Indaakiminaan, a group of grassroots Red Lake tribal members and allies, are demanding that the flow of oil through these pipelines be stopped.’
Havasupai
The Havasupai Nation joined forces with three conservation groups to sue the U.S. Forest Service over its decision to allow Energy Fuels Resources, Inc. to begin operating a uranium mine near Grand Canyon National Park without initiating or completing formal tribal consultations and without updating an outdated 1986 federal environmental review. As stated in a recent joint press release, “The Canyon Mine threatens cultural values, wildlife and endangered species and increases the risk of soil pollution and pollution and depletion of groundwater feeding springs and wells in and near Grand Canyon.” For more on the active threat of uranium mining at the Grand Canyon, please see here.
Mathias Colomb Cree Nation
The Mathias Colomb Cree Nation (MCCN) and The Wilderness Committee are working to oppose Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting Company’s (Hudbay) new Reed Mine project in Grass River Provincial Park. Pointing to unaddressed environmental concerns and a lack of free, prior and informed consent, MCCN Chief Arlen Dumas recently explained, , “The Reed Lake mine proposed by Hudbay is within the unceded traditional territories of Mathias Colomb Cree Nation. This proposed mine raises serious concerns in relation to caribou populations, water quality, and carbon emissions. The province of Manitoba and the proponent, Hudbay, have failed to meet with MCCN, the true owners of these lands and resources, in good faith to obtain our free, informed and prior consent on any proposed activities within our territories.”
Muscogee-Creek
Hickory Ground Tribal Town member, Wayland Gray, Muscogee-Creek, was recently arrested and charged with making a terrorist threat for peacefully entering the construction site of the expansion of the Wind Creek Wetumpka Casino. Wayland, who was arrested with three others, entered the site to pray over the desecration of the grounds because it is where 57 ancestral remains were unceremoniously moved to make room for the casino expansion. Wayland has since been released form jail, however, the charge of uttering a terrorist threat remains. Watch a video of the arrest.
Innu
In Quebec, the Innu are continuing to reject the “North for all” plan, a massive economic, social, and environmental development project that will directly impact Innu tradition, culture, language and history. The Plan Nord is a multi-faceted resource-exploitation project that involves digging mines, expanding forestry, and damming a slew of rivers.
Lummi
The Lummi Nation is continuing to push against the proposed Gateway Pacific coal terminal at Xwe’chi’eXen (Cherry Point), a sacred landscape the Lummi have relied on for over 3,500 years. The proposed terminal and shipping point would be used to export Powder River Basin coal to China. If built, the project will set the stage for the possible destruction of all live in the Salish Sea. As Jay Julius, member of Lummi Nation tribal council recently pointed out, it could also destroy underwater archaeological sites and upland burial grounds. Late last year, a wid spectrum of Native and non-Native Fishers joined the Lummi Nation to oppose the project.
Wolf Lake and Eagle Village
While not a struggle per se, there is a situation with a proposed ‘rare earth’ mine that we should keep an eye on, for obvious reasons. In western Ontario, Wolf Lake and Eagle Village First Nation have entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Matamec Explorations Inc., over a proposed yttrium-zirconium mine. Rare earth mines have gained alot of attention over the past couple years for the notorious amount of pollution they produce. The two First Nations are undoubtedly aware of this, however, they have decided to take a facts-based approach concerning Algonquin cultural impacts social economic impacts and specific environmental impacts.
Lake St. Martin First Nation
The entire population of the Lake St. Martin First Nation continues to remain homeless after their reserve was drowned in water by the Manitoba government in 2011. As if the loss of their homes was not enough, the people of Lake St. Martin were left with no choice but to relocate to an old military base that has no infrastructure. For more on this, be sure to look at: Flooding Hope: Displacement Politics by the Province towards Lake St. Martin First Nation.
Dineh, Hopi and Zuni
A coalition of Indigenous and non-indigenous groups are working to stop the development of the Grand Canyon Escalade project at the confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado Rivers on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona. The $120 million resort and tramway project is being pushed forward by the Navajo Nation government despite the obvious risks to the environment and the cultural and spiritual well-being of the Dineh, Hopi and Zuni Peoples. Several groups have come together to stop the project, including the Diné Medicine Man Association, Inc., Forgotten People, Next Indigenous Generation, and the Grand Canyon Trust. Hopi leaders have also unanimously agreed to oppose the commercial initiative.
Ohlone, Miwok and Yokut
The Ohlone, Miwok and Yokut peoples are working to protect Brushy Peak, a sacred place near Livermore, California, that is a part of their origin stories. The East Bay Regional Park District (EBRPD), which maintains and operates a system of regional parks within the San Francisco Bay Area, wants to turn the area into a recreational preserve against the wishes of the concerned Indigenous peoples. Buried Voices, a new documentary film by Michelle Steinberg, provides a great deal of insight into this ongoing struggle. Other recent struggles in the region include the effort to protect Glen Cove (Sogorea Te) and Rattlesnake Island.
Navajo, Hopi, Apache, Acoma, Zuni…
The long-running struggle to defend the San Fransisco Peaks continues in Arizona, despite the fact that the infamous Snowbowl has since become the first ski area in the world to make fake snow from 100% treated sewage waste water. Activists working to defend the Peaks lament that “We have temporally lost this battle with attacks on us from the U.S. Forest Service and the so called U.S. ‘judicial system’”. Nevertheless, they remain committed to stopping the production and use of the disgusting snow.
Anishinaabe
A group of Anishinaabe citizens from seven different communities/reservations in northern Minnesota are struggling to defend the sacred manoomin (wild rice) from the dire impacts of sulfate contamination. the group, known as Protect Our Manoomin is working specifically to oppose mining legislation that endangers manoomin and the ecosystem of northern Minnesota; and to educate and inform Anishinaabe communities of the imperilment of nonferrous mining. Companies that are currently threatening manoomin include PolyMet/Glencore, Twin Metals/Antofagasta, and Kennecott/Rio Tinto.
Ktunaxa
The Ktunaxa, meanwhile, are continuing to resist an impending cultural and environmental disaster in southeastern British Columbia. The Jumbo Glacier resort proposal, located in the heart of Qat’muk (GOT-MOOK), threatens critical grizzly bear habitat, and ignores the cultural and spiritual significance of the area to the Ktunaxa. According to Ktunaxa belief, Qat’muk is home to the Grizzly Bear Spirit, which makes it a culturally pivotal sacred site. The BC government, in order to move forward with the project, recently created the Jumbo Glacier Resort Municipality (JGRM), a municipal body that doesn’t represent any actual people. The undemocratic body is being challenged in court.
Asubpeeschoseewagong
Grassy Narrows is gearing up for yet another court battle in their decade-long struggle against clearcut logging on their territory. In January, the Ontario Government began proceedings to overturn a major legal victory that was eleven years in the making. On August 16, 2011, Ontario Superior Court Justice Saunderson found that the Government of Ontario did not have the power to unilaterally take away rights outlined in Treaty 3. The province preposterously claims that Justice Saunderson’s analysis was the “antithesis of reconciliation.” Grassy Narrows meanwhile, continues to cope with the impacts of mercury pollution on their lands along with White Dog FN and some members of Wabauskang who lived at Quibell. In March 1962 Dryden Chemicals began dumping an estimated 10 metric tonnes of mercury into the Wabigoon River, contaminating the fish which formed the subsistence and economy of all three communities. The mercury was never cleaned up.
Dineh
Returning to Navajo territory, uranium companies are working double time to convince the Navajo nation to let them mine their “uranium-rich” land, despite the overwhelming number of abandon uranium mines that continue to pollute the territory. There are over 1000 abandon mines.
The Confederated Tribes of the Goshute
Elsewhere in the Southwest, the Confederated Tribes of the Goshute are stepping forward to stop a water pipeline that has been proposed by the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA). According to the Protect Goshute Water website, the pipeline “would draw 150,000 acre feet per year from the Great Salt Lake Watershed Basin lowering the water table, drying up our springs, and fundamentally changing access to water over this vast region for plants, wildlife, and people.. Even a slight reduction in the water table will result in a cascade of wildlife and vegetation impacts directly harming our ability to engage in traditional practices of hunting, gathering, and fishing on ancestral lands.”
Cree
The Grand Council of the Crees just called on the Quebec government to move forward with its plan to convene an independent evaluation of the uranium industry in Quebec. The Cree Nation of Eeyou Istchee has consistently stated its opposition to uranium mining in all its forms in the Eeyou Istchee James Bay territory. In August 2012, the Cree Nation enacted a permanent moratorium on uranium exploration, mining, milling and waste emplacement in Eeyou Istchee. The Crees are also intervening in the legal proceedings recently commenced against Environment Quebec by Strateco Resources, the proponent of the Matoush advanced uranium exploration project, the most advanced uranium project proposed to date in the Province.
Dene
The Yellowknives Dene First Nation (YKDFN) and Lutsel K’e Dene First Nation (LKDFN) announced in February that they will not support the proposed Nechalacho rare earth mine at Thor Lake, about a 100 km southeast of Yellowknife. The project would exploit a total 15 rare earth metals – including radioactive ones like uranium and thorium. The YKDFN explained their opposition stems from a deteriorating relationship with the company behind the project and that the potential environmental impacts resulting from the project far exceed the perceived benefits.
Winnemem
The Winnemem Wintu Tribe and their allies are pushing against the proposed Shasta Dam expansion project, which would flood the Winnemem’s sacred sites for a second time! The proposed expansion also jeorpardizes the site of the Winnemem Coming of Age ceremony. Furthermore, in conjunction with the Bay Delta Conservation Plan it would also hasten the extinction of Central Valley salmon, steelhead, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other fish species.
Amidst these many struggles, there are numerous efforts around the continent dedicated to reclaiming, revitalizing, and securing traditional languages, many of which are on the brink of extinction. In Canada alone, there are over 60 communities working to record/document their languages before they are lost. As highlighted at Our Mother Tongues, language revitalization efforts include the Akwesasne Freedom School, the Chumash “Silent No More” project at the University of California at Berkeley, the Wicoie Nandagikendan: Dakota-Ojibwe Language Immersion Preschools and the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project. Also, The Squamish Language is making a come back; and efforts are underway for language reclamation at Shoal Lake. Then there is the Digital Indigenous Democracy project, described by Christa Couture of RPM.fm as “a remarkable endeavor that will bring interactive digital media to eight remote Baffin Island Inuit communities – communities whose 4,000 year-old oral language will become extinct without digital media to carry it forward into the next generation.” There are many other programs and efforts across the US and Canada; new ones are appearing all the time.
Attawapiskat First Nation
In recent months, the Cree community of Attawapiskat has held a constant presence in the news. Most notably, Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence carried out a six week fast as a part of IdleNoMore; and let’s not forget the coordinated media effort to discredit her in order to weaken the IdleNoMore movement. Last month, members of Attawapiskat also set up a blockade on the road leading to the De Beers Victor mine with a second blockade by a different group of Attawapiskat citizens who wanted their own concerns addressed. Meanwhile, the reserve continues to cope with a long-standing housing shortage.
Wet’suwet’en
For more than 15 months, the Grassroots Wet’suwet’en peoples have maintained The Unist’ot’en Camp, a resistance community that was established to protect Wet’suwet’en territory from several proposed pipelines from the Tar Sands Gigaproject and shale gas from Hydraulic Fracturing Projects in the Peace River Region. Most recently, in November, the Wet’suwet’en of the C’ilhts’ekhyu and Likhts’amisyu Clans confronted, and escorted out, employees and drillers of the Pacific Trails Pipeline (PTP) who were attempting to enter Wet’suwet’en lands without consent.
Aamjiwnaang
Aamjiwnaang is an Anishinaabe reserve located just outside of the city of Sarnia in Southwestern Ontario–an read well known as “Chemical Valley.” Home to 40% of Canada’s petrochemical industry, the Chemical Valley region experiences some of the worst air pollution in Canada. The Aamjiwnaang Reserve, boxed in by industry on three sides, bears the brunt of this pollution. Currently, two Aamjiwnaang band members, Ron Plain and Ada Lockridge, are confronting this with a lawsuit against the Ontario Ministry of Environment (MOE) and Suncor Corporation. Their argument is a simple one: they believe it is a basic human right to step outside one’s home and not breathe air harmful to one’s health. Another challenge faced by the community is the lack of legal protection from spills and intentional dumping of toxic chemicals within the reserve, a problem that is known very well by reserves across the country.
Blackfeet
For the past few years, the Blackfeet Nation in what is now northern Montana have been struggling with a problem that has now reached several reserves across the continent: the controversial practice known as fracking. In the case of the Blackfeet, who are one of three members of the Blackfoot Confederacy, fracking has not only harmed the land. It has also divided the Blackfeet People. Since 2009, the Blackfeet Nation Tribal Council has taken it upon itself to lease out 1 million acres or 66% of the reservation to three companies: Newfield, Anschutz Exploration, and Rosetta Resources. Blackfeet citizens have had little say in the actions of the Tribal Council, nor opportunities to learn about what is being done on their land. Fortunately, there are those among the Nation who are demanding accountability, transparency, and who wish to defend their land from the pollution of oil and fracking chemicals.
Kanai (Blood Tribe)
The Kanai, another member of the Blackfoot Confederacy, find themselves in much the same situation as their southern relatives, the Blackfeet. In this case, the Kanai Tribal and Business Councils signed almost half of the reserve over to oil companies, again, without any involvement from the citizenry. The situation gained major headlines in 2011 when three Kainai women carried out a protest on the Blood Reserve, in southern Alberta. Soon after the protest began, all three women were arrested and charged with trespassing and intimidation. Sadly, there have been no other major protests since then.
Athabasca Chipewyan
In northern Alberta, the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation (ACFN) is trying to stop an oilsands expansion project on their traditional territory. Industrialization of the Denesuline community’s traditional territory has lead to the cumulative removal of lands, wildlife and fish habitat as well as the destruction of ecological, aesthetic and sensory systems. The expansion of Shell’s Jackpine Project would cause even more damage, specifically at Poplar Point, the heart of the ACFN homelands.
Barriere Lake Algonquins
For more than twenty years, the Algonquins of Barriere Lake have been struggling to get the governments of Canada and the Province of Quebec to honour the landmark 1991 Trilateral Agreement, an alternative to Canada’s preferred negotiation policy, called the “Comprehensive Land Claims.” Canada has tried every trick in the book in order to get out of the 1991 agreement, including placing the community under third party management using Section 74 of the Indian Act. The community has won some important victories over the last couple years – and one or two that were less than ideal – nevertheless, ABL presses on. Most recently, the Algonquins made there position clear on proposed exploration activities of the junior mining company Copper One.
U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz gestures during an interview with Reuters in Vienna June 30, 2013. Photo: Reuters/Leonhard Foeger
Fredrik Dahl, Reuters
The U.S. government is not waging a “war on coal” but rather expects it to still play a significant role, U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said on Sunday, rejecting criticism of President Barack Obama’s climate change plan.
Obama tried last week to revive his stalled climate change agenda, promising new rules to cut carbon emissions from U.S. power plants and other domestic actions including support for renewable energy.
The long-awaited plan drew criticism from the coal industry, which would be hit hard by carbon limits, and Republicans, who accused the Democratic president of advancing policies that harm the economy and kill jobs. Environmentalists largely cheered the proposals, though some said the moves did not go far enough.
Obama “expects fossil fuels, and coal specifically, to remain a significant contributor for some time,” Moniz told Reuters in Vienna, where he was to attend a nuclear security conference.
The way the U.S. administration is “looking at it is: what does it take for us to do to make coal part of a low carbon future,” he said, adding this would include higher efficiency plants and new ways of utilizing coal.
It is “all about having, in fact, coal as part of that future,” Moniz said. “I don’t believe it is a ‘war on coal’.”
Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, the No. 2 U.S. coal mining state after Wyoming, said last week that Obama had “declared a war on coal,” and the industry said the rules threatened its viability.
Moniz acknowledged there could be winners and losers but that economic models belie “the statement that there are huge economic impacts” from controlling greenhouse gases.
“Quite the contrary. We expect that this is going to be positive for the economy,” he said.
Obama said he had directed the Environmental Protection Agency to craft new emissions rules for thousands of power plants, the bulk of which burn coal and which account for roughly one-third of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
With Congress unlikely to pass climate legislation, Obama said his administration would set rules using executive powers.
Moniz said he was optimistic that the United States would meet its goal to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by roughly 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. “We’re pretty close to the track right now. We’re halfway there,” he said.
An $8 billion loan guarantee program for projects to develop new technologies that help cut emissions of fossil fuels would include carbon capture and storage technology (CCS) as “one of a number of options,” he said.
“It will also include some advanced technologies for using coal very different from today’s technologies that will enable much less expensive carbon capture in future,” Moniz said.
CCS is a relatively new, expensive and unproven technology that captures carbon dioxide and buries it.
The key takeaway from President Obama’s major climate change announcement this week was his intent to batten down on coal. But if history is any indication, the man Mr. Obama selected to run the Department of Energy may have different plans.
Ernest J. Moniz has a long history of supporting coal-powered electricity, staking his arguments in favor of coal on a technology that remains entirely unproven: carbon capture and sequestration (CCS).
Mr. Moniz will be in a uniquely influential position when it comes to confronting these problems. President Obama announced that he would rely on executive agencies instead of Congress, so Mr. Moniz’s Energy Department will play a crucial role in determining precisely how Obama’s strategy is administered.
The day after Obama’s speech, Moniz told Congress “the President advocates an all-of-the-above energy strategy and I am very much in tune with this.”
What’s wrong with an all-of-the-above strategy? It extends reliance on fossil fuels, at a time when scientists warn that we can only burn twenty percent of current reserves before the world tips past the crucial 2 degree Celsius point. Beyond two degrees, some of the most devastating impacts of global warming will be felt. Keep in mind that, if all of the world’s coal is burned, global temperatures could rise by a jaw-dropping 15 degrees Celsius, a study published in the prestigious journal Nature last year concluded.
The stakes, when it comes to controlling American greenhouse gas emissions, are huge.
In May, carbon dioxide levels in the Earth’s atmosphere reached 400 parts per million – the highest level of carbon dioxide ever recorded in human history. Last year, the continental U.S. experienced its hottest year on record, and the NRDC estimates that climate-related disasters like crop loss, wildfires and floods cost the nation roughly $140 billion last year alone, with much of the tab picked up by taxpayers.
Power plants are the single largest source of American carbon dioxide emissions, accounting for a third of the nation’s total greenhouse gasses. So focusing on power plants is key if emissions are to be reduced.
Coal currently supplies about 40 percent of American electricity, according to EIA statistics, down from fifty percent in 2005. Coal’s decline comes as natural gas from fracking (which has its own worrisome climate impacts, measured in methane rather than carbon dioxide), wind and solar, have risen in their share of the U.S. electric portfolio. Since the beginning of 2010, 145 coal-fired power plantsannounced plans to retire.
But the Department of Energy is focused not on retiring more of these plants, pinning its hopes instead on developing new technologies to make coal cleaner. The plan in rough form, involves collecting carbon dioxide emitted by power plants and burying it, forever, underground.
If that sounds like a heck of a challenge, that’s because it is.
There’s not a single large commercially-operating carbon sequestration plantanywhere in the world.
That’s despite over $25 billion in government subsidies worldwide from 2008 to 2012.
Nevertheless, Mr. Moniz told Congress that “the Administration has already committed about $6 billion to [carbon capture and sequestration] demonstrations, and success of the forthcoming projects will be a critical step toward meeting the President’s climate goals.”
The $8 billion in total subsidies adds up to more than the wind and solar industries combined receive – and those are industries that have proven themselves to be commercially viable.
Undaunted, Moniz toldThe New York Times on Thursday that carbon capture and sequestration was a vital part of the country’s climate change strategy. He called for CCS to be commercialized first for coal-fired power plants. He added that natural gas’ carbon emissions, though half those of coal, are still too high to meet Obama’s long-term goal of slashing emissions 80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050 — so he called for the same speculative technology to resolve that problem as well.
The transition to an electric industry that captures its greenhouse gasses instead of releasing them into the atmosphere makes the challenges associated with developing renewables like wind and solar look easy in comparison.
Professor Vaclav Smil, author of “Energy Myths and Realities: Bringing Science to the Energy Policy Debate” has calculated that to sequester just a fifth of current carbon dioxide emissions:
“… we would have to create an entirely new worldwide absorption-gathering-compression-transportation- storage industry whose annual throughput would have to be about 70 percent larger than the annual volume now handled by the global crude oil industry whose immense infrastructure of wells, pipelines, compressor stations and storages took generations to build.”
Carbon capture is also grossly inefficient. “By some estimates, 40 percent of the energy generated has to go to the carbon capture and sequestration process,” Josh Galperin, associate director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy,said after the climate strategy was released. DeSmog’s Kevin Grandia describessome further technical hurdles that carbon sequestration has yet to overcome.
In a key indication of how shaky the science is behind carbon sequestration, not even the World Bank will fund it. Concerns about climate change led the Bank to restrict its financial support for coal projects except in “rare circumstances,” a draft strategy leaked to the press earlier this week indicates. In a glaring omission, the strategy says nothing about carbon capture and sequestration as an alternative.
None of this seems to matter to Mr. Moniz, whose support of the coal industry and faith in sequestration has been longstanding.
A 2009 report he helped produce focused on how to reduce CO2 from coal plants, touting the potential for so-called “clean coal.”
“It’s cheap,” he told Scientific American when the report was released, “there’s lots of it and there’s lots of it in places with high demand, namely the U.S., China and India.”
In 2007, Moniz co-authored an MIT report titled “The Future of Coal” that aimed to examine “how the world can continue to use coal, an abundant and inexpensive fuel, in a way that mitigates, instead of worsens, the global warming crisis.”
Moniz’s faith in carbon sequestration has remained unshaken up to the present day.
“It’s not going to happen tomorrow, but I believe in this decade we will have demonstrated the viability of large-scale storage” of carbon-dioxide from industrial operations, he told the Associated Press on Thursday. “The president made clear that we anticipate that coal and other fossil fuels are going to play a significant role for quite some time on the way to a very low carbon economy,” he added.
Meanwhile, broader concerns about the President’s climate plans remain.
“We’re happy to see the president finally addressing climate change” said Bill Snape, senior counsel for the Center for Biological Diversity, “but the plain truth is that what he’s proposing isn’t big enough, and doesn’t move fast enough, to match the terrifying magnitude of the climate crisis.”
And if the clean coal technology Mr. Moniz is counting on doesn’t pan out, prospects may be even dimmer.
I’ve mostly been offering modest praise for Obama’s climate plan, but there are some notable oversights. While it addresses U.S. coal-fired plants through EPA regulations, it neglects another, equally large aspect of the coal problem. Specifically, I’m talking about coal mining, leasing, transport, and export in the U.S. Northwest. There’s a bad situation there and it’s getting worse.
The Powder River Basin stretches across southeast Montana and northeast Wyoming. It is rich with high-sulfur (dirty) coal. Most of that coal is on public land, owned by you and me. What you and I are doing at the moment, via the Bureau of Land Management in the Department of the Interior, is leasing the mineral rights on those public lands to coal companies for pennies on the dollar.
Domestic demand for coal is declining (and will decline further once EPA regulations are in place), so what these coal companies want to do is start shipping the coal by rail to the West Coast and from there exporting it to China and other coal-hungry developing countries, where it sells for prices up to seven times higher than in the U.S.
It’s a sweet deal for the coal companies: buy low, sell high. But it’s a raw deal for everyone else and a disaster for the climate.
Joe Smyth has a great post about the rotten coal-leasing program here, and I wrote about the push for coal-export terminals here. There’s lots of background in those posts if you want it. In this post, I’ll mostly focus on the topic at hand, which is what Obama can and should do about it.
First, the coal-leasing program. A recent report from the Inspector General at Interior revealed that the program is (or rather, remains, after decades of corruption [PDF]) terribly run, with spotty enforcement, very little competitive bidding, disregard of rising exports, and prices that fall well below going market rates. Overall, writes The New York Times, the program’s failures “deprived taxpayers of almost $30 billion over the previous 30 years.”
The BLM says it has a “task force” looking into it, for whatever that’s worth. Obama should make it a priority to finally clean up that cesspool.
But he should go farther than that. The problem is not just that the public is leasing coal at below-market rates, it’s that market rates are too low. Coal markets do not currently internalize the costs imposed by carbon pollution (the “social cost of carbon”). Obama should insist that the social cost of carbon be integrated into the leasing program. That would more fairly balance the public’s interest in revenue from leases with its interest in a livable climate. Such a move would substantially reduce the the amount of coal leased on public land — as it should.
Second, coal exports. “Turning Cascadia into a conveyor belt for coal,” as KC Golden puts it, flies in the face of the region’s character as a nature-rich tourist destination and as a high-skill, high-tech hub. Dozens of new coal trains a day would thunder through the region’s small towns (and my beloved Seattle as well), making noise, clogging traffic, and spewing toxic dust. The coal would then be loaded on to giant, polluting ships in giant, polluting ports, turning the bucolic coastal towns where they are located into loud, dirty industrial hubs. All to ship coal the American public got scammed out of to China, where it will be burned and accelerate climate change.
It’s insane. And it’s running into resistance that may prove fatal. Three of the six proposed coal export terminals have been scrapped and the others face serious problems. Delay alone could kill the remaining ports, as there are signs that China’s demand for coal may fall short of expectations. News of slowing Chinese growth is part of what sent coal stocks tumbling the other day.
What’s needed is a comprehensive environmental assessment of the whole network of coal leases, trains, and ports, an assessment that includes the effects on carbon emissions. (Preliminary analysis shows that — shocker — exporting the coal would raise carbon emissions [PDF].) Only the feds can do that kind of analysis. The governors of both Washington and Oregon have asked the feds for one, as have mayors, members of Congress, and activists. But just the other day, the Army Corps of Engineers refused (again). That’s Obama’s corps. He should kick their asses into gear and get a comprehensive assessment underway.
Remember what Obama said about Keystone: “Our national interest will be served only if this project does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution.” How does turning over one of the world’s biggest dirty coal fields to private companies for cheap not exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution?
Of course it does. Digging up and burning that Powder River Basin coal will put enough carbon in the atmosphere to undo all of Obama’s other climate work.
If Obama really believes, as he proclaimed on Tuesday, that increasing climate pollution is not in the nation’s interests, then he needs to get serious about stopping coal leasing and coal exports in the Northwest.
