Event Alert: Ecology of Spirit

Event Alert: Ecology of Spirit

Species extinction. Plastic pollution. Global warming. Catastrophic floods. Raging fires. The failure of coral reefs. Whales dying en masse. Forever chemicals contaminating mothers’ breast milk. Where is our spirit?

Our planet is in crisis. And while the wealthy and governments pour trillions into technological so-called “solutions,” things are spiraling out of control.

What if solving the ecological crisis depended on falling in love with the natural world, and acting to defend those we love?

What if a biocentric worldview — one which places the natural world at the center of our morality — could help us access the courage needed to stop the destruction?

On October 21st, join us for special 3-hour live streaming event on Facebook or Givebutter:

Ecology of Spirit: Biocentrism, Animism, and the Environmental Crisis — “the spirituality of the front lines.”

This live event will explore the connectedness of all life and focus on organized resistance to the destruction of the planet.

It starts at 1pm Pacific Time / 20:00 UTC, and features selected speakers including:

Tiokasin Ghosthorse

 

Ecology of Spirit

Tiokasin Ghosthorse is a member of the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation of South Dakota and has a long history with Indigenous activism and advocacy. Tiokasin is the Founder, Host and Executive Producer of “First Voices Radio” (formerly “First Voices Indigenous Radio”) for the last 27 years in New York City and Seattle/Olympia, Washington.

In 2016, he received a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize from the International Institute of Peace Studies and Global Philosophy. Other recent recognitions include: Native Arts and Cultures Foundation National Fellowship in Music (2016), National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship Nominee (2017), Indigenous Music Award Nominee for Best Instrumental Album (2019) and National Native American Hall of Fame Nominee (2018, 2019).

He was also awarded New York City’s Peacemaker of the Year in 2013. Tiokasin is a “perfectly flawed human being.”

Suprabha Seshan

Suprabha Seshan
Suprabha is a conservationist and environmental educator committed to the rewilding of habitat and human beings. She lives and works at the Gurukula Botanical Sanctuary (GBS) in the Western Ghat Mountains in India, which she often describes as a refugee center for hundreds of species of plants which are rescued from threatened places, and for the wildlife who they support.
Learning from nature to protect nature better is the work of GBS, through its integrated conservation practices in land, species and community-based ecological nurturance. On behalf of the GBS team, Suprabha received the prestigious Whitely Award for Nature in 2006.

Derrick Jensen

Derrick Jensen: The Man Box and the Cult of Masculinity
Derrick Jensen is a leading voice of cultural dissent. A longtime activist living in Northern California, he has been described as an “ecophilosopher in the anarcho-primitivist tradition.”

He explores the nature of injustice, how civilizations devastate the natural world, and how human beings retreat into denial at the destruction of the planet. His work examines the central question, “If the destruction of the natural world isn’t making us happy, then why are we doing it?”

Keala Kelly

Ecology of Spirit

Keala Kelly is a filmmaker and journalist living on Hawai’i Island. Her works depict the critical links between cultural, Film, and spiritual survival in the movement for Hawaiian self-determination and Indigenous peoples’ struggles for territorial and environmental survival.

She is an outspoken advocate for Indigenous self-representation in mass media. Keala is a Ted Scripps Environmental Journalism Fellow and has an MFA from UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television.

Lierre Keith

 

Lierre Keith (auteur de Le Mythe végétarien) - Babelio

Lierre Keith is an American writer, radical feminist, food activist, and environmentalist. She began her public involvement in the feminist movement as the founding editor of Vanessa and Iris: A Journal for Young Feminists (1983–85).

During this same period, she also volunteered with a group called Women Against Violence Against Women in Cambridge, where she participated in educational events and protest campaigns.

In 1984 she was a founding member of Minor Disturbance, a protest group against militarism from a feminist perspective. In 1986 she was a founding member of Feminists Against Pornography in Northampton, Massachusetts. She is a founding editor of Rain and Thunder, a radical feminist journal in Northampton.

Sakej Ward

 

Ecology of Spirit

Sakej (James Ward) belongs to the wolf clan. He is Mi’kmaw (Mi’kmaq Nation) from the community of Esgenoopetitj (Burnt Church First Nation, New Brunswick). He is the father of nine children, four grandchildren and a caregiver for one. He resides in Shxw’owhamel First Nation with his wife Melody Andrews and their children.

Sakej has a long history of advocating and protecting First Nations inherent responsibilities and freedoms, having spent the last 21 years fighting the government and industry. This deep desire to bring justice to all Indigenous people has given Sakej experience in international relations where he spoke on behalf of the Mi’kmaq Nation at the United Nations Working Group for Indigenous Populations (WGIP).

For his efforts in protecting Indigenous people, freedoms and territory he has received the National Aboriginal Achievement Award.

Will Falk

 

Will-Falk | Oregon Community Rights Network

Will Falk is a writer, lawyer, poet and environmental activist. The natural world speaks and Will’s work is how he listens. He believes the ongoing destruction of the natural world is the most pressing issue confronting us today. For Will, writing is a tool to be used in resistance.

Will graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School and practiced as a public defender in Kenosha, WI. He left the public defender office to pursue frontline environmental activism.

So far, activism has taken him to the Unist’ot’en Camp – an indigenous cultural center and pipeline blockade on unceded Wet’suwet’en territory in so-called British Columbia, Canada, to a construction blockade on Mauna Kea in Hawai’i, to endangered pinyon-juniper forests in the Great Basin, and to Thacker Pass in northern Nevada where Will is trying to stop an open pit lithium mine from destroying a beautiful mountain pass.

Rebecca Wildbear

 

Meet Rebecca Wildbear

Rebecca Wildbear is a river and soul guide who helps people tune in to the mysteries that live within the Earth community, dreams, and their own wild Nature, so they may live a life of creative service. She has been a guide with Animas Valley Institute.

A long-time yoga teacher (since 2003) and a former faculty member at Nosara Yoga Institute (2008-2017), Rebecca created Wild Yoga™ — a practice of worship, veneration, and advocacy for Earth — while teaching yoga in a variety of wild places, including the tide pools of Costa Rica, the mountains and rivers of Colorado, and the ancient red rock canyons of Utah.

Max Wilbert

 

Board of Directors

Max Wilbert is a third-generation organizer who grew up in Seattle’s post-WTO anti-globalization and undoing racism movement. He has been an organizer for more than 15 years. Max is a longtime member of Deep Green Resistance and serves on the board of a small, grassroots non-profit. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Environmental Communication and Advocacy from Huxley College.

His first book, a collection of pro-feminist and environmental essays written over a six-year period, was released in 2018. He is co-author of the forthcoming book “Bright Green Lies,” which looks at the problems with mainstream so-called “solutions” to the climate crisis.

Alan Clements

 

Ecology of Spirit

Alan Clements was one of the first Westerners to ordain as a Buddhist monk in Myanmar (formerly Burma). In 1984, forced by the dictator Ne Win to leave the country, Clements returned to the West and lectured on ‘The Wisdom of Mindfulness.’

In 1988, Alan integrated into his Buddhist training an awareness that included universal human rights, social injustice, environmental sanity, political activism, the study of propaganda and mind control in both democratic and totalitarian societies, and the preciousness of everyday freedom.

In the jungles of Burma, in 1990, he was one of the first eye-witnesses to document the mass murder and oppression of ethnic minorities by Burma’s military dictatorship, which resulted in his first book, ‘Burma: The Next Killing Fields?’ In 1995 a French publisher asked Alan to attempt re-entering Burma with the purpose of meeting Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of her country’s pro-democracy movement and 1991 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

The transcripts of their five months of conversations were smuggled out of the country and became the book ‘The Voice of Hope’.

Other special guests will attend the session as well. There will be opportunities to ask questions and participate in dialogue.
You can join the event through our Facebook page or Givebutter page.

The mainstream environmental movement is mostly funded by foundations which don’t support revolutionary change. Radical organizations like Deep Green Resistance rely on individual donors to support our activism around the world, which is why “Ecology of Spirit” is also a fundraiser.

We’re outnumbered and we need your help.

There is a path out of the this crisis, and DGR is one of the organizations leading the way. But we can’t do it without you. We’re raising funds to support global community organizing, fund mutual aid and direct action campaigns, and sustain our core outreach and organizational work.

Donate here: https://givebutter.com/ecologyofspirit

Whether or not you are in a financial position to donate, we hope you will join us on October 21st for this opportunity to connect with kindred spirit offering light in dark times!

Contamination Is Forever: Story of Pike County in Ohio

Contamination Is Forever: Story of Pike County in Ohio

Editor’s Note: Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant (PORTS), a facility in Pike County, Ohio, produced enriched uranium for the US Atomic Energy Commission (USAEC). It operated from 1954 to 2001. Since 2019, PORTS has been under scrutiny for expelling radioactive material to the land, air and soil. The local community had been unaware till mid-2019 when enriched uranium was detected in Zahn’s Corner Middle School, culminating in the school having to be suddenly closed after the revelation. The school later filed a lawsuit against PORTS. On June 10, Dr. Michael Ketterer gave a presentation on the ongoing effects of the contamination by PORTS. The following piece presents a brief summary and reflection, followed by a video of the presentation.


By Bobby Vaughn, Jr.

On the beautiful and lightly breezy afternoon of June 10th, the residents of Piketon, OH, and many surrounding cities, were shaken awake by new, revealing disclosures exposed at the Comfort Inn Conference Center. The exposé pertained to the extent of radioactive fallout discharged from the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant (PORTS), and included documented evidence to prove the startling claims.

Radioactive elements were released from the plant both intentionally, as ordered by management, and also unintentionally during accidents. These occurred from the date it opened in 1954 up until the present day.

Though, until this particular meeting was held by scientists and whistleblowers, details surrounding these facts have never formally been divulged to the public by any of PORTS’ governing agencies: Department of Energy (DOE), Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), nor the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The first speaker to present his detailed, yet very well explained, intel was Dr. Michael Ketterer. He is Professor Emeritus of Chemistry and BioChemistry at Northern Arizona University, and has many peer-reviewed papers published science journals. He’s recently performed various in-depth radiochemical testing on samples obtained from around the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant.

Summing up the vast array of Dr. Ketterer’s intensive findings, he’s personally found many radioactive isotopes surrounding PORTS at multiple locations, and have so far found to be (at least) 14 miles away. These include not only uranium-235 (U-235), which was the plant’s “money isotope”, but also uranium-234, which is conservatively 7,000 times more radioactive than U-235!

To the jaw-dropped audience, Dr. Ketterer explained in a section of his powerpoint presentation entitled, The Penetrating Power of Radioactivity, also exclaiming the unique differences and high concerns between alpha, beta, and gamma particles.

The uranium detected near PORTS, OH, and even Huntington, WV is an alpha emitter.

The list doesn’t stop there. Amidst uranium, there are currently detectable amounts of transuranics, plutonium (Pu), Neptunium (Np), and Americium (Am), and also the fission-element, technetium-99 (Tc-99), which flows and interacts with water very fluently, and is a beta ray emitter. Tc-99 has been detected almost everywhere vastly surrounding the plant.

Alpha radiation, which is most common in the Uranium, Neptunium, and Plutonium, is present in samples taken from dust, dirt, water and air surrounding the Piketon, Ohio plant. When ingested from eating or inhaling they become radioactively and chemically severe, and can cause fetal abnormalities, birth “defects”, mutations, cancer, and much worse, death.

And, remember, the alpha were the most plentiful; plus, they were being released into the surrounding towns, environment/nature, as well as the homes intentionally by the plant.

These radioactive particles enter into your body, home, and business through your use of air-conditioning systems and simply breathing and eating. They are ingested alpha, beta, and gamma emitters.

Dr. Ketterer, as well as myself, and on behalf of many, many others; we beg the pardon of the DOE and governing agencies’ contracted companies, including but not limited to Centrus, USEC, Fluor-BWXT, Lockheed-Martin, Bechtel and Goodyear. Their corporate-government criminal acts have been documented, and are being investigated.

Dr. Ketterer, after vigorous testing, and documenting his findings, concluded he does not accept the DOE and Plants’ null hypothesis that the radioactive contamination surrounding the plant, which is killing children is from nuclear weapons testing from the Nevada Test Site. It all came from the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant.


Growing up in the radioactive wasteland of Metropolis, Illinois, early on in life Bobby developed a sense of responsibility in protecting the Ohio River and the surrounding community. Bobby continues to collaborate with nuclear whistleblowers and active individuals in exposing truths which have been buried for decades. Bobby loves adventures in nature, art, scootering and researching. An Investigative Journalist by nature, yet a vigilante at heart.

Photo by Dan Meyers on Unsplash

American Greed: A Corrupt Corporation Is Destroying Sacred Site

American Greed: A Corrupt Corporation Is Destroying Sacred Site

By Max Wilbert/Protect Thacker Pass

A criminal slips a police officer a handful of bills and walks free. A businessman buys a politician with a briefcase full of cash. We often think of bribery and corruption in these blatant terms, and as something that happens in poor countries, elsewhere.

But corruption often looks different.

In the United States, where I live, corruption is common. It’s also mostly legal.

In fact, dirty money has become part of the political fabric of our nation. It has become normalized, institutionalized, and even regulated. And yet, the effects of this corruption are just as insidious and destructive as blatant payoffs. Corruption is a rot in our political system, and it is spreading.

This article is about American corruption, but the story will be told by looking at one particular Canadian mining company called Lithium Americas, which is working in the United States through a wholly-owned U.S.-based subsidiary, Lithium Nevada Corporation.

For two and a half years, I’ve been fighting Lithium Nevada to stop them from destroying Thacker Pass — a biodiversity hotspot and Native American sacred site known Peehee Mu’huh in the Paiute language that is in northern Nevada, just shy of the Oregon border. Lithium Nevada, as you have probably guessed, wants to turn this place into an open-pit lithium mine.

This is a special place. Thacker Pass is home to dwindling sage-grouse, Pronghorn, mule deer, and golden eagles. It’s a migratory corridor and climate change refuge. It’s the watershed for local communities, and the site of two massacres of Paiute people, including one on September 12, 1865 in which US Army soldiers killed between 30 and 50 men, women, children, and elders in a surprise attack at dawn. It’s been recognized by the Federal Government as a “Traditional Cultural District,” a landscape of outstanding importance to Native American history and cultural identity.

And right now, as you read this, it is being destroyed by a corrupt corporation and a corrupt government. Bulldozers are rolling and centuries-old sagebrush, millennia-old artifacts, and the lives of precious desert creatures are being crushed under metal treads.

How is this possible? How, in a democracy where people have the right to protest, to speak out, to comment, to petition, to file lawsuits, how is it possible to have such a miscarriage of justice? And more broadly, how is it possible that our governmental system is failing to address the ecological catastrophe we are facing: the 6th mass extinction of life on Earth?

Part of the answer is corruption, which we can break down into five categories: lobbying, writing laws, the revolving door, campaign contributions, and community bribery. Let’s look at each in turn, using Lithium Americas and Thacker Pass as an example.

Lobbying: How Corporations Gain Disproportionate Access

Lobbying is based on a simple principle: that government officials should listen to their constituents.

Transparency International defines lobbying as “Any activity carried out to influence a government or institution’s policies and decisions in favor of a specific cause or outcome.”

“Even when allowed by law,” they say, “these acts can become distortive [harmful to democracy and justice] if disproportionate levels of influence exist — by companies, associations, organizations and individuals.”

Today’s lobbying is not the simple practice of people talking to their elected officials. Instead, it’s a tightly regulated $3.73 billion industry dominated by political insiders and major corporations, rife with corrupt “revolving doors,” and matched by at least $3-4 billion in “shadow lobbying” that isn’t regulated or disclosed to the public in any way.

The regulation of lobbying is essential to its proper functioning as a method of corruption. As Ben Price, National Organizing Director at the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, puts it, “regulation is not so much a way to curb corruption, but more to the point, regulations legalize the corruption by defining the limits to it that will be disallowed.”

“In doing so,” he continues, “the principle effect of regulations is to shield bribery from legal liability by legalizing enough of it to serve the purpose of the corporate legislative influencers.”

Like advertising, corporations use lobbying because it works.

Studies have found that spending more money on lobbying and campaign contributions results in direct reductions in federal taxes, state taxes, and more federal contracts. One analysis looking at only the nation’s 200 most “politically active” corporations found they spent $58 billion on lobbying the federal government and “campaign contributions”[i] between 2007 and 2012, but received $4.4 trillion in federal subsidies, contracts, and other support during the same time period. That’s a 7,580% return on investment.

Another study found even bigger returns: “on average, for every dollar spent on influencing politics, the nation’s most politically active corporations received $760 from the government” — a 76,000% payout.

Corporations are Writing Our Laws

Corporations use lobbyists because their wealth allows them disproportionate access to the government, meaning that they can build relationships with politicians and staffers, influence policy, share ideas, and even draft legislation. They can also bribe judges, as the recent Clarence Thomas corruption scandal shows. But it goes further. As one report in NPR notes, “It’s taken for granted that lobbyists influence legislation. But perhaps less obvious is that they often write the actual bills — even word for word.”

Our laws are being written by corporations.

And this isn’t just a federal problem. A 2019 USA Today investigation found more than 10,000 bills introduced to legislatures in all 50 states over an 8-year period were “almost entirely copied from bills written by special interests.” The report also notes that their investigation detected these bills using automated techniques, and “the real number is probably far higher.”

Our politicians rarely write laws. Instead, corporations and lobbyists write laws; congress sells the laws to the public; then lobbyists pay their congresspeople in campaign contributions, Super PAC funding, and revolving-door job opportunities – topics we will look at next.

The Revolving Door

Another way that corruption has become endemic inside the government of the United States is through what’s known as the “revolving door.”

The revolving door refers to the common practice of corporate employees quitting their jobs and going to work in the government, and vice versa. It’s quite common for government employees and elected officials to quit or end their terms and immediately get jobs in the industries they were supposedly regulating.

Why, you might ask? Money. As one headline reads, “when a congressman becomes a lobbyist, he gets a 1,452% raise (on average).

This is a sort of “retroactive bribery” where government officials do what corporations want, then get paid off afterwards. And it’s completely legal.

Occasionally there will be stories of lobbyists who stray into outright bribery — Jack Abramoff, notably — but these stories are rare, not because corruption is uncommon, but because you don’t really need to break the law as a corporation: you wrote the laws. And you did it deliberately to make your bribery and influence campaigns legal.

As of 2016, about half of retiring senators and a third of retiring House Representatives register as lobbyists to collect their checks. This is equally common among Democrats and Republicans.

Lithium Nevada Corporation’s Lobbying Activities (the ones we know about)

Lithium Nevada has spent at least $310,000 on Federal lobbying since 2016, via a lobbying company called Harbinger Strategies.

Harbinger is “a leading federal government and political affairs firm” that was founded by and employs former high-level Republican congressional aides and political operatives. They have been listed as among the top lobbyists in Washington D.C. and made a total of $10.9 million in 2021 from a client list which includes the airline industry, major banks and investment firms, mining companies, biotech, the military-industrial complex, Facebook, electric utilities, General Electric, and the oil and gas industry.

“We leverage our experience as former senior staff to the Congressional Leadership and the Executive Branch to position clients for a seat at the decision-making table,” they write on their website. They continue: “[Harbinger is] founded on the belief that every client deserves partner-level legislative expertise” — a “boutique model” — that they use “for one simple reason: it gets results.”

In the state of Nevada, Lithium Nevada Corporation has hired at least 4 lobbyists since 2017 from two businesses: Argentum Partners, “a full-service strategic communications firm… with a hungry, energetic, and experienced team of lobbyists,” and Ferrato Corporation, “a full service bi-partisan public affairs firm.”

Notably, Lithium Nevada’s Argentum lobbyists included Mike Draper, who “helmed the media relations and public affairs for the planning, permitting, construction and opening of the Ruby Pipeline, the largest natural gas pipeline in North America.” The Ruby Pipeline was fought vehemently by environmentalists and Tribes in 2009 and 2010.

Campaign Contributions

Another technique of legalized corruption is “campaign contributions,” also known as donations to politicians.

Many countries in the world place strict limits on the amount of money that people can donate to political candidates, or even have political campaigns funded by the government, removing the influence of money almost entirely. The United States is not one of those countries.

Elected officials in the United States are desperate for money. The average U.S. senator has to rase $14,000 a day just to stay in office — and that’s once they’re already elected. This is true for both Democrats and Republicans, which is why corporations, both directly and through their lobbyists and employees, tend to play both sides by donating to both political parties.

For example, Jonathan Evans, CEO of Lithium Americas Corporation, donated at least $10,250 to political candidates between 2021 and 2022 including Catherine Cortez Mastow (Democratic Senator from Nevada) and Mark Amodei (Nevada’s Republican Governor). George Ireland, Board President of Lithium Americas, has donated at least $19,800 to candidates since 2011, including $500 to the Trump campaign and $6,600 to John Hickenlooper. Data from OpenSecrets.org shows that 7 other Lithium Americas employees, Board members, and associated parties gave at least another $10,819 to political candidates between 2018 and 2022.

These amounts don’t include the MUCH larger political contributions given by employees and family members of Harbinger Strategies, who gave $392,842 to political candidates in the 2020 election cycle alone.

Many of these people donated up to the legal limit, implying that if the limit were higher, they would give more money — and perhaps that they would seek ways to circumvent contribution limits via so-called “Super PACs” and other dark money techniques.

Keep in mind that less than 1.5% of Americans donate more than $200 to political candidates or parties in any given year. This is the domain of the wealthy.

The Payoff

Lithium Americas money is well-spent.

In what appears to be a quid pro quo for their lobbying and campaign contributions, Lithium Americas Corporation has been granted a total of $8,637,357 in tax abatements from the State of Nevada, including a partial sales tax abatement worth $5 million, a $3.3 million property tax abatement and about $225,000 in payroll tax abatements. That money is unavailable for schools, healthcare, social services, small business assistance, environmental programs, etc.

From the Federal Government, Lithium Americas has received a loan from the Department of Energy’s “Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program” (ATVM) which is likely to cover “up to 75% of the Thacker Pass’ total capital costs for construction.”

This loan program offers highly favorable terms that amount to a significant subsidy of as much as $3 billion USD.

Based on a very conservative estimate for Lithium Americas Corporation lobbying and employee campaign contribution of, say, $400,000, they’re looking at a return on investment of 2,100% — and that’s before including the massive financial value of the ATVM loan.

Community-Level Bribery

Corruption in politics is often matched with corruption at a local level.

Lithium Americas’ plans to destroy Thacker Pass have created serious community opposition among farmers and ranchers from the rural areas closest to Thacker Pass, among local citizens in the nearby town of Winnemucca, among environmental groups concerned about impacts to wildlife, plants, air, and water, and among Native American tribes concerned about their sacred and culturally important sites, animals, and medicines.

The response has been predictable. Anti-mining activist Joan Kuyek’s book Unearthing Justice: How to Protect Your Community From The Mining Industry describes the myths repeated incessantly by Lithium Americas and almost every mining company:

  • “The mine will create hundreds of jobs and enrich governments.”
  • The mine can make community members rich and solve all of their social and economic problems.”
  • “Modern engineering will ensure that the mine doesn’t damage the water, air, or the wildlife.”

When these myths are exposed as false, they resort to legalized bribery. At Thacker Pass, that takes the form of Lithium Americas Corporation paying for a new school for the community of Orovada, and signing an agreement with one local Tribal Councilwoman for construction of a cultural center. One tribal member, my friend Shelley Harjo, wrote in response: “A few promised buildings and a cultural center do not supersede the responsibility we have to our ancestors before us nor our obligation to our unborn after.” Another Tribal leader in the region says of the mining companies, “They take advantage of our poverty.”

That poverty gives the mining companies serious leverage. Among community members at Fort McDermitt, rumors of bribery are common.

Lithium Americas’ Involvement in Human Rights Abuses Overseas

Lithium Americas has deep business links and personnel overlaps with Chinese state-owned mining corporation Ganfeng Lithium (the largest lithium company in the world). In fact, Ganfeng and Lithium Americas are co-owners of an Argentinian lithium mining company known as Minera Exar.

The Minera Exar mining project is located in the Andean highlands in the so-called “lithium triangle,” an arid region near the borders of Chile and Bolivia. Over the years that Minera Exar has been active in the region, they — like other lithium mining companies in the area — have come under criticism for serious environmental and human rights abuses.

The Washington Post, exploring these abuses, wrote that:

“Mining companies have for years been extracting billions of dollars of lithium from the Atacama region… But the impoverished Atacamas have seen little of the riches… one lithium company, a joint Canadian-Chilean venture named Minera Exar, struck deals with six aboriginal communities for a new mine here. The operation is expected to generate about $250 million a year in sales while each community will receive an annual payment — ranging from $9,000 to about $60,000 — for extensive surface and water rights.

The exposé continues:

“Yolanda Cruz, one of the leaders of the village in Argentina, said she signed the [community benefits agreement with Minera Exar] but now regrets it. At the time she valued the opportunity to create jobs for her village. But she now worries, ‘we are going to be left with nothing.’ she said. ‘The thing is the companies are lying to us —that’s the reality. And we sometimes just keep our mouths shut,’ she said. ‘We don’t say anything and then we are the affected ones when the time goes by.’”

Meanwhile, Ganfeng Lithium recently announced plans to mine for battery metals in the Xinjiang region of China, where the Chinese Government has detained and imprisoned Uyghyrs and other Muslim groups in forced labor and indoctrination camps.

Waste of Government Funds

We are being told the main goal of lithium mining at Thacker Pass is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This is another lie, a new type of corporate greenwashing which is becoming increasingly common. In fact, many analyses actually find that the emissions reductions from switching to electric vehicles are relatively minor.

Producing a single electric car releases greenhouse gas emissions—about 9 tons on average. This average is rising as the size of electric cars is going up substantially. The more electric cars are produced, the more greenhouse gases are released. And so while EVs reduce emissions compared to gasoline vehicles, bigger EVs don’t reduce them much. Analysis from the Center For Interdisciplinary Environmental Justice says that electrification of cars in the United States will reduce national emissions by only 6 percent.

Further, producing lithium at Thacker Pass would require 700,000 tons per year of oil refining byproducts — sulfur, perhaps largely sourced from the Alberta Tar sands. While Thacker Pass receives billions in subsidies from the government, carbon emissions are continuing to rise.

Environmental activist Paul Hawken, as another example, doesn’t put electric cars in his top 10 climate solutions. In fact, it’s number 24 on his list, with almost ten times less impact than reducing food waste, nearly six times less impact than eliminating the use of refrigerants which are powerful greenhouse gases, and behind solutions like tropical rainforest restoration (about 5 times as effective at reducing emissions as is switching to EVs) and peatland protection (more than twice as effective).

Corruption and waste go hand-in-hand. The data makes it clear that if reducing greenhouse gases is your goal, subsidizing the Thacker Pass lithium mine is not a good use of government funds.  It’s wasteful.

If you actually want to allocate government funds to effectively halt global warming, giving money to extractive industries is the exact wrong thing to do.

Instead, start with women’s rights, educating girls, and making contraception and family planning widely available. Start with economic relocalization initiatives. Start with insulating homes properly, which may have the biggest immediate carbon impact per dollar spent. Start with demand-reduction initiatives.

Stop wasting taxpayer money on subsidies to Earth-destroying corporations, and start taking actions that really matter.

The Banality of Evil

Lithium Americas’ corruption reminds me of what political philosopher Hannah Arendt called “The Banality of Evil.” Writing of Otto Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi officer who was one of the major organizers of the Holocaust, Arendt explains that Eichmann felt no guilt; indeed, he never even considered that what he was doing might be wrong: “He did his ‘duty’…; he not only obeyed ‘orders’, he also obeyed the ‘law’.”

As one article states, “[Eichmann] performed evil deeds without evil intentions, a fact connected to his ‘thoughtlessness’, a disengagement from the reality of his evil acts. Eichmann ‘never realised what he was doing’ due to an ‘inability… to think from the standpoint of somebody else’. Lacking this particular cognitive ability, he ‘commit crimes under circumstances that made it well-nigh impossible for him to know or to feel that he [was] doing wrong’.”

Lithium Americas is not killing people en masse, nor are they even among the “worst” mining companies. They may even be acting completely within the boundaries of the law.  And yet they are complicit in cultural genocide, in ecological destruction for personal gain, and in what may be an even bigger crime against the future: greenwashing their destruction as positive and thus creating more financial and political incentives for more of this madness.

They believe that what they are doing is right and they are “following the rules.”

What Now?

The corruption at Thacker Pass is not unique. Lobbying, campaign contributions, greenwashing, and community bribery is common in the United States and across much of the world. I believe there is likely much more corruption that we are not aware of. Perhaps there really are briefcases full of cash being exchanged. We can only speculate. And, this article has not even begun to discuss the government complicity in lawbreaking, corruption, and ethical violations at Thacker Pass — a story that is, in some ways, even more sordid.

All of which is part of why academic analyses of the United States tend to show “economic-elite domination” rather than true electoral democracy or pluralism. The wealthy are running our country (and indeed, the world) Our government is corrupt, corporations are running rampant, and our world is being destroyed.

For many, the situation we find ourselves in is paralyzing. What can do in the face of this?

When I first came out to begin protecting Thacker Pass and setup a protest camp on the planned mine site in the depths of winter 2021, I had no illusions. I knew that the courts weren’t likely to save us. Remember, the laws were written by corporations. I knew that public commenting wasn’t going to work; the regulations are written to favor corporate interests. I knew that the government wasn’t going to help, since the politicians are mostly bought and paid for. I even knew that standard methods of protest would likely be ineffective, given the repression tactics and divide-and-conquer strategies that have been honed over centuries by corporations and colonizers.

As a society, we find ourselves in the midst of the 6th mass extinction event, a global climate catastrophe, and seemingly terminal overshoot. And as an environmental movement, despite our brave and inspired action, it has not been enough.

That’s why, for many years, I have been calling for an ecological revolution — a fundamental transformation of society — and organizing to make it happen.

Whether you agree that this is needed or not, we can all agree that what we are doing isn’t working. I don’t have all the answers. But what I do know is that it’s time to go further.


This article was originally published on Earth Day 2023. Since then, there have been developments in Thacker Pass. Direct action has been able to halt mine construction for the moment. Read more about it here.

Featured image: Resistance in Thacker Pass by Max Wilbert

Eden’s Last Chance: Earth Day 2023 Film [Press Release]

Eden’s Last Chance: Earth Day 2023 Film [Press Release]

Editor’s Note: Celebrate this Earth’s Day with Eden’s Last Chance. We congratulate Joshua on the completion of his film, and hope that it will encourage more people to get involved in the environmental movement. View more of our coverage on Fairy Creek here.


TEENAGER’S RELEASE OF 2023 EARTH DAY FILM CHALLENGES OUR FUTURE

Amazon will be releasing Eden’s Last Chance – One Teenager’s Journey into the Environmental Movement, before Earth Day 2023 on April 18th. Winner of an Impact Docs award, the full length documentary is 19-year-old Joshua Wright’s first film. Known as a champion of British Columbia’s defense of Fairy Creek’s old growth forests, his aim is to mobilize citizens to take immediate action on the ecological crisis.

“If this is the end of the world, then what do we do? That is the question I wanted to answer with this film” says Wright, the young producer, director, second cinematographer, and editor.

In 2018, Wright dropped out of grade nine when he learned of scientists’ dire warnings that the planet had 12 years to address global warming before passing the 1.5C mark. He would be 27 years old when that milestone was reached. So at 14, Wright picked up a camera and dedicated the next three years seeking an answer to his existential question.

Academic studies and white papers became part of his self-schooling curriculum. He followed climate change experts and was determined to find every new energy project that would further add to an already fragile ecological balance. Wright has become an outspoken climate activist, criticized by corporations seeking to hide their impacts.

While filming in Australia, Wright explored the damage coal has done to communities including the $16B Adani Carmichael coal mine, and the coral die off of the Great Barrier Reef. He documented the destruction of the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest in the Tongass Rainforest of Southeast Alaska and forest defenders protecting Mattole Valley in California’s Humboldt County. More than 15 leading authors and scientists from Europe, Australia, and the US were interviewed for the film.

“Climate change is only half the story,” says Wright, referring to destructive industries. “We as a society are ignoring the reality that civilization itself is the route of the ecological crisis, and that saving the planet does not mean electric cars, it means a radical transformation in the way we live, and the centering of the more-than-human world our society ignores.”

The bootstrapped crew included Joshua at the helm with his uncle, Andrew Wright as first cinematographer and second editor. Wright’s father, Chris Wright, acted as executive producer, and second cinematographer, as well as managing the group’s travel.

Wright refuses to give into despair, choosing instead to work to motivate others into action.

“Do something—do anything,” he says. “Don’t be a bystander in the death of the living world.”

The trailer for Eden’s Last Chance is posted on edenslastchance.com and the press kit is found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uvsmPNrO3hFcHs7_8bF3DlRqQTswq9jdUVuBYcU7Lbg/edit?usp=sharing

Media Contacts

Joshua Wright, Filmmaker
jawrighter@gmail.com
360-989-8067

Valerie Elliott, Media Relations
iD2 Communications
elliott@iD2.ca

Featured image by Megan ✌🏼 on Unsplash

The Destruction of Thacker Pass Has Begun

The Destruction of Thacker Pass Has Begun

Editor’s Note: Over the past two years, we have brought you news about the fight for Thacker Pass, and how destruction will affect the indigenous people and the natural community. The destruction of Thacker Pass has already begun. Despite that, those who were fighting against the ecocide have not stopped. This is a call for action to support them in any way that you can.


On March 23, U.S. District Court Judge Miranda M. Du ruled against the tribes — the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, Summit Lake Paiute Tribe, and the Burns Paiute Tribe — who argued that the Bureau of Land Management violated several laws when it permitted Lithium Americas on Jan. 15, 2021 to mine Thacker Pass. The tribes also alleged that the permission violates their access to historically and culturally significant sites. 

The region is considered sacred by the tribes, who call it Peehee Mu’huh, or Rotten Moon in the Paiute language, because in 1865 the U.S. Federal Cavalry killed more than 30 men, women and children and then left their bodies to rot. 

 

The full-scale destruction of Thacker Pass, Peehee Mu’huh, this sacred and wild place, has begun. This video was submitted to us anonymously several days ago.

As you read this, life and biodiversity is being bulldozed and destroyed. Ancient artifacts and the remains of ancestors are being crushed into dust. Water is being poisoned and the once-clean air is being fouled with toxic fumes.

And yet, despair is only for those who see the end beyond all shadow of a doubt. We do not.

This fight is not over. There are still court cases ongoing. Residents are rising up. Protesters are gathering. In times of darkness it is most important to look deep into your heart and walk with your head held high.

Never forget, as Martin Luther King Jr. said, that “Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice, and… when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.”

#ProtectThackerPass #ProtectPeeheeMuhuh #LoyaltyToLandAndLife

Support our ongoing legal efforts to protect Thacker Pass by donating here.

More you can do to help; https://www.protectthackerpass.org/take-action/

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MY ECO LIST
Previously published in The POET (UK)
By David Sparenberg

This is not lifeless Saturn
or Jupiter, the Moon, Venus, or Mars.
Because a neighboring planet is
named for a Roman goddess
does not mean that
women originate there as if from
an unearthly temple of extraterrestrial love.
Because another is named
for a Roman god
does not prove that men are
hard wired and destined for war.

Here is Earth.
Earth is a Life Place.
We live here, only, always
within a context of
others also living.

Learn again
to live appropriately with
realities
of the changing Earth.
Clear your head
(if you cannot
blow your mind) open your heart
reintroduce your suffering
soul to the intricate
complexities of creation.
Initiate relationships.

Buy less, yes.
Possess less, use less.
Embrace
the Prosperity of Appreciation.
Do not regret
what you give up
rejoice instead
in who you save.

Defend diversity.
Cultivate maturity.
Renounce violence.
One imminent need is
to democratize our
ability to respond to
realities and
discern difference between
false and genuine needs.

Another imminent necessity
is to advance “mustard seeding.”
Transition from the solitude of awakening
into a solidarity of commitment. Note
that instead of transcendence
I am favoring imminence and
the dynamic constancy
of transitional movement.
An ancient modality.
Don’t let the garden you
cultivate become overly tame!

Magic of the here and now
is participatory art and natural science.
Magic of the metamorphic
empowers dreams and reverent
dread as well as excitation
of awe-inspiring wonder.

Make choices
that are Acts of Beauty
choices for seven generations.
Embody delight. Be amorous
with circles. Consciously, conscientiously
joyously: evolve! evolve! evolve!

Attend
a Council of All Beings.
Think
like a mountain or
at least your favorite
tree. Envy
pollen dusted
busy working bees.
Sing with whales. Whales
are profound singers!