Recognizing the true guardians of the forest: Q&A with David Kaimowitz

Recognizing the true guardians of the forest: Q&A with David Kaimowitz

Indigenous peoples worldwide are the victims of the largest genocide in human history, which is ongoing. Wherever indigenous cultures have not been completely destroyed or assimilated, they stand as relentless defenders of the landbases and natural communities which are there ancestral homes. They also provide living proof that humans as a species are not inherently destructive, but a societal structure based on large scale monoculture, endless energy consumption, accumulation of wealth and power for a few elites, human supremacy and patriarchy (i.e. civilization) is. DGR stands in strong solidarity with indigenous peoples.


This article originally appeared on Mongabay.

by  on 14 April 2021

‘The People Have Spoken’: Left-Wing, Indigenous-Led Party Vows to Stop Greenland Uranium Mining Project After Historic Win

‘The People Have Spoken’: Left-Wing, Indigenous-Led Party Vows to Stop Greenland Uranium Mining Project After Historic Win

While this is a great temporary success, we have to keep in mind that Greenland is a vast island and very scarcely populated. The pressure by multinational corporations to exploit the countries resources will likely increase in the near future.

This article originally appeared on CommonDreams.

Featured image: Members of the Inuit Ataqatigiit (AI) Party wave party flags as they celebrate following the exit polls results of the legislative election in Nuuk, on April 6, 2021. Greenland went to the polls on April 6 after an election campaign focused on a disputed mining project in the autonomous Danish territory, as the Arctic island confronts the impact of global warming. (Photo: Emil Helms / Ritzau Scanpix / AFP)


“Greenlanders are sending a strong message that for them it’s not worth sacrificing the environment to achieve independence and economic development.”

Jon Queally, staff writer

Members of the left-wing and Indigenous-led Inuit Ataqatigiit (AI) party in Greenland celebrated late Tuesday after winning a majority of parliamentary seats in national elections and vowed to use their new power to block controversial rare-earth mining projects in the country.

Poll results released Wednesday morning showed that the Inuit Ataqatigiit won 36.6 percent of the vote compared to the 29 percent garnered by the center-left Siumut party, which has dominated domestic politics since Greenland won autonomy from Denmark in 1979. If those margins hold, according to the Associated Press, AI is expected to grab 12 out of the 31 seats in the Inatsisartut, the local parliament, a 50 percent increase from the 8 seats it currently holds.

As Agence France-Presse reports:

The dividing line between the two parties was whether to authorise a controversial giant rare earth and uranium mining project, which is currently the subject of public hearings.

The Kuannersuit deposit, in the island’s south, is considered one of the world’s richest in uranium and rare earth minerals—a group of 17 metals used as components in everything from smartphones to electric cars and weapons.

IA has called for a moratorium on uranium mining, which would effectively put a halt to the project.

According to Reuters, the results cast “doubt on the mining complex at Kvanefjeld in the south of the Arctic island and sends a strong signal to international mining companies wanting to exploit Greenland’s vast untapped mineral resources.”

“The people have spoken,” IA leader Mute Egede told local news oultet DR when asked about Kvanefjeld. “It won’t happen.”

“We must listen to the voters who are worried,” he said. “We say no to uranium mining.”

In other comments following the party’s victory, Egede said, “There are two issues that have been important in this election campaign: people’s living conditions is one. And then there is our health and the environment.”

“It’s not that Greenlanders don’t want mining, but they don’t want dirty mining,” Mered added. “Greenlanders are sending a strong message that for them it’s not worth sacrificing the environment to achieve independence and economic development.”

The Long Shadow of the Tar Sands: Lithium Mining and Tar Sands Sulfur [Dispatches from Thacker Pass]

The Long Shadow of the Tar Sands: Lithium Mining and Tar Sands Sulfur [Dispatches from Thacker Pass]

In this article, Max Wilbert talks about his experience in fighting tar sand mining in Washington and Utah, and how this is related to the current campaign against lithium mining in Nevada. “I think it’s wrong to blow up a mountain for tar sands. I think it’s wrong to blow up a mountain for lithium, too. I guess I’m just stubborn like that.”


by Max Wilbert

It’s often said that solar panels, wind turbines, and the lithium-ion batteries that store their energy and power electric vehicles will save the planet.

What most people don’t know is that producing lithium has direct links to the Alberta Tar Sands (also known as the Athabasca tar sands), the largest and most destructive industrial project on the planet.

This is a personal issue for me. I have fought the tar sands for over a decade. Starting in 2010, I began campaigning for the city of Bellingham, Washington to forbid a spur of the Trans Mountain pipeline which carries “dilbit” (diluted bitumen, AKA unrefined tar sands to which gas has been added so it’ll flow easily through a pipeline) under the city.

After months of campaigning, Bellingham became the first city in the nation to unanimously pass a resolution declaring tar sands fuel to be harmful. But despite overwhelming public opposition, the city’s attorneys said they couldn’t prevent the pipeline from operating using the law. What that says about the state of democracy is worth a whole different article. And perhaps a revolution. But I digress.

After my years in Bellingham, I lived in Salt Lake City, where I took part in the campaign to protect the Tavaputs Plateau in northeastern Utah from tar sands strip mining. As part of that work, I took part in public meetings, family camp-outs on the site, disruptive protests, and several direct actions against the U.S. Oil Sands Corporation.

For the last three months, I’ve been in Nevada, on Northern Paiute territory, holding down a protest camp established on the proposed site of an open-pit lithium mine. I’m an equal opportunity land defender. I think it’s wrong to blow up a mountain for tar sands. I think it’s wrong to blow up a mountain for lithium, too. I guess I’m just stubborn like that.

But as I’ve implied, these projects are directly related. It turns out, the proposed mine at Thacker Pass would likely rely directly on materials sourced from the Alberta tar sands as the key chemical ingredient in their production process.

According to the Final Environmental Impact Statement, the proposed Thacker Pass mine would produce 5,800 tons of sulfuric acid per day for use in refining lithium. That would require importing 1,896 tons of sulfur per day. That’s nearly 700,000 tons per year, roughly equivalent to the mass of two Empire State Buildings annually. This would be brought in to Thacker Pass on dozens of (diesel-fueled) semi-trucks each carrying 3,800 gallons of molten sulfur.

Most sulfur comes from oil and gas refineries, where it’s a byproduct of producing low-sulfur fuels to meet air-quality regulations. And here’s the punchline: according the U.S. Geological Survey, tar sands contain 11 times as much sulfur as conventional heavy crude oil. There are literal “mountains” of sulfur piling up in Alberta, and at other refineries which process tar sands fuel.

That includes the refineries in Anacortes, Washington, which refines the “dilbit” from the pipelines running underneath Bellingham, my old home. These two refineries are major sources of sulfur for the entire western United States, shipping out millions of tons annually.

According to Lithium Americas Corp. Vice President of Global Engineering, the proposed lithium mine at Thacker Pass would purchase sulfur on the bulk commodity market, and it would be delivered by rail to Winnemucca (60 miles south), then brought by truck to Thacker Pass. That bulk commodity market sources nearly 100% of its elemental sulfur from oil and gas refineries.

And so we come full circle: the lithium destined for lithium-ion batteries that will be extracted from Thacker Pass, will almost certainly be directly connected to the total destruction of Alberta’s boreal forest, the poisoning of the water across thousands of square miles, the epidemic of cancers and rare diseases in that region, the wave of missing and murdered indigenous women in Alberta, and all the other harms that come from the tar sands. And, lest we forget, the tar sands are a major contributor to global warming. Canadian greenhouse gas emissions have skyrocketed over recent decades, as tar sands oil production has expanded.

Revenue from sales of sulfur is not unimportant to the economics of tar sands oil extraction. One report from 2018 found that as much as half a million barrels per day of tar sands product would be economical to extract if legal levels of sulfur allowed in bunker fuel were lowered. Another report found that “developing a plan for storing, selling or disposing of the sulphur will help to ensure the profitability of oil sands operations.”

All this points to a relatively simple conclusion: extraction of lithium at Thacker Pass would directly support the economics of extracting additional sulfur-rich crude oil and bitumen at the tar sands, further incentivizing the destruction of the planet.

Why do we defend the land here at Thacker Pass? There are so many reasons. It is important habitat. It is sacred ancestral land for our Northern Paiute friends from the nearby Fort McDermitt tribe. It is beautiful. But we also stand to protect this place because we stand for the truth. Lithium mining, and by extension, much of the so-called “green economy” that is being developed is not separate from fossil fuels. It is firmly dependent on fossil fuels.

Besides the sulfur, this project would burn tens of thousands of gallons of diesel fuel per day — operating heavy equipment made of steel that was produced with metallurgical coke, a type of coal. That same steel makes up the frame of the electric cars, too. The roads into the mine site would likely be made of asphalt concrete. You know what another name for asphalt is? Bitumen. AKA tar sands.

The idea of a “green” electric car is a fantasy. The sooner we face that reality, the sooner we can put a stop to false greenwashing projects like the Lithium Americas/Lithium Nevada Thacker Pass mine. The sooner we face reality, the sooner we can recognize that to shut down the tar sands, we actually have to shut down the tar sands, not just blow up other mountains elsewhere and hope that leads to the end of the tar sands.

Do not fool yourself. This is not some great green transition. It is more of the same. More destroyed land, more poisoned water, more decimated wildlife.

It’s beautiful here at Thacker Pass. Yesterday morning, I woke before 5am to visit the Greater sage-grouse “lek” — mating ground — on top of the mountain directly above the proposed mine. I watched the male grouse strut and dance, and thought about the new USGS report showing that grouse populations have declined by 80% since 1965, and nearly 40% since 2002. That comes on top of previous population collapses. The population was 16 million a century ago. Now, it’s closer to 200,000. That’s a 99% decline. This region, the northwestern Great Basin, has been particularly hard hit.

It is possible for humans to live sustainably. Our ancestors managed it for hundreds of thousands of years. Is it possible to live sustainably, and drive cars? No, I don’t believe it is. You may not like it, but there’s a thing about the natural laws of the universe: they don’t give a damn if you like them or not. Gravity exists. Ecological constraints exist. If you ignore them, you will pay the price.

We cannot afford to ignore the truth, and because of this, we must stop the Thacker Pass mine — and the tar sands. We need your help. If you can contribute to this campaign, or to the broader transformation of society that is needed, reach out to us at https://ProtectThackerPass.org. Construction might begin very soon. If that happens, Thacker Pass will die. The water will be poisoned. And the truth will be crushed along with the sagebrush, under the hard metal treads of the bulldozers. Stand with us.

#ProtectThackerPass #BrightGreenLies #TarSands #Greenwashing #Lithium #EVs #EnergyStorage #KeepItInTheGround

Photo: Large sulfur pile — byproduct of tar sands oil refining. By Leonard G., Creative Commons ShareAlike 1.0.

Brazilian Supreme Court takes crucial step towards recognizing indigenous rights

Brazilian Supreme Court takes crucial step towards recognizing indigenous rights

Indigenous peoples worldwide are the victims of the largest genocide in human history, which is ongoing. Wherever indigenous cultures have not been completely destroyed or assimilated, they stand as relentless defenders of the landbases and natural communities which are there ancestral homes. They also provide living proof that humans as a species are not inherently destructive, but a societal structure based on large scale monoculture, endless energy consumption, accumulation of wealth and power for a few elites, human supremacy and patriarchy (i.e. civilization) is. DGR stands in strong solidarity with indigenous peoples.

This article originally appeared on Survival International.
Featured image: One of the leaders of Guyra Roka, Ambrosio Vilhalva, who was murdered in 2013. © Sarah Shenker/Survival


A small community of Brazilian Indians has won a land rights case at Brazil’s Supreme Court that could have major repercussions for indigenous people across the country.

The Court has ruled that a 2014 judicial decision canceling the return of some of their ancestral territory to the Guarani community of Guyra Roka must be revisited because the Guarani themselves were not involved in the process. Now, they must be given a fair hearing before the Court votes again on the return of their territory.

The ruling will potentially affect other communities whose lands have been stolen, but who hope to reclaim them.

However, the chances of the Guarani recovering their land any time soon are remote.

Most of the area has been taken over by a powerful politician and rancher, José Teixeira, who has been implicated in a series of attacks on the Guarani. One of the leaders of Guyra Roka, Ambrosio Vilhalva, who acted in the feature film Birdwatchers, was stabbed to death in 2013.

Vilhalva and others led a “re-occupation” in 2000 to recover a small parcel of their land from the rancher.

Tito Vilhalva, a religious leader of the Guyra Roka community, said: “I’m 99 years old now. [When I was young] Guyra Roka was forest – there was no road, no fences. It was just forest and Indians, monkeys and tapirs. There were no Brazilians then.”

The 2014 cancelation of the Guyra Roka’s territory was based on what campaigners have called the “Time Limit Trick” – a ploy by anti-indigenous politicians to manipulate the constitution and steal indigenous lands.

The Time Limit Trick says that unless indigenous peoples were living on their ancestral lands on October 5, 1988 [the day the Brazilian Constitution was adopted] they no longer have any right to them. If successful, this genocidal manoeuvre would put hundreds of indigenous territories and dozens of uncontacted tribes at grave risk.

The Supreme Court is due to rule in a separate case shortly concerning the Xokleng tribe that will set the definitive precedent for the Time Limit Trick. If it is upheld in that case, indigenous rights will be set back decades and many tribal peoples, and their lands, could be destroyed.

The indigenous lawyer Eloy Terena said: “Instead of protecting indigenous interests, [the state and its agents] worked with the region’s farmers to evict the indigenous people from their lands and to promote genocidal agribusiness.”

The Time Limit Trick is just one of a series of measures that President Bolsonaro’s government is pushing aimed at opening up all indigenous lands in the country to mining, ranching and logging. These measures constitute the biggest attack on indigenous peoples in decades, and if passed could have the effect of completely destroying tribal peoples in Brazil.

Survival’s Research & Advocacy Director Fiona Watson, who has visited the Guyra Roka community, said today: “This is a stunning victory for a group of people who have been relentlessly persecuted for decades but never stopped fighting to recover their land. The Guarani and their many allies around the world will fight for their land to be returned. The Guarani have endured a decades-long humanitarian crisis in which almost all their land has been stolen, their leaders murdered, and their means of survival destroyed. Like other tribal peoples across Brazil, they’re confronting a government whose policies and actions have the clear and genocidal aim of wiping them out.”

How the Saami Indigenous People Fended Off Gates-funded Geoengineering Experiment

How the Saami Indigenous People Fended Off Gates-funded Geoengineering Experiment

We in DGR do not believe that there are any technological solutions to climate change. Technocrats like Bill Gates represent the insanity and human supremacy of this culture, believing that they can play God and engineer the planet. We consider this a very dangerous approach. The only real solution to climate change is a large scale ecological restoration.
This article originally appeared on Counterpunch and Patrick Mazza’s substack blog The Raven.
Featured image: The Sami flag (public domain)


By Patrick Mazza

The first ever stratospheric test of geoengineering technology, funded by Bill Gates, has been suspended under pressure from the indigenous people over whose heads it would take place, the Saami of northern Scandinavia. It may be moved back to the United States.

At the recommendation of the project’s Advisory Committee, the scheduled June test has been called off. That became public March 31.

When Bill Gates $4.5 million investment in geoengineering research came to light in 2010, one of the scientists he put in charge of the project, Ken Caldeira, said the money was not funding any field experiments. But as the project has grown and moved to Harvard, that line was crossed. In a first-of-a-kind test of geoengineering technologies in the stratosphere, the Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment – SCoPEx for short – intends to release around a kilogram of calcium carbonate, essentially chalk dust, from a propelled balloon-gondola rig 12 miles up. Particles would cover the equivalent of 11 football fields and test the material’s potential to block a portion of solar radiation, countering the heat-trapping effects of carbon dioxide. The June test would not have released any particles, only tried out the rig’s technologies.

Last December SCoPEx announced it was moving the rig test to Sweden because of the pandemic. It was to have been in Arizona and New Mexico.  The new test site was to be Swedish Space Corporation’s launch center at Kiruna near the Arctic Circle, the Saami homeland. Trouble was, nobody had talked to the Saami or anyone else in Sweden.

The Saami Council, which defends the rights of the reindeer-herding people from Norway to Russia, on Feb. 24 sent a letter to the SCoPEx Advisory Committee opposing not only the experiment, but the entire premise of geoengineering research outside an international consensus. It was co-signed by leaders of the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation, Friends of the Earth Sweden and Greenpeace Sweden. Environmental groups had previously weighed in on their own.

The Saami have reason to be concerned about what’s flying over their heads. Winds from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster dumped radiation on their villages and reindeer grazing lands. Thousands of animals had to be slaughtered, and decades later reindeer meat must still be tested for radiation. The Saami have also taken an active stance on climate, persuading Norway’s second largest pension fund to divest from fossil fuels.  And they showed up at Standing Rock in 2017 to support tribes resisting the oil-carrying Dakota Access Pipeline under the Missouri River.

HAZARDS MORAL AND OTHERWISE

The letter from the Saami and their allies economically summarizes the fundamental contradiction of the Harvard research and geoengineering experiments in general – private governing bodies assuming powers and making decisions of such immense potential impacts that democratic accountability is required.

Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI), write the Saami and environmentalists, “entails risks of catastrophic consequences including . . . uncontrolled termination  . . . ” –  If it was stopped, the heat-trapping effect of carbon dioxide would kick back in and cause sudden heating, like a junkie having withdrawals from addiction – “and irreversible sociopolitical effects that could compromise the world’s necessary efforts to achieve zero-carbon societies.” In other words, geoengineering would provide an excuse for powerful interests to continue burning the fossil fuels that add to atmospheric CO2. By offering protection from risks it would reduce the incentive to eliminate them. This is known as moral hazard.  “There are therefore no acceptable reasons for allowing the SCoPEx project to be conducted either in Sweden or elsewhere.”

The ways research creates moral hazard is illustrated by Alex Lenferma, a South African climate analyst writing for the Carnegie Council. “David Keith (a lead in the Harvard project whom Gates tapped to help distribute his 2010 funding) tells us that geoengineering could be very inexpensive. According to him, it would cost just $10 billion (annually), or one ten-thousandth of global GDP, whereas its benefits could be more than 1 percent of global GDP—a return one thousand times greater than its cost. While Keith warns that solar geoengineering does not spare us the need to reduce emissions, other team members do not seem so convinced.

“Fellow Harvard teammate Richard Zeckhauser tells us that ‘solar geoengineering is the most promising technology we have today.’ It is so promising that Zeckhauser says he would be fine if we redirected some of our efforts from greenhouse gas emission reduction to geoengineering, a statement that borders on encouraging moral hazard . . . “

Research illustrates the dangers of moving ahead in a Wild West atmosphere of independent initiatives taken outside a global governance structure. Releasing solar shielding particles in the northern hemisphere alone could increase droughts in India and the Sahel of Africa even as it benefits the north. Jacob Pasztor, executive director of the Carnegie Climate Geoengineering Governance Initiative, told Carbon Brief, “If one country decided to put its own interests first – say the leader of that country thought ‘our country needs cooling down, let’s do some regional solar geoengineering’ – that could have potentially catastrophic effects in other parts of the world.”

Keith was the co-author of a 2020 modeling study that downplayed the danger. Previous studies showed solar shielding worsening climate impacts over 9% of the Earth’s land area. But if shielding aimed to reduce just half of warming it “would only exacerbate change over 1.3% of the land area,” said co-author Peter Irvine. “Our results suggest that when used at the right dose and alongside reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, stratospheric aerosol geoengineering could be useful for managing the impacts of climate change.”

“There is a real potential, maybe a significant potential, to reduce the risks of climate change this century – by a lot,” Keith said.

Research showing geoengineering could be cheap, reduce climate damage and have minimal impacts in “the right dose” has the appearance of making a case for geoengineering. Even though the scientists acknowledge uncertainty, such research at least entertains moral hazard. This is particularly so absent a framework of global governance or democratic accountability.

THE SAAMI CALL OUT HARVARD

The Saami and their allies took direct aim at the accountability issue and the Harvard-appointed Advisory Committee. It is worth quoting at length. There are “serious problems in terms of governance and decision-making in relation to SCoPEx. We find it remarkable that the project has gone so far as to establish an agreement with SSC (Swedish Space Corporation) on test flying without, as we understand, having applied for any permits or entered into any dialogue with either the Swedish government, its authorities, the Swedish research community, Swedish civil society, or the Saami people, despite the controversial nature of SCoPEx . . . “

“It is noteworthy that Harvard University considers it reasonable for a committee whose role it is to decide whether this controversial project should go ahead, to not have any representation from the intended host country, Sweden. Instead, the committee is composed of almost exclusively US citizens and/or residents. We note that SCoPEx ‘independent’ Advisory Committee appears to be extremely homogeneous, is far from representative and appointed through Harvard itself, without any inclusion of affected groups and without directly critical and non-US voices. (Members are listed here.)

“The SCoPEx project’s comment on its Advisory Committee’s draft ‘Engagement Process for SCoPEx’ highlights core issues and shows the project’s problematic approach to ethics, responsibility and decision making. The SCoPEx project states that no one research project should have to answer questions such as ‘Does solar geoengineering research or deployment pose a moral hazard? Is it ethical to deploy solar geoengineering, and who should decide? Can solar geoengineering deployment be governed, and can we trust that governance? Is research a slippery slope to deployment?’. The SCoPEx project states that under such requirements research would have to halt, and complains that this has not been the case for other areas of research, and therefore ‘should not be the burden for solar geoengineering research.’

“We state that precisely because of the extraordinary and particular risks associated with SAI, this technology and SCoPEx cannot be treated like other research. The type of key issues cited above must be considered first, and in forums that are significantly more representative and inclusive than the SCopEx Advisory Committee. Experimentation and technology development through projects such as SCoPEx must therefore be halted.

“We call on the SCoPEx Advisory Committee as well as SSC to recognise these shortcomings, and to cancel the planned test flight in Kiruna. The SCoPEx plans for Kiruna constitute a real moral hazard . . . Stratospheric Aerosol Injection research and technology development have implications for the whole world, and must not be advanced in the absence of full, global consensus on its acceptability.”

HARVARD RETREATS

Indigenous and environmental opposition has backed SSC and Advisory Committee down. On March 31, MIT Technology review reported that the SSC had withdrawn from the project, and the committee in “an unexpected move” advised suspending the June test. The group said it has begun a public engagement process to “help the committee understand Swedish and Indigenous perspectives and make an informed and responsive recommendation about the equipment test flights in Sweden.”  SCoPEx principal investigator Frank Keutsch said flights will be suspended until the committee can make a recommendation “based on robust public engagement in Sweden that is broadly inclusive of indigenous populations . . . “

It is likely tests will not be conducted before 2022 and not in Sweden. With the pandemic abating the tests may return to the U.S.

It took the Saami and environmental allies calling out the Harvard project and the Advisory Committee to begin a consultation process. That it came as an afterthought underscores the basic point. In geoengineering as with so many crucial issues, private institutions and individuals are acting as de facto governments, making decisions potentially affecting billions of people without democratic accountability.  Harvard, the premier university in the U.S. and the world, is a preeminent case in point. Resistant to campaigns for fossil fuel divestment, it is researching technologies that could diminish the drive to end fossil fuel burning. A poster for moral hazard. To move toward the first stratospheric experiment of highly controversial geoengineering technology in a foreign country without thinking to consult the country’s civil society, let alone indigenous people over whose lands you will conduct that experiment, evidences a certain HAA-VUD “we-know-better-than-you” arrogance.  It is the essence of private government over democratic accountability.

SHOULD SCIENTISTS LEAD?

Announcement of the suspension came only days after release of a National Academy of Sciences report calling for a program of geoengineering research.

“This proposal is dangerous,” wrote Frank Bierrman, Utrecht University professor of global governance and founder of the Earth System Governance Project. “Solar geoengineering technologies remain speculative and assume a level of understanding of the planetary system that does not exist. Numerous studies have pointed to the risks especially for developing countries and vulnerable populations if anything goes wrong with ‘hacking the climate’. Most importantly, the governance challenges of solar geoengineering are unsurmountable in today’s global political system.”

“The NAS report’s vision for global governance is clear: it is the United States that should lead the way, at least for now. Other countries are invited to join, but there is no indication that the NAS authors envision to place geoengineering technology under global control with a binding veto power for those countries in the Global South that are most vulnerable . . . Instead, the vision of the NAS report seems to be that scientists should lead, especially US scientists. Based on that, a global network of experts could autonomously govern research. It is widely known, however – and acknowledged by the NAS report itself – that this global research community is vastly skewed in favour of a few industrialized countries. Research governance by experts is governance by the Global North, with some ‘consultation’ of others on the side. It is, as I argued earlier, a ‘rich man’s solution’.

Penn State Climatologist Michael Mann, a member of the NAS, issued his own concerns. “A report like this is as much about the policy message it conveys as it is about the scientific assessment, for it will be used immediately by policy advocates. And here I’m honestly troubled at the fodder it provides for mis-framing of the risks . . . the report itself, in my view, really puts a thumb on the scales. It falls victim to the moral hazard that I warn about in The New Climate War  . . . “

Mann quotes from the widely acclaimed new book,  “A fundamental problem with geoengineering is that it presents what is known as a moral hazard, namely, a scenario in which one party (e.g., the fossil fuel industry) promotes actions that are risky for another party (e.g., the rest of us), but seemingly advantageous to itself. Geoengineering provides a potential crutch for beneficiaries of our continued dependence on fossil fuels. Why threaten our economy with draconian regulations on carbon when we have a cheap alternative? The two main problems with that argument are that (1) climate change poses a far greater threat to our economy than decarbonization, and (2) geoengineering is hardly cheap – it comes with great potential harm.”

GATES: ENGINEERING OVER POLITICS

Gates has made several other geoengineering plays. He joined with Microsoft’s old chief technology officer, Nathan Myhrvold, and his company, Intellectual Ventures, in which Gates is an investor, on a 2008 geoengineering patent application that envisions using cold sea water to tamp down hurricane intensities.  In 2010 he announced an investment in Sea Spray, a company researching a technology that would spray seawater into the atmosphere to seed sunlight-reflecting white clouds. Gates also funded David Keith to create a company that captures CO2 directly from the atmosphere. Carbon Engineering has built a plant in British Columbia and plans another with partner Occidental Petroleum in the Permian Basin of Texas, one of the fracking centers of the continent. CO2’s current market is for enhancing oil recovery by pumping it into wells. Chevron and BHP are other oil company investors in Carbon Engineering, as is Alberta tar sands financier N. Murray Edwards.

Criticism of Gates’ investments ranges well beyond geoengineering to the disproportionate influence his foundation exerts in global health and development as well as education policy. The foundation’s support for industrialized agriculture models in Africa and the teach-to-test-oriented “Common Core” plan for U.S. education have come under scrutiny. Critical reviews of his new book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, have called out his focus on technology as opposed to political solutions.

Wrote climate activist Bill McKibben in his New York Times review, “ . . . politics . . .  is where Gates really wears blinders. ‘I think more like an engineer than a political scientist,’ he says proudly — but that means he can write an entire book about the ‘climate disaster’ without discussing the role that the fossil fuel industry played, and continues to play, in preventing action . . . That’s why we’ve wasted almost three decades of scientific warning. ‘I don’t have a solution to the politics of climate change,’ Gates writes, but in fact he does: He founded, and his foundation is a shareholder in, a company that has donated money to exactly the politicians who are in the pocket of big oil. A Bloomberg analysis last fall found that Microsoft had given only a third of its contributions to ‘climate-friendly’ politicians.”

NOBODY’S SMART ENOUGH ON THEIR OWN

In today’s world, money and power are being super-concentrated, aggregating to massive corporations, wealthy individuals such as Gates, and influential institutions such as Harvard. There is a tendency, especially among the successful, to believe their success translates into broad insight on how the world should be managed.  With their money, resources and prestige, they speak with the loudest voices, often drowning out others.

But no matter how brilliant or even well intentioned we may be, each one of us human beings is limited by our own perspectives. We all have blind spots. We all make mistakes. The greater our reach, the more injurious the potential impact. That is the downfall of the private governance structures becoming ever more powerful in the world. Inclusive frameworks of democratic accountability are required to gain the widest range of knowledge and insights, reflect the broadest interests, and avoid pitfalls.

The Saami, speaking with the growing moral authority of the indigenous, along with their environmental allies, have brought a crucial voice to the geoengineering table. That they were not asked their views, but had to raise their voice, says everything about the flawed assumptions of private government. This is true for the range of challenges confronting our world. It is nowhere truer than in a field with such global and potentially catastrophic impacts as geoengineering.

This first appeared on Patrick Mazza’s substack blog The Raven.

Biden Administration/Army Corps Allows Illegal Dakota Access Pipeline to Continue to Flow Despite Impacted Indigenous Opposition

Biden Administration/Army Corps Allows Illegal Dakota Access Pipeline to Continue to Flow Despite Impacted Indigenous Opposition

For Immediate Release:
Press Contact: Jennifer K. Falcon, jennifer@ienearth.org, 218-760-9958

___________________________________________________________________________

Washington D.C. (April 9th, 2021)- The Army Corp announced today that they will not be shutting down the Dakota Access pipeline despite it lacking the proper operating and environmental permits. This move continues to ignore the treaties and voices of the Standing Rock Tribal Nation who have been vocal about their opposition to the pipeline for over five years. The decision comes on the heels of the Standing Rock Youth Council taking over the streets of to D.C. last week with a 318-foot-long snake to deliver 400,000 petition signatures in support of shutting DAPL down to the Army Corps.
 
The federal judge overseeing the case announced he will be making a decision on whether he will order the pipeline to be shut down or not by April 19th, 2021.
 
Quotes:
Joye Braun, IEN DAPL Frontline Organizer, Cheyenne River Sioux Nation Citizen: “It is imperative that the Biden administration shut down DAPL now. The Army Corps of Engineers should not twist the rule of law to favor big oil interests and further spit on the nation-to-nation relationship between tribal nations and the US Government. The Biden Administration needs to do the right thing and stop this illegal pipeline. Why allow something illegal to continue? Set the example, honor the treaties, and show that the rule of law is greater than oil corporate interests. We will no longer accept being the sacrificial lamb for corporate raping of our Mother Earth and her water.”
 
Maya Monroe Runnels-Black Fox, Co-chair of the Standing Rock Youth Council: “It’s been a long hard five years, but we are the defenders of the land and protectors of this water. The youth will continue on fighting these black snakes for our people and the next 7 generations to come. President Joe Biden needs to act now and keep his promise to be a climate president.”

Waniya Locke, Standing Rock Grassroots: “The Army Corps of Engineers and Biden have the authority to shut down the illegal Dakota access pipeline and protect 10 million people’s drinking water. Inaction is no longer acceptable behavior when we are in a climate crisis. Our tribal sovereignty can save 10 million people drinking water, if the Amry Corps respected our sovereignty.”
 
Tasina Sapa Win Smith, Cheyenne River Grassroots Collective:
“The Biden administration and ACOE have declared another battle with the Oceti Sakowin First Nations people by allowing the illegal continuation of dirty oil to flow through the Dakota Access Pipeline. Biden’s inaction to protect our fragile ecosystems, natural resources, traditional medicines, and indigenous rights is a clear sign that this administration is the exact opposite of the climate leadership narrative they promised to lead during his campaign. As Indigenous people, it is our inherent right to protect our natural resources and future generations. With that said, the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota people are ready to take courage by putting our unarmed bodies on the line and freedoms at risk to stop this ongoing injustice against our nation and all of Turtle Island. That is what true climate leadership takes — courage. Biden, be bold.”

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Established in 1990, The Indigenous Environmental Network is an international environmental justice nonprofit that works with tribal grassroots organizations to build the capacity of Indigenous communities. I EN’s activities include empowering Indigenous communities and tribal governments to develop mechanisms to protect our sacred sites, land, water, air, natural resources, the health of both our people and all living things, and to build economically sustainable communities.
Learn more here: ienearth.org