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The ambitious plan put forward by congressional Democrats to address climate change, create jobs and mitigate economic inequality has a reference to “indigenous communities.” But the 14-page proposed resolution does not specifically mention tribes. That and the lack of acknowledgement for government-to-government relations concerns the Indigenous Environmental Network, which otherwise applauds the goals of the Green New Deal. Other critics call the plan unrealistic. We take a look at the Green New Deal from a Native perspective.
Guests:
Dallas Goldtooth (Diné and Dakota) – Keep it in the Ground campaign organizer for the Indigenous Environmental Network
Julia Bernal (Sandia Pueblo, Yuchi and Creek) – co-director of Pueblo Action Alliance
Dr. Ryan Emanual (Lumbee) – associate professor and university faculty scholar in the department of forestry and environmental resources at North Carolina State University
Break 1 Music: Stadium Pow Wow (feat. Black Bear) (song) A Tribe Called Red (artist) Stadium Pow Wow (feat. Black Bear) (single)
Break 2 Music: Vipismal – The Hummingbird Song (song) Earl Ray (artist) Traditional Songs Of The Salt River Pima (album)
Dear NAC, I listened to this show and was really surprised to hear so many native people support some of the core ideas in the Green New Deal.
The GND is primarily a growth plan; it calls for “massive” industrial growth, “upgrading all buildings”, “overhauling the entire transportation system”, replacing our power grid with “clean” energy, etc.
There are only a few people reporting on the mining requirements to actually build a fully “clean” grid and a fully electric transportation system, but recent studies show that, for instance, to go from 3 million EVs currently on the road (globally) to 125 million EVs will require a 50% increase in *global* copper mining. Now imagine replacing all 1.1 billion cars on the road with EVs! That’s a global increase of 500% in copper mining. That’s just for the cars… then add on the copper requirements for wind and solar battery storage, and the numbers become truly mind-boggling.
Now extrapolate that to other materials needed for “clean” energy and building infrastructure: imagine the iron ore needed for steel for instance–and then think about the recent iron ore mine disaster in Brazil. Many other metals, minerals, and rare earths are required to build solar panels, wind turbines, and EVs. Silicon refining is a nasty dirty process; to learn more about this, see the current fight in NE WA state against a silicon smelter in Newport.
Not to say that all of this would necessarily be worse than fossil fuels–it’s hard to imagine that it would–but when you consider these impacts *in addition* to the current impacts of fossil fuels which will remain with us for a very long time, it is rather terrifying.
Take a look at the impacts of wind turbines in Oaxaca (see work done by Alex Dunlap for instance). As with pipelines, these came with the promise of jobs, and have translated into yet more appropriation of indigenous land, short term financial gains, with the long term loss of land, jobs and culture.
Given that mining activities have often (usually!) exploited and ruined indigenous lands and the water that runs through them, and that industrial solar and wind turbines are being built on rural (often indigenous) landscapes, to me this whole thing smacks of yet more ways to appropriate indigenous land, and exploit indigenous people — again.
As a white person and ally, my mantra is “to help, first stop doing harm”. To me, “clean” energy and the GND is just a way to do more harm. It is fundamentally a capitalist, growth-economy plan, wrapped in the language of social and economic justice–language that sounds good enough to fool a lot of people into believing that this time, industry will be different. I am done being fooled by that.
I think my biggest problem with the GND is that it continues this assumption that if we can just switch our energy sources, we can continue to live as we are on this planet, which is a fallacy. Small local low impact wind and solar for intermittent and small amounts of energy are one thing; a global transition to these forms of energy to keep our current high impact lifestyles going can never be “just” — the mining requirements and land requirements alone are far too destructive for that.
My belief is that the only way forward is to dramatically reduce consumption, dramatically reduce industry of all kinds (and eliminate the military!), and live much more lightly on the land. The GND makes no mention of these ideas at all. To me, the GND is fundamentally a program that is written primarily by and for white, industrial colonialists, to keep our industrial, destructive, growth culture going a little bit longer.
Who are the experts at living lightly on the land? The indigenous. All of us should be learning from all of you.
I would really love if you could dig into this deeper–I want to hear your perspective on this at a deeper level.
Thank you!!