GEO Test 3 Flashcards
Proximate & Structural Issues With Energy Currently
Proximate: Global increase dependence on energy (5GJ - 20GJ - 80GJ) consistently 80% fossil fuels causing GhG emissions & climate change
Energy transition is needed as fast as possible & cannot be solved by technical adjustments or changes in individual behavior, they require political, economic, social transformations to address structural drivers
Structural: Poised to continue or replicate unequal & unjust structures of Injustice, Extractivism, Colonialism, Racialization, must be held accountable with Climate Justice
Energy Sacrifice Zones + Bennett Dam
Energy Sacrifice Zones: areas that bear disproportionate health & environmental burdens of energy development in the name of larger national or international demands for energy
Bennett Dam on Peace River: large hydro dams viewed as progress, ushering prosperity, modernization in the post WW2, funded & executed by government to electrify province & industrial development, now part of BC Hydro: business + government organization created when private sector failed. Impacts on Tsay Keh Dene Peoples:
* Flooding → dispossession
* Have not received any benefits, no hydroelectricity
* Destroyed habitat, climate, debris, changing water levels
* Isolation from dangerous & un-navigable waters
* Lost autonomy, self-determination, dependence on wage labor & social assistance
* Negative health implications from dust & increased substance abuse
* World Commision on Dams: found dams understated negative social & environmental impacts, over-budget, doesn’t achieve their social goals. World Bank stops financing dams & becomes sunset sector until climate change resparked interest
Piikani Nation Oldman River Dam
Piikani Nation Oldman River Dam: in opposing resource extraction, Nations are enacting their own legal orders and are creatively expressing it in relation to multiple colonial legal orders
* Indigenous Legal Consciousness, formed within relationships with many legal orders,
Proposed in 1970 for additional irrigation capacity for agriculture, construction started 1986, completed 1991, hydro plant added 2003
Extractivism: Excluded financial participation in construction & operation → dam moved outside of reserve so benefits would not be given to Piikani, loss of access to water & treaty rights
Impacts on land: Forest seeds were no longer dispersed, Rainbow Trout population collapsed, constant flow of river isolating communities, breeding ground for Caribou lost, River has become a canal
Relationships Between Nation & River: Spiritual & Social, Source of Law, Relative, Resource, Source of Subsistence
Attempts to Challenge
* In Court: water rights case 1986, Piikani claims treaty rights & water was not surrendered
* Lonefighters Camp & Diversion of Oldman River: blocked set up by moving society, diverted the way of the water using bulldozers to traditional dormant water bed
* Participation in Environmental Assessment Review Panel: Federal review was deemed not needed. Dam finished 1990 before assessment was published 1992 enacted by a lawsuit
* Public hearing, formal presentations by elders & chiefs key themes of treaty rights not addressed in EARP process & impact on Piikani relationship with Oldman River
Recommendations: ineffective
- Decommission dam by low level diversion tunnels for unimpeded flow
- If not decommissioned, will be approved under condition of agreement with Piikani without treaty laws accounted for
- If Peigan obstruct process by discussion on their own terms, Minister will proceed as if agreement had been reached
Curly
CURLY - Resources = Colonialism. Idea of resources is a colonial construction consistent with genocide, displacement, exploitation & capitalism. Creates colonialscapes, displaces Indigenous ontologies (philosophies of existence) erasing kinship networks, transforming understandings of place, water & nonhuman relatives with notions of property
Colonialism
Colonialism is ongoing & built into institutions (legal, cultural, social, environmental) shaping how we transition to renewables, devalues certain groups, denies agency & sovereignty justified by racist logics
Hamouchene
HAMOUCHENE - A green and just transition must fundamentally transform and decolonize our global economic system AND overhauling the production and consumption patterns that are energy-intensive and utterly wasteful, especially in the global North. We need to break away from the imperial and racialized (as well as gendered) logic of externalizing costs that if left unchallenged, only generate green colonialism and a further pursuit of extractivism and exploitation (of nature and labor) for a supposedly green agenda
* Green Colonialism: further pursuit of extractivism and exploitation (of nature and labor) for a supposedly green agenda, necessitates overhauling of production with consumption patterns that are wasteful energy-intensive in Global North
* Just Green Transition: decolonize global economic system that does not serve the social, ecological & biological purpose
Sullivan & Hickel + Cliff Atleo
Sullivan & Hickel: poverty was produced through colonial & capitalist processes, making benefit hard to capture and cost easier to agree too by power relations and desperate need for revenue
Cliff Atleo: neoliberal capitalism, settler colonialism & resource extraction places Indigenous communities between the rock & a hard place
Anti-Colonial Analysis vs Environmental Justice Analysis + Navajo Nation Coal Mining Context
Anti-Colonial Analysis: when nature, ecologies, or relations are framed as resources they are being positioned in a colonial framework that renders the environment as inert matter to be exploited by humans, fundamentally shaping Indigenous institutions and governance, constraining the possibility to exercise sovereignty of self-determination
* Coal is the biggest employer in a region with an unemployment crisis, thus they are forced to work there despite the damaging effects on their health, elders say to stop but the youth want to work
* Residents trying to enact self determination, defend their land, told they are trespassing on their own land, police brutality
* Tribe elected to buy mine to keep it running to enact self-determination, as provides livelihood to small number of people, however constraints them further as all of them experience the environmental consequences, coal company put in the contract that they would not be held liable to any past, present or future for the effects on the community, shady deal the company fronts the money to buy the mine, with a hidden interest rate
Environmental Justice Analysis: environmental benefits & harms are unevenly distributed; environmental harms are often born by those most marginalized, while environmental benefits are enjoyed by the most privileged or wealthy
* No ability to stop the digging & excavation from reaching their house, or stopping the water from getting contaminated
* Provides cheap electricity at a high cost for Black Mesa & Navajo Nation Indigenous communities
* Urban oasis in the middle of the desert, powering most of the South West & profited by large energy corporations in the world at the cost of using the resource of the Navajo Nation for 6 decades, mined for its coal reserves
* Dust, fly ash, smoke, mercury emissions, dumps dangerous coal waste in storage ponds, seeps into ground water impacting health, asthma, eye conditions (ex. Black Lung, terminal conditions from long term exposure to coal dust)
* Billions of gallons of water from Black Mesa aquifer, sole drinking source of water, for coal slurry, drying up the mesa, must go to water pumps hours away for their animals and living
Green-Grabbing + International Financial Institutions + Context:Ouarzazate Solar Plant
Green-Grabbing: plant acquired 3000 hectares of land in an arid region seized & built on without permission from North Africa’s Indigenous Amazigh peoples who owned & managed communally the land where communities desperately need water which the plant requires mass amounts for cooling & cleaning the panels
Financed by International Financial Institutions: required public-private partnerships shifting monetary benefits of the project to international private firms
Extraction vs (Green) Extractivism
The massive technological transitioning needed for renewables in order to meet climate goals → just as massive amounts of minerals needed to be mined to produce the technology to transition
Extraction: not inherently damaging removal of matter form nature to be transformed into useful resources for humans
Extractivism: political & economic formation - a mode of accumulation - of hyper-extraction with lopsided benefits + costs; concentrated mass-scale removal of resources in Global South primarily for export with benefits largely accumulating far from sites of extraction to Global North. Green: solar, lithium batteries, hydroelectric dams
Critical Minerals
Critical Minerals: for national security, energy transition, subject to geographical constraints & scarcity where some are given more power over others on supply & control, government plays key role in extraction & securing resources in a highly competitive market
Lithium Triangle
60% of world’s lithium in the Lithium Triangle: Chile, Argentina, Bolivia eyed for mining & electromobility programs in Global North, already brought down governments, caused social & political unrest
Debates over distribution of benefits & costs:
Whose way of life & water will be sacrificed for wealthy Glob. N’s electromobility? Salt lakes attract tourists & salt mining is a key industry must not be destroyed, uncontaminated & unwasteful use of water for communities & agriculture industry, fragile ecosystem must be preserved
**Will these mines break or continue previous colonial patterns of extractivism? **Structural drivers must be addressed; overconsumption, locals must be entitled to the profits & have say in the development of the projects
Who decides, authority & decision making? Agreements must clearly define the roles of participants & the royalties for each group
Benefits: uplifting ailing economies of Global S. & allowing Global N. to transition to low emissions electric mobility faster
Costs: Extracting lithium is water intensive creating concern about impacts to ecosystems & livelihoods of other industries (agriculture, salt)
Inflation Reduction Act + Onshoring + Friendshoring
Inflation Reduction Act’s targeted investments incentivize onshoring manufacturing and building resilient supply chains in the United States, & contains measures that will provide Canadian miners & automakers advantages/friendshoring
Offshoring: movement of production to other countries for lower labor and costs
Onshoring: movement of production back inside national borders to reduce supply chain disruption and/or for job creation/political rationales
Friendshoring: policies that encourage companies to source materials & manufacturing from within countries viewed as like-minded friends or allies
Is mining better in the Global North than in the South?
Benefits vs Issues with Photovoltaic Modules
Benefits:
* To meet climate goals, exponential growth of solar panels is needed, PV dominates net capacity additions, if done right:
* Displaces the dirtiest forms of energy production:
* Cleaner air, fewer nitrogen oxide emissions, less particulate matter pollution
* Climate friendly: less GHG emissions, comes from transport & production
* Environmentally Just: reaches communities directly safely
Issues
* Demand for Production of PV energy is Rising Fast however, PV lasts only 25 years
* Disposal & recycling of PV technologies is a large scale problem, distant enough in future to not worry
* Overuse of water
* Land seized & exploited from Indigenous communities without permission
* Community doesn’t receive the benefits of the energy & profit of plant, lopsided distribution of benefits & costs
PV Waste throughout entire life cycle
* Early Waste Flows: production+transport defects
* Lifetime Damage: tornados, storms
* Toxicity: larger waste streams and landfills → groundwater chemical & toxicant contamination
* Emissions: trucked to landfills raising GHG emissions dramatically
* Depletion of Limited Rare Resources: continual production of PV modules, without recovery & reuse, production will be expensive & require expanded extraction
* End-of-life Recycling Issue: value of materials in PV decreases & laborious to recycle, thus less profitable, no incentive
Achiem
Racialized: reflects that races are socially constructed hierarchies, not essential to skin color
Structural Racism: refers to an array of dynamics – historical, cultural, institutional & interpersonal – that routinely produce cumulative & chronic adverse outcomes for people of color when compared to white people
Achium Report: an effort to explain patterns of injustice over a large swath of space & time
* Racialization is the foundation & justification of patterns of extractivism, produced in colonial era
* Extractivism relies upon & thrives within systemic racialized hierarchies
