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Fracking's Toll on the Indigenous
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Page Updated:
December 4, 2022

• • Fracking Company Must Pay For Public Water System

  Its the Price That Must
  Be Paid in a Rural PA Town
  
  

  Nov. 30, 2022 -The Pennsylvania town that became famous when residents ignited methane-infused tap water will be getting a new public water system paid for by a gas driller that admitted causing the contamination.

• • U. S. to Pay Millions to Move
  Tribes Threatened by Climate Change

  Tribes in Washington State and Alaska Will Get $25 Million Each
  
  

  Nov. 30, 2022 -The Biden administration will give three Native tribes $75 million to move away from coastal areas or rivers, one of the nation’s largest efforts to date to relocate communities that are facing an urgent threat from climate change.

  The three communities — two in Alaska, and one in Washington State — will each get $25 million to move their key buildings onto higher ground and away from rising waters, with the expectation that homes will follow.

• • The Top Polluter Avoids Paying For Climate Damage

  Learn Who They Are
  
  

  Nov. 23, In 1992, the United Nations classified China as a developing country, as hundreds of millions of its citizens lived in poverty.

  A lot has changed since then: China is now the world’s second-largest economy and the biggest annual emitter of planet-warming greenhouse gases. Average Chinese today are 34 times richer and nearly four times more polluting. But the classification has stayed the same for the past three decades, frustrating diplomats from developed nations who say it has allowed Beijing to avoid paying its fair share to help poor countries cope with the ravages of climate change.

• • The U.S. Promised Tribes They
  Would Always Have Fish, But...

  The Fish They Have
  Pose Toxic Risks

  ProPublica, Nov. 22, 2021 -The Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation are among several tribes with a deep connection to salmon in the Columbia River Basin, a region that drains parts of the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, Canada, southward through seven U.S. states into the West’s largest river.

  It’s also a region contaminated by more than a century of industrial and agricultural pollution, leaving Sam and others to weigh unknown health risks against sacred practices.

• • States Lagging on Environmental Justice Issues

  They Are Indiana,
  Iowa, Ohio and Wisconsin
  
  

  Nov. 21, 2022 -On the northwest side of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where more than half the population is Black or African American, the outdated sewer system is often at capacity, and miles of asphalt and concrete make stormwater management a challenge. Sometimes, heavy rains bring flooding into the neighborhood, and members of the community have called for action to help manage their water.

• • Tribes in the Colorado River
  Basin Are Fighting For Their Water

  States Wish They Wouldn’t
  
  

  Nov. 16, 2022 -In early November, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a case brought by the Navajo Nation (NN) that could have far-reaching impacts on tribal water rights in the Colorado River Basin.

  In its suit, the NN argues that the Department of Interior has a responsibility, grounded in treaty law, to protect future access to water from the Colorado River. Several states and water districts have filed petitions opposing the tribe, stating that the river is “already fully allocated.”

• International Court Must Investigate a ‘Network’
Committing Crimes Against Humanity in Brazil’s Amazon

Lawyers Argue That the Crimes Are Linked to a Coordinated Web of Politicians, Businesses and Gangs



Nov 9, 2022 - Even as environmentalists cheer the ouster of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro as a turning point for the Amazon rainforest, new information filed Wednesday with the International Criminal Court suggest that the battle to protect the region and its inhabitants is far from over.

• • There's Not Enough Land to
  Meet Many of the World’s Climate Pledges

  The Land Gap Report
  
  

  Nov. 1, 2022 -Carbon removal plans relying on land do not add up, says a new report. Or, more accurately, researchers have now actually added them up, but countries’ climate pledges would require millions of square kilometers of land ­– putting pressure on ecosystems, Indigenous peoples, and food security.

• • Making Baltimore a Laboratory for
  Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience

  A Big Federal Grant Aims to Just
  
  

  Oct. 28, 2022 -A multidisciplinary team of scientists will work with city officials and community groups to protect vulnerable residents and communities from extreme weather, flooding, urban heat islands and fossil fuel pollution.

• • Who Giveth Taketh Away

  A Timber Mill's Role in Sparking the Wildfire That Destroyed a Neighborhood
  
  

  Oct. 25, 2022 -Segregation and climate change contributed to the destruction of the Lincoln Heights neighborhood in Weed, California. They may also hinder the recovery of its unique character.

• • Environmental Reporting Through
  an Indigenous Perspective

  Your Perspective Can Make a Difference
  
  

  Oct. 18, 2022 - Whether it’s Native Americans, the First Nations of Canada, Aboriginal Australians or any Indigenous community across the globe, people who’ve lived in balance with their environment have endured oppression and hardship while trying to protect their resources from outside interests.

  In the wake of global warming and related hazards, people are beginning to appreciate the sustainable practices demonstrated by many of these so-called “primitive” cultures. For this tipsheet, we’ll stick to Native American tribes and groups here in the United States. But enterprising reporters can apply some of the general tips to any number of Indigenous communities they may wish to cover.

• • The People’s Forest

  How the Menominee
  are Facing Climate Change
  
  

  Oct. 14, 2022 -They appeared as the last glacier retreated, twelve thousand years ago. It was the end of Earth’s last ice age, the Wisconsin Glaciation, when vast snowy sheets descended over much of the planet. As the ice drew back, it carved the landscape as it is today and made way for humans, who named themselves the Original People. Other tribes, in time, would come to call them the Ancient Ones.

  The Menominee, as they are now known, evolved as the land did, moving with the seasons up and down the length of modern-day Wisconsin. As the tundra sprouted a seemingly infinite forest, trees became a cornerstone of life.

• • Poor Nations to Demand Climate
  Justice, Finance at UN Summit

  Compensation For Poorer Countries Suffering from Climate Change to be High Up on the Agenda.
  
  

  Oct. 14, 2022 -Madeleine Diouf Sarr, who chairs the Least Developed Countries group, told The Associated Press that the November conference — known as COP27 — should “capture the voice and needs of the most climate-vulnerable nations and deliver climate justice.”

  Sarr said the group would like to see “an agreement to establish a dedicated financial facility” that pays nations that are already facing the effects of climate change at the summit.

• • Where Defending Nature Can Be Deadly

  No region is More Dangerous for Environmentalists than Latin America
  
  

  Oct. 4, 2022 -The world’s forests are increasingly threatened and the main thing keeping some of them alive are the people, many of them Indigenous, standing up against those who want to clear the land.

  In the last decade at least 1,733 people have died defending the environment, according to a report by Global Witness, an environmental watchdog group.

• • How Environmental Racism Connects to Military Bases

  Minority Neighborhoods Often
  Suffer Greater Environmental
  Problems In the US
  
  

  Sep. 30, 2022 -Minority neighborhoods are often clustered around industrial sites, ports, truck routes, and military bases — all of which can be sources of toxic exposure. This phenomenon, part of a broader problem called environmental racism, is also impacting black active-duty service members.

• • E.P.A. Will Make Racial Equality
  a Bigger Factor in Environmental Rules

  The Agency is Creating an Office of Environmental Justice
  
  

  Sep. 24, 2022 -The Environmental Protection Agency will establish a new National Office of Environmental Justice, the Biden administration’s latest effort to rectify the disproportionate harm caused by pollution and climate change in communities of color and in low-income cities, towns and counties.

  Michael S. Regan, the E.P.A. administrator and the first Black man to run the agency, announced the creation of the office alongside environmental justice and civil rights leaders on Saturday in Warren County, N.C., the site of a toxic dump where protesters were arrested 40 years ago, giving rise to the environmental justice movement.

• • California’s Revised Net Metering
  Plan Still Fails Environmental Justice Communities

  Based on a Center for Biodiversity Report
  
  

  Nov 14, 2022 - The California Public Utilities Commission’s proposed revised state net-metering plan, released last week, abandons the hefty solar tax from last year’s proposal but still threatens to put affordable renewable energy out of reach for most communities.

• • Victory in Cancer Alley

  Environmental Justice Advocates are Declaring Victory After a Louisiana Judge Canceled Permits For a Regional Plastic Factory
  
  

  Sep. 23, 2022 -A state court in Louisiana has canceled permits for a controversial plastic factory along the Mississippi River in a region known as Cancer Alley for the high rate of the disease linked to emissions from some 150 petrochemical plants. In her ruling against Formosa Plastic, Judge Trudy White cited questionable data and environmental racism.

  Her decision blocks construction unless the company wins an appeal. Sharon Lavigne lives near the proposed factory in the predominantly black town of Welcome in Saint James Parish and organized the advocacy group Rise St. James to fight Formosa.

• • Federal Funds For Environmental Justice

  The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act Contains Billions to Address Environmental and Climate Injustice
  
  

  Sep. 23, 2022 -While the climate emergency and related fossil fuel pollution affects us all, low-income communities as well as people of color bear far more than their fair share of the negative impacts. These range from deadly summer heat in public housing linked to redlining, to higher asthma, cardiac problems and cancers related to unequal proximity to polluting highways and fossil fuel operations.

  Thanks to progressive House Democrats who called for a Green New Deal, the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act contains billions of dollars aimed directly at addressing environmental and climate injustice

• • E. Coli Contamination Hits Baltimore’s Water Supply

  City and State Officials
  Continue Searching for the Cause
  
  

  Sep. 15, 2022 -Ianthia Darden said she was not ready to drink water out of the tap just yet. “I’m doing so out of the abundance of caution,” the 74-year-old resident of West Baltimore’s predominantly Black Harlem Park area said on Wednesday afternoon, adding that she has used tap water for other things like washing clothes.

  “I’m still boiling water to do the dishes and using the leftover bottled water that the city gave out last week,” she said. “So, no, I’m not drinking it yet.”

  Darden is one of many West Baltimoreans still reeling from last week’s E. coli contamination in the drinking water system, which mostly hit the city’s underserved west side areas.

• • Court Nixes Air Permits for Formosa’s Huge
  Petrochemical Complex in Cancer Alley

  Formosa Denied Proposal for
  Petrochemical Complex
  
  

  Sep. 15, 2022 -Wednesday’s decision throws out the air permits and sends Formosa Plastics back to the drawing board. The permits would have allowed the company to emit more than 800 tons of toxic pollution into the air, worsening environmental racism and harming the health of St. James’ predominantly Black residents in a region known as “Cancer Alley.”

  “Stopping Formosa has been a fight for our lives, and today David has toppled Goliath,” said Sharon Lavigne, founder and president of RISE St. James. “The judge’s decision sends a message to polluters like Formosa that communities of color have a right to clean air, and we must not be sacrifice zones.”

• • The Father of Environmental Justice Meets the Moment

  The White House Has Pledged $60 Billion to a Cause Robert Bullard Has Championed Since the Late Seventies
  
  

  Sep. 12, 2022-He’s known as the father of environmental justice, but more than half a century ago he was just Bob Bullard from Elba, a flyspeck town deep in Alabama that didn’t pave roads, install sewers or put up streetlights in areas where Black families like his lived. His grandmother had a sixth grade education. His father was an electrician and plumber who for years couldn’t get licensed because of his race.

  Now, more than four decades after Robert Bullard took an unplanned career turn into environmentalism and civil rights, the movement he helped found is clocking one of its biggest wins yet.

• • The Jackson, Mississippi Water Crisis

  White Flight and Environmental Injustice Led to It
  
  

  Sep. 9, 2022 -Mississippi has found itself in a dire position, after a flood left the state’s capital city, Jackson, without water to drink or fight fires.

  Residents, who had actually been under a boil-water advisory since mid-July, were reminded to keep their mouths closed during showers—if they were lucky enough to even have water pressure.

  After days without running water, water pressure was back earlier this week, but a boil water advisory remained in effect.

• • Lower-Income Countries are at Higher
  Risk From Indoor Microplastic Pollution

  Microplastics are in Our Homes --
  in Some More Than in Others
  
  

  Sep. 8, 2022 -Microplastics, these tiny bits of plastics of less than five millimeters, have contaminated almost every corner of the planet, including our homes — where we spend much of our time. However, not everyone is equally exposed, with those living in low-income countries and young children at greater risk, according to a new study.

• • The Super-Rich ‘Preppers’ Planning
  to Save Themselves From the Apocalypse

  Billionaires Buy Up Luxurious Bunkers and Hire Military Security to Survive a Societal Collapse They Helped Create
  
  

  Sep. 4, 2022, by Douglas Rushkoff -As a humanist who writes about the impact of digital technology on our lives, I am often mistaken for a futurist.

  The people most interested in hiring me for my opinions about technology are usually less concerned with building tools that help people live better lives in the present than they are in identifying the Next Big Thing through which to dominate them in the future. I don’t usually respond to their inquiries. Why help these guys ruin what’s left of the internet, much less civilization?