Meet the Indigenous Women Protesting Pipelines in Biden’s America
Welcome back to Climate Weekly!
Today we are heading to the US, with Ilana Cohen, a climate journalist and organiser now leading the Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard campaign.
Hello! My name’s Ilana Cohen and I’m a journalist, activist, and college student from Brooklyn, New York, and I’m passionate about climate justice.
March is Women’s History Month in the US, and it gives me one more reason to focus on the deep interconnectedness of gender justice and climate action.
Right now, the US is seeing an iconic fight for Indigenous and climate justice unfold with the movement to #StopLine3 in Minnesota, where women activists are protesting Canadian company Enbridge’s Line 3 Replacement Project.
If completed, it would basically double the Line 3 pipeline’s carrying capacity and cut through Indigenous territory in the process.
If the picture of Indigenous women and eco-warriors directly challenging fossil fuel infrastructure and interests sounds familiar, that’s because it’s become a pattern in the US (think Dakota Access and Keystone XL).
It’s also because women are uniquely threatened by pipelines like Line 3 not only due to their climate change impacts but also due to the consequences of man camps, or temporary housing facilities for male pipeline workers which are linked to violence against Indigenous women (who are missing and murdered at disproportionate rates).
One such woman leader is Tara Houska. She is an Indigenous Ojibwe woman and attorney from Couchiching First Nation. In the past, she has written about Enbridge’s greenwashing and is now pushing banks to defund the Line 3 pipeline.
Winona LaDuke is another Indigenous woman leading the fight against the pipeline (fun fact: LaDuke is also the founder of Winona’s Hemp and Heritage Farm, which grows hemp for fiber and for additional bi-products for food, oil, and building and bedding materials).
Plus, young women across the state, and even nationwide, are heading to the front lines in Minnesota.
Take 25-year-old Ojibwe woman Alex Golden-Wolf, for instance. According to reporting by Zoe Jackson of the Star Tribune, Golden-Wolf quit work to move to an Indigenous-led encampment by the pipeline’s construction called Camp Migizi. The camp was founded by Taysha Martineau, of the Fond du Lac tribe.
Many of Alex’s contemporaries are also risking arrest to obstruct pipeline construction, and protesting across cities and university campuses.
Whether these activists can successfully defund the pipeline or get President Biden to heed their calls and shut it down, remains to be seen. But at least for now, women leaders have made it clear they’re not going anywhere soon.
Whether or not the Line 3 pipeline is on President Biden’s mind, his administration remains outspoken on climate change and environmental justice. They are already planning an international leaders summit for Earth Day, which is just a month away (April 22).
The day began in 1970 with over 20 million Americans taking to the streets to celebrate. This year, the White House will convene a Leaders’ Climate Summit, where it is also expected to unveil a new national emission reduction target.
A report by the Environmental Defense Fund has said the US must achieve at least a 50% emissions cut across the economy by 2050 to meet international goals of limiting global warming.
Climate Action Tracker currently ranks the US as having “critically insufficient” policy commitments. Activists across the US are waiting to see what Biden does next, and if his administration can fulfil his stated desire to develop a sufficiently bold emissions reduction target.
But to implement any even reasonable target will involve taking a serious look at the transportation sector, which accounts for the greatest share of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions (roughly 28%, as of 2018).
Electrifying vehicle fleets and creating policies to make electric vehicles more accessible may help, but investing in sustainable public transit will also be an important part of the picture.
These types of investments are getting a lot of coverage in national and regional discussions around the Covid-19 pandemic relief. In my home city of New York, for instance, policymakers are hoping the White House will inject more funds into the subway, which has seen ridership plummet while we’ve all been home.
Even as they anticipate substantial federal relief from the $1.9 trillion Covid-19 package, NYC transit officials are considering significant service cuts in light of a revenue shortfall. Without a robust subway system, the city will face greater challenges to meeting its ambitious climate goals--which could undermine the city’s reputation as a national and international model for climate action.
That’s it for now!
See you next week
Thanks for reading this week’s Climate Weekly. If you have any questions, comments or want to get involved, email me at chris@climatetracker.org.