Green energy is an important component to combat climate change, but if it includes destroying the environment and the lives of Indigenous communities, then it is not worth the cost. We have to find other solutions for our energy sources. Reducing everyone’s energy consumption dramatically is going to be necessary. Let’s analyze the impacts of green energy and how its implementation is affecting the environment and Indigenous people in three separate communities.
First, we have a legal battle between the Tohono O’odham, Hopi, Zuni, and San Carlos Apache Tribe against Bureau of Land Management and the US Interior Department over the use of their lands without consent for a transmission line sending energy from a wind farm from New Mexico to Arizona. The fact that the US government is superseding the tribes wishes is unacceptable and hopefully the court will side with the sovereignty of the tribes. Even as the case is deliberated, Pattern Energy is destroying pristine and untouched wilderness that is sacred to these tribes and to the local ecosystem of southern Arizona. Despite this being a supposedly massive green energy project, the impacts on wildlife, the untouched environment, and the sovereignty of the tribes is unimportant to the US government. To the government it is a win so that they can proclaim that they created a massive green energy project, but at what cost? Is it really green energy when land is ruined and the wishes of the Indigenous communities are ignored? The US government is more concerned with the lines affecting the military than it is affecting the environment and the tribes.
For more on this, please read San Diego Union Tribune’s article: Tribes, environmental groups ask US court to block $10B energy transmission project in Arizona
Second, just north of the disputed transmission lines, Arizona has another green energy battle at hand over the opening of a uranium mine near the Grand Canyon. Pinyon Plain mine is back in production due to the need for uranium in nuclear energy production. After the Cop28 summit, the mine began running again because of an agreement to triple the use of nuclear energy as a means to fight fossil fuel use. This mine is on protected land. The extraction of uranium directly affects the Havasupai Tribe which is located near the mine and tribe leaders know this will destroy their water source. Though AZ officials have researched and studied the issue of possible water contamination from Pinyon Plain mine, the Havasupai leaders do not find these reassurances enough to allow mining so close to their land. Other tribes that have allowed uranium mining have been battling cancer and lung illnesses due to their handling and proximity to uranium. Plus, other mining projects have hit aquifers without intending to.
For more information, please read The Guardian’s article: Alarms as first uranium mine in years opens near the Grand Canyon
Third, up in Nevada, there is growing opposition to both mining and solar farms that threaten the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge, which is an incredibly important and fragile ecosystem for the desert. Open-pit mining would damage this very delicate ecosystem and the endangered species that reside there. Lithium was detected on the Ash Meadows Refuge and now companies want to extract the lithium for green energy purposes, but in doing so they would decimate a beautiful and crucial ecosystem. Not just mining, but solar farms that are already underway are killing wildlife such as the desert tortoise. Local officials are countering the Department of the Interior and disputing the use of the land for mining and solar farms.
For more information please read the Nevada Current’s article NYE County Commission rebukes lithium mining, solar development
and the Review Journal’s article: Desert tortoise deaths raise concerns as solar farms solve energy needs
Green energy projects are anything but green when they end up harming and wiping out the areas that resources are extracted or the areas that solar farms supplant. The brunt of these projects are shouldered on Indigenous communities who are being disregarded and their concerns unheard. In the worst cases, it is killing them.
These are all steps taken under the Biden administration. Even when trying to save the environment, they are still destroying it and the people who live there.
There are no easy solutions to combat climate change and reduce fossil fuel consumption. What the US government should do is divest in military research and spending and use the money to research and fund other green energy sources. Don’t waste money on the military complex, spend it wisely on the future of our planet. They could make an impact on supporting forest protections, assisting Americans on reducing energy consumption, banning private jets and commercial cruises, taxing the rich heavily for their carbon footprint, and reducing Americans dependency on automobiles with 15-minute cities. The reason we don’t see systemic changes such as these is that these require an end of major capitalistic practices, which the US government will always uphold over protecting people and the environment.