News About Indigenous Resistance to Fossil Fuel Projects
Indigenous people’s resistance to fossil fuel projects in the United States and Canada has had a major impact. Many people are familiar with the opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline led by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe starting in 2016 and the current struggle against the Line 3 pipeline through treaty-protected Anishinaabe land in Minnesota. Less well known are more than 20 other projects that Indigenous people have organized to fight. Some of these fights they have won, some are ongoing, and a few have been lost.
A new report has calculated that Indigenous resistance has stopped or delayed 1.587 billion tons of carbon emissions in the last 10 years through highly effective campaigns. This is an amount equivalent to the pollution of approximately 400 new coal-fired power plants, or roughly 345 million passenger vehicles (more than all the vehicles on the road in the U.S. and Canada). It is also equivalent to 24% of one year’s total carbon emissions in the U.S. and Canada combined.
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