Friday, July 10, 2020
Thursday, July 9, 2020
FEDERAL JUDGE ORDERS DAKOTA ACCESS PIPELINE SHUT DOWN
By Amy R. Sisk, The Bismark Tribune.
July 7, 2020
https://popularresistance.org/federal-judge-orders-dakota-access-pipeline-shut-down/
The Dakota Access Pipeline must be shut down and emptied of oil within 30 days while a lengthy environmental review of the project is conducted, a federal judge ruled Monday.
The move was requested earlier this year by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and three other Sioux tribes in the Dakotas who fear environmental harm from the pipeline and have spent four years in court fighting the project. North Dakota officials have said such a move would have “significant disruptive consequences” for the state, whose oil patch has been hit hard in recent months by falling demand for crude amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Standing Rock Chairman Mike Faith said the tribe is trying to prevent a potential environmental disaster should the pipeline leak.
“For the tribe’s sake, it is good news,” he said of Monday’s ruling. “I think for downstream users, it’s good news also.”
Pipeline developer Energy Transfer moved swiftly to challenge the ruling, filing several legal documents Monday evening seeking to put the shutdown order on hold while it appeals the decision to a higher court.
In an emergency motion, the company said “a number of time-consuming and expensive steps are required to shut the pipeline down safely and empty it of oil,” adding that the process “would require well more than 30 days.”
Energy Transfer issued a statement earlier in the day calling the ruling “an ill-thought-out decision.” The company said the judge presiding over the matter has exceeded his authority and that the ruling “is not supported by the law or the facts of the case.”
The company said it is “confident that once the law and full record are fully considered Dakota Access Pipeline will not be shut down and that oil will continue to flow.”
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a permit for the pipeline in 2017 under the direction of President Donald Trump, who just days after taking office in January 2017 green-lighted construction of the pipeline that had become stalled toward the end of the Obama administration.
The Corps referred a Tribune request for comment to the U.S. Department of Justice, which is representing the Corps in the lawsuit. The department had no immediate comment on the ruling, spokeswoman Danielle Nichols said.
U.S. Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette issued a statement saying, “It is disappointing that, once again, an energy infrastructure project that provides thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in economic revenue has been shut down by the well-funded environmental lobby, using our Nation’s court system to further their agenda.”
North Dakota Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem said the state “will certainly be willing to be involved” in the appeal process. The state filed a brief ahead of the judge’s ruling that cautions of a “serious reduction in economic output in North Dakota and corresponding loss of tax revenue to the state” if the court shut down the pipeline.
The state collects substantial revenue from oil taxes and is a mineral owner itself, leasing property to numerous oil companies.
Gov. Doug Burgum said in a statement that the ruling “could have devastating effects on North Dakota’s economy and U.S. energy security.”
“No one cares more about North Dakota’s clean water than the people who live here,” he said. “If a single judge is able to shut down a state-of-the-art pipeline project that was permitted and has been operating safely for more than three years, it would have a chilling effect on America’s ability to build, modernize and improve our nation’s critical infrastructure, which we need to do for both energy security and environmental stewardship.”
The Ruling
The $3.8-billion pipeline has been moving Bakken oil to a shipping point in Illinois for three years.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who is overseeing the tribes’ lawsuit, in March ordered the Corps to complete a full Environmental Impact Statement. That ruling was a significant victory for the tribes, but the question of whether the pipeline would be shut down in the meantime had lingered since.
An EIS is a much more stringent review than the Environmental Assessment the Corps completed earlier.
After arguments by both sides and other interested parties this spring, Boasberg on Monday revoked a key Corps permit for the pipeline and ordered that “Dakota Access shall shut down the pipeline and empty it of oil by August 5, 2020.”
The pipeline has been carrying as much as 570,000 barrels of oil out of the Bakken each day — about 40% of the state’s daily production before the pandemic hit. Boasberg acknowledged that his order “will cause significant disruption to DAPL, the North Dakota oil industry, and potentially other states.” But he also said “the Corps has not been able to substantiate its decision to publish only an EA and not an EIS.”
“Given the seriousness of the Corps’ … error, the impossibility of a simple fix, the fact that Dakota Access did assume much of its economic risk knowingly, and the potential harm each day the pipeline operates, the Court is forced to conclude that the flow of oil must cease,” Boasberg wrote.
The EIS process, across all federal agencies, typically lasts for more than three years, and the Corps takes longer on average, he wrote in his ruling. But for Dakota Access, the Corps anticipates completing the study in 13 months, he wrote.
“This expedited process, if it proceeds on track, would cabin the economic disruption of a shutdown,” Boasberg wrote, adding that if he did not revoke the permit, “the Corps and Dakota Access would have little incentive to finish the EIS in a timely manner.”
A projected timeline of 13 months could place the environmental review under a new administration less friendly to the fossil fuel industry, if former Vice President Joe Biden were to win the race against President Donald Trump.
Boasberg in 2017 ordered the Corps to revisit several issues pertaining to the easement it granted the pipeline, but he allowed the pipeline to continue operating. Energy Transfer on Monday gave notice that it is also appealing his 2017 ruling.
The Corps completed the work he ordered in August 2018, leading to more legal wrangling when the tribes argued the additional study was flawed. The company over the years has maintained that the pipeline is safe, a contention backed by the Corps.
Oil Impact
Assuming Boasberg’s order stands, the shutdown of Dakota Access will force more Bakken oil to be transported by other means at a higher cost, including via trains and trucks, according to people involved in North Dakota’s oil industry.
Existing oil train infrastructure is “primarily still there,” said Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council, who added that “the rail cars have been parked.”
He called the shutdown of the pipeline “extremely frustrating.”
“This is the equivalent to taking the BNSF railroad and shutting it down for farmers for the fall,” he said. “This is the safest, most reliable, economic way to move Bakken oil to the best market for oil in the country.”
The latest figures available show that pipelines carried 69% of North Dakota’s oil to market in April. Trains hauled 21%, primarily to the east and west coasts. The oil industry used to ship substantially more crude via trains, but that changed in recent years as more pipeline options became available.
The oil-by-rail business has faced scrutiny following fiery oil train explosions, including one in 2013 that killed 47 people in Quebec.
In the brief North Dakota filed with the court earlier this year, the state argued that substantial revenue is at stake should the pipeline be shut down.
Before the pandemic, the state anticipated it would collect $4.9 billion in direct revenue from the oil and gas industry over a two-year budget cycle. Officials estimated the state has brought in an additional $317 million in oil tax revenue since the pipeline started operating in 2017, as a result of decreased shipping costs and higher oil prices for crude delivered to the Gulf Coast.
Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem said Monday that a sudden uptick in oil train traffic could cause problems for farmers looking to haul grain to market via trains.
“I think it needs to be emphasized that the consequences are much more serious than the judge realizes for North Dakota and other states,” he said.
Energy Transfer said the “economic implications of the Judge’s order are too big to ignore.”
The American Petroleum Institute, a national trade group for the oil and gas industry, is calling for federal permitting reform for energy projects in wake of Monday’s ruling and an announcement over the weekend that the developers of a major proposed pipeline in the eastern United States are ending their project after it faced delays.
“Our nation’s outdated and convoluted permitting rules are opening the door for a barrage of baseless, activist-led litigation, undermining American energy progress and denying local communities the environmental, employment and economic benefits modern pipelines provide,” the group said in a statement.
Pipeline Opponents Weigh In
Alice Brownotter, a 16-year-old Standing Rock tribal member who is among the youth active in campaigning against the pipeline, heard about the ruling when she woke up Monday morning.
“I was like, ‘What the heck is going on? Did this actually work?'” she said. “All this hard work actually paid off.”
As part of her activism, she took part in a run from Standing Rock to Washington, D.C., with other young Native Americans in 2016. There, she spoke with federal officials and explained the importance of water to the tribe.
Four years later, she spent Monday afternoon boating and tubing on the Missouri River. She said the prospect of having no oil, “nothing deadly,” flowing through the pipeline is “like a sigh of relief.”
The tribe fears a pipeline spill into the Missouri River would contaminate water that tribal members rely on for drinking, fishing and religious practices.
Thousands of pipeline opponents from around the world who took up their cause flocked to southern North Dakota in 2016 and 2017 to protest the project, raising the profile of the tribes’ fight. Some clashed with police, resulting in more than 760 arrests.
“The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and millions of others who fought against the Dakota Access Pipeline showed us the power of standing together against injustice,” Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders tweeted on Monday.
Sanders, who made fighting climate change a significant part of his unsuccessful campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination this year, added, “We can create a future where a clean environment and indigenous rights matter more than Big Oil’s profits.”
Standing Rock leaders, meanwhile, are looking ahead to the next steps in fighting the pipeline.
Faith on Monday said the Corps has not approached the tribe about the EIS. He is calling for “true consultation” that is “face to face.” He said the tribe “is going to do its best to work with the Corps to take a hard look during the EIS process.”
“The bottom line of all this is that the EIS will probably tell us that they should have used a different route in the first place that did not affect Sioux Nation treaty rights,” he said.
The Corps did consider alternate routes for the pipeline’s Missouri River crossing, including one north of Bismarck, but ultimately permitted the pipeline to cross under the water just north of the reservation near Cannon Ball.
The ruling comes as Energy Transfer seeks to nearly double the capacity of the pipeline to carry 1.1 million barrels per day of oil. It has secured permits from regulators in North Dakota and Iowa but still needs to acquire permission from Illinois, where it faces opposition by environmental groups. In North Dakota, the company plans to build a pump station west of Linton in Emmons County to boost the line’s horsepower.
“Let’s say it does reopen, we still have to have that plan in place of a quick response team, at least to try to get the oil off the river and off the sides,” Faith said, adding that the tribe still wants to see the pipeline shut down permanently.
UNPRECEDENTED RULING FOR INDIGENOUS PEOPLES
https://popularresistance.org/unprecedented-ruling-for-indigenous-peoples/
By The Inter-American Court Of Human Rights.
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has set a precedent with its decision to grant territorial and ancestral rights to Indigenous peoples in Argentina—how will this ruling affect the region?
On April 2, a ruling issued in Costa Rica by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights resounded strongly in the arid north of Argentina. For more than two decades, the original communities of the province of Salta had been awaiting the outcome of the case Lhaka Honhat Association (Our Land) vs. Argentina, a case sponsored by CELS since 1998.
After more than twenty years of litigation, the Court ordered the government of Argentina to cede an undivided deed to 4,000 km2 of ancestral territory to the Lhaka Honhat Association of Aboriginal Communities, located in the north of the country. Furthermore, the South American country was convicted for the first time of violating the rights to a healthy environment, food, water, and cultural identity.
It is beyond doubt that this ruling, which sets a new standard at the continental level, is a first sign of justice for a centuries-old debt to the Indigenous peoples. However, despite its paradigmatic nature, this precedent remains precarious.
The Right To Community Property
In the Wichí language, Lhaka Honhat means “our land”. Since 1984, the 132 communities that compose the Lhaka Honhat Association have struggled to obtain a community title and maintain their cultural identity. In 1998, faced with the inaction of successive governments, the Lhaka Honhat Association and CELS filed a complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
Twenty-two years of litigation led to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruling that the Argentine government must delimit, demarcate, and grant a single collective title, without subdivisions or fragmentation, on an area of 400,000 hectares of the ancestral territory. The land is claimed by the more than 10,000 Lhaka Honhat members who originate from the Wichí (Mataco), Iyjwaja (Chorote), Komlek (Toba), Niwackle (Chulupí) and Tapy’y (Tapiete) communities. The government has a maximum term of six years to deliver the territory free of fences and livestock and to relocate the Criollo populations that live there. Furthermore, the State must refrain from holding public meetings, undertaking public works or any other type of intervention on the territory without prior consultation. Also, it must take the necessary measures to adopt specific legislation on community property.
The Right To A Healthy Environment, Food, Water And Cultural Identity
The original communities in this area are fishermen, gatherers, and hunters. They travel extensive stretches of their ancestral land to find food and medicine. But tens of thousands of heads of cattle from Criollo families graze through their traditional territory, eating the fruits that Indigenous communities collect and polluting the water they use. The fences of the Criollos also hinder access to rivers and mountains, and the constant practice of illegal logging has caused a significant change in the soil and water.
Two Lhaka Honhat leaders, Francisco Pérez and Rogelio Segundo, in their testimonial hearings in Costa Rica, presented these facts. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights found that these events “affected environmental assets, affecting the traditional way of feeding indigenous communities and their access to water.” Thus, the Court established that the Indigenous peoples had not consented to this alteration of the traditional way of life, marking the close link between the lack of guarantee of rights with the lack of a community title, under Article 26 of the American Convention on Human Rights.
Throughout the last decade, and increasingly since the beginning of this year, the Indigenous communities of this region have been the focus of national news due to the number of fatal victims of malnutrition, especially child malnutrition. One reason for this was the lack of access to Indigenous territory and the contamination generated by neighboring Criollo farming activity, resulting in the impossibility to carry out the traditional forms of subsistence for the Lhaka Honhat communities.
As a measure of reparation by the government, the Inter-American Court ordered the creation of a community fund to meet the goals that the communities themselves have set to restore their rights. In addition, it urged the government to carry out two separate studies with action plans to deal with the lack of protection of these four rights. The Court’s intent is to order the government to repair decades of setbacks.
A Conquest As Enormous As It Is Fragile
This ruling has been a light at the end of a very dark tunnel. After years of struggle, Indigenous communities finally have a ruling from an international tribunal that falls on their side.
The ruling is paradigmatic for several reasons. First, it is the first Inter-American Court of Human Rights case related to a claim by Indigenous peoples in Argentina. The massive extension of the territory in dispute is also unprecedented. Finally, the rights to a healthy environment, food, water and cultural identity have never been declared as autonomously violated before. This case will undoubtedly be one of the mandatory sentences for any litigant on issues of Indigenous peoples and ESCR.
However, we must not lose sight of the fact that the judgment of the case was given with a fair margin. The Inter-American Court composed of seven members; one of them, Judge Raúl Zaffaroni, being Argentine, excused himself. The vote on the violation of these rights was three against three, but the vote of Judge Odio Benito, as president, condemned the government of Argentina.
There is no guarantee that subsequent economic, social and cultural rights (ESCR) violation cases will share the same fate due to the composition of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Furthermore, this same ruling could be discussed again, despite the fact that this would represent a clear violation of the principle of non-regression of human rights. Regional civil society should be vigilant in the upcoming elections for Court judges to guarantee that the new members work towards the expansion of indigenous rights, applying the jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
A Legacy Case For The Region
The common point between this case and several others related to community property of the Inter-American System is the monumental task of fully implementing the most needed measure: delimiting, demarcating, and granting a community property title. Although the government has a maximum term of six years to comply, the reality faced by Indigenous communities is rapidly deteriorating. Despite Lhaka Honhat’s strength, especially that of its leaders, six more years in a decades-long struggle seems like an eternity.
With the effective conquest of rights on paper, it remains to be seen what level of collaboration the government that—over the decades and through the different political parties—has been characterized by its non-compliance with the rights of original peoples, will provide. Hopefully we are witnessing a change of position and this ruling will become a model case of how a state can attend to the needs of Indigenous peoples, rather than another failure in the list of international litigation cases.
The actions carried out by Argentina now will determine whether it truly wants to join the vanguard of countries that respect, protect, and guarantee the rights of all of its peoples.
FRIGHTENING NUMBERS: BIOSPHERE HEATING ACCELERATES
By Manuel Garcia Jr. from his blog.
July 7, 2020
https://popularresistance.org/frightening-numbers-biosphere-heating-accelerates/
The Earth Is Warming At An Astounding Speed, Equivalent To Absorbing 907 Times The USA’s Annual Energy Use, Far Faster Than Biological Species Can Adapt.
At this time, the Biosphere is warming at a rate of 3.03×1015 Watts, which is equivalent to a temperature rate-of-rise of 0.0167°C/year. The warming rate has been increasing steadily since the 19th century when it was on average “zero” except for natural fluctuations (plus and minus) that were hundreds of times smaller than today’s warming rate.
The total energy use by the United States in 2019 was 100 quadrillion BTU (British Thermal Units), which is equivalent to 1.055×1020 Joules. Averaged out over the 31,557,600 seconds in a year implies a use rate of 3.34×1012 Watts during 2019.
From the above two observations, we can deduce that the current rate of Biosphere warming on a yearly basis is equivalent to the yearly energy use in 2019 of 907 United States of Americas.
The total increase in the heat energy of the Biosphere since 1910 is 5.725×1024 Joules, with a corresponding increase of its temperature by 1°C. That heat energy increase over the last 110 years is equivalent to 54,260 years of U.S. energy use at its 2019 amount, per year.
So, today the Biosphere is warming at a rate equivalent to it absorbing the total energy used by the U.S. in 2019, every 9 hours and 40 minutes.
In 2008, I estimated the energy of a large hurricane to be 6.944×1017 Joules.[1] Thus, 152 such hurricanes amount to the same total energy as that used by the U.S. during 2019.
The heat energy increase of the Biosphere during 2019 was 9.56×1022 Joules, with a corresponding temperature increase of 0.0167°C. That heat energy increase is the energetic equivalent of 137,741 hurricanes. Now, of course, that Biosphere heat increase during 2019 did not all go into making hurricanes, but it should be easy enough to see that a small fraction (for a whopping amount) went into intensifying the weather and producing more and stronger hurricanes (and consequent flooding).
Two clear observations from all this are:
the Biosphere is warming at an astounding rate, even if “we don’t notice it” because we gauge it by the annual change in average global surface temperature (which is in hundredths of degrees °C per year);
the immense amount of heat added to the Biosphere every year is increasingly intensifying every aspect of weather and climate, and consequently driving profound changes to all of Earth’s environments.
Those environmental changes directly affect habitability, and species viability, because they are occurring at a rate orders of magnitude faster than the speed at which biological evolution can respond to environmental pressures.
What Should We Do About It All?
That is obvious: ditch capitalism and socio-economic inequities worldwide; ditch all forms of bigotry, intolerance, racism, war and social negativity; form a unified planetary political administration for the management of a socialist Earth; deploy reasonable technical mitigation strategies (like drastic reductions in the use of fossil fuels, transforming the transportation infrastructure); implement very deep and comprehensive social adaptation behaviors (“lifestyle changes,” eliminating consumerism, scrupulously protecting biodiversity, resettlement of populations displaced by permanent inundation or uninhabitable drought and heat, worldwide sharing of food production).
None of this will actually stop global warming, as the amount of carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere (assuming it has a lifetime there of thousands of years [2]) has us programmed to warm by about another 1°C to 2°C within two centuries, even if we immediately and permanently shut off all our greenhouse gas emissions.
But, such an improved civilization would experience the least amount of suffering — which would be equitably distributed — from the consequences of advancing global warming; and it would contribute minimally toward exacerbating future global warming.
Notes
[1] The Energy of a Hurricane, Counterpunch, September 5, 2008
[2] Global Warming and Cooling After CO2 Shutoff at +1.5°C, manuelgarciajr.com, June 20, 2020
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