Our path forward with renewables must be an environmentally just one

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Working towards net-zero is not without its complications—especially when it comes to making sure history doesn’t repeat itself. Countless vulnerable communities bear the brunt of the worst consequences from big polluters in the fossil fuel industry. Everything from air to soil can be compromised from mining, drilling, refining, and more. Just as communities worry when major companies bring in such damaging practices for oil and gas, they’re also concerned about the tools needed for battery storage, electric vehicle production, and renewable energy generation. A recent Mother Jones feature encapsulates this struggle, highlighting the battle between copper mining company Resolution Copper and the Indigenous community of the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation in Arizona.

Resolution Copper—which has a parent company, Rio Tinto, with a history of violating worker and Indigenous rights—plans to build a copper mine in an area around Lake Superior that includes portions of Tonto National Forest, including the sacred Oak Flat site known to the San Carlos Apache tribe as Chi’chil Bildagoteel. The mesa is considered a blessed place that has been a site of worship and has held significance for the tribe since time immemorial. It’s also said to have enough copper to potentially meet a quarter of the United States’ renewables needs. Though the site has been protected as public land since 1955 and has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 2016, Resolution Copper and other interested parties have worked to undermine those protections in a bid to start mining as soon as possible.

Mother Jones points out a land swap bill that was tucked into a 2014 defense spending measure allowing Resolution Copper to trade acreage from a different location in Arizona in order to access Oak Flat for its mining operation. That bill came at the behest of John McCain and Jeff Flake, both of whom have benefitted from Rio Tinto’s largesse, with McCain receiving campaign donations from affiliated parties and Flake at one point even lobbying for Rio Tinto. Moving forward with the mine has been overwhelmingly unpopular with Arizonans, however. Last year, 74% of voters said they opposed the project, crossing party lines and staying consistent in both urban and rural communities.

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This isn’t the only project that could jumpstart our green future but faces pushback over environmental concerns: Rural Nevada communities last year slammed a solar project they say could harm the environment, concerns abound when it comes to hydrogen hub and carbon capture projects across the country, and communities in Idaho worry that reopening a gold mine could lead to environmental disaster, though gold has been used to jumpstart solar panel efficiency. Throughout these stories, there is the common thread of vulnerable communities facing the threat of projects that could alter their very ways of life.

The Biden administration has vowed to center environmental justice, having unveiled an equity agenda that includes a promise to “ensure that environmental justice is at the heart of the [Environmental Protection Agency’s] mission.” But advocates say that promise is not enough. According to E&E News, We Act for Environmental Justice Executive Director Peggy Shepard; Deep South Center for Environmental Justice Executive Director Beverly Wright; and the father of environmental justice, Robert Bullard, have joined forces to better hold the federal government accountable. With support from the Bezos Earth Fund, the trio will oversee developments in the Biden administration’s promise to invest 40% of climate-related benefits into communities impacted by environmental racism.

In the meantime, projects like the Resolution Copper mine remain in limbo. A lawsuit filed by Apache Stronghold, a nonprofit committed to defending Indigenous holy sites, seeks to prevent the land transfer that would grant Resolution Copper access to Oak Flat from taking effect. Mother Jones states that a decision from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals could be made “any day.” The most recent activity regarding the case occurred April 5, when appellees on the U.S. side filed what’s known as a “citation of supplemental authorities,” essentially adding a citation to a point made by Apache Stronghold; in this case, quibbling about how the destruction of sacred Indigenous land “does not impose a substantial burden.”