Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
Cadiz Inc.’s potentially lucrative groundwater mining proposal for the Mojave Desert intends to water lawns and pools for suburban Southern California at the expense of taxpayers and ultimately the desert ecosystem. The company could realize $1 billion to $2 billion in revenue over the plan’s 50-year life. Opponents say public resources are being used for private profit.
Huge new hydroelectric dam projects now underway call for damming pristine rivers and flooding virgin rainforest, home of the Ngäbe People. The Panamanian government deems it vital for economic growth, with multinational corporations cashing in. Even the UN has awarded carbon credits predicated on “sustainably” produced energy.
The dirty water produced from fracking has triggered a gold rush among water-treatment companies, with the private water industry profiting while downplaying its environmental, public health and economic risks.
Canada is the number one oil supplier to the US and is pushing to increase that role using the Alberta Tar Sands, slated to mine and strip an area of Boreal Forest the size of Florida, impacting land resources and indigenous communities, producing bitumen-crude that will foul the global climate.
The human commodification of nature often overlooks small, seeming inconsequential values, someday leading to the earth’s foreclosure and unavoidable eviction.
Go ask any fish how it feels to have your road home permanently blocked by a “clean” “green” “renewable” “low-cost” hydroelectric dam.
President Evo Morales signed into law in 2017 that stripped protection from the Isiboro Secure National Park and Indigenous Territory, known as TIPNIS for its Spanish initials, opening it to highway construction and other development.