What Terrible Injustices Are Hiding Behind American Energy Habits?

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When someone charges a cellphone or flips on the lights, what costs are felt by the far-off communities that produced the coal or gas powering that home? What happens to those same communities when a utility decides to switch from coal power to natural gas? And what keeps these impacts of American energy habits hidden fromย view?ย ย ย 

New research helps provide some clarity. A study led by Noel Healy from Salem State University in Massachusetts analyzes the hidden but interconnected injustices that can occur throughout the worldโ€™s fossil fuel supplyย chains.

The research project spanned three sites: a power plant in Salem, Massachusetts, recently decommissioned and converted from coal-fired to natural gas; the Cerrejรณn open-pit coal mine in La Guajira, Colombia, which was the primary coal supplier to the Salem plant for over a decade; and hydraulic fracturing (fracking) sites in Pennsylvania, which now supply natural gas to the power plant inย Salem.

A Coal Mineโ€™sย Impacts

Healy and his colleagues Jennie Stephens from Northeastern University and Stephanie Malin from Colorado State University reveal what they call โ€œinterlinked chains of injustices,โ€ or how local energy decision-making in one region generates social and environmental injustices in other, distantย ones.ย ย 

Reliance on coal mining in La Guajira to turn on the lights in Massachusetts supported a mine that over more than three decades has forcibly displaced several nearby indigenous communities and tried to suppress, with bloody results, union activity. The mineโ€™s operations have been linked to widespread pollution from coal dust and the destruction of fishing and hunting grounds, leaving La Guajira plagued by foodย insecurity.

โ€œSome villages were bulldozed, communities forcibly removed, like the Afro-Colombian community of Tabaco,โ€ said Healy, who has conducted research surroundingย theย Cerrejรณn mine. โ€œOthers were displaced via the โ€˜slow violenceโ€™ of contaminated farmland and drinkingย water.โ€

Cerrjon open-pit coal mine in Colombia
The Cerrejรณn mine in La Guajira, Colombia, is one of the largest open-pit coal mines in the world. Credit: Noel Healy, used withย permission

โ€œCommunities live in fear,โ€ he added. โ€œWe witnessed high levels of community trauma, anxiety, and stress.โ€ In the communities Healy interviewed, children reportedly suffer from respiratory illnesses and some people are afraid to drink theย water.

โ€œMining operations have destroyed the social and cultural fabric of communities within the region, traditional migration routes have been cut off, and communities lost access to sacred sites and ancestral grounds,โ€ Healyย said.

Colombian Coal to New Englandย Power

Aviva Chomsky, a Salem resident, professor, and activist, has long fought to bring attention to the injustices surrounding the Colombian mine by making them more visible to its end users in Newย England.

โ€œMost of us like to think of ourselves as good people who would not deliberately harm someone or take advantage of someone,โ€ Chomsky told DeSmog.ย โ€œYet we are the beneficiaries of a system that harms and takes advantage of a lot of people โ€” and we collaborate with it because we are able to not see theย harms.โ€ย 

Chomsky is the founder of the North Shore Colombiaย Solidarity Committee (NSCSC) and has organized speaking tours for several of La Guajiraโ€™s indigenous leaders and activists inย Massachusetts.

Antonia, a Wayuu mother in La Guajira, Colombia
Antonia is an indigenous Wayรบu mother. The Cercado Dam drained the Rancheria River, her community’s only nearby source of water. According to Noel Healy, the Cerrejรณn mine uses over 4.4 million gallons of water a day.โ€‹โ€‹โ€‹โ€‹โ€‹โ€‹โ€‹ Credit:ย Nicolรฒ Filippo Rosso, used withย permission

โ€œWe need to hear the voices of the people displaced and the lives and livelihoods destroyed by coal,โ€ said Chomsky.ย โ€œIn La Guajira, Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities are crying out for the world to see what is happening to them and to support their struggle for recognition and reparations from the coal company that has destroyed their farming communities and left them dispossessed.โ€ย ย 

And while activist pressure has led local political leaders in Salem to acknowledge the injustices wrought by the reliance on coal, thereโ€™s a reluctance to extend the same recognition to the effects from Pennsylvaniaโ€™s fracking fields, where Salemโ€™s power plant now sources its energyย feedstock.

โ€˜An economic logic that allows some places to beย destroyedโ€™

The study led by Healy has found that energy injustices in one place are perpetuated in another when regulators fail to account for them. For example, the extraction, processing, and transportation of natural gas to Salem were not considered in the formal siting process when the power plant made the switch fromย coal.

The devastation in these zones is โ€œoften shielded by the absence of effective regulatory frameworks, and is normalized by an economic logic that allows some places to be destroyed in the name of progress, profit, and national and regional economic interests,โ€ Healy and his colleaguesย wrote.

Just as troubling, the researchers found that companies involved in the supply chain perform what amounts to greenwashing these injustices in order to justify their operations. The current owners of the Cerrejรณn mine rebranded the mine as โ€œCerrejรณn Minerรญa responsableโ€ (responsible mining), and launched a system of charitable foundations to complement its corporate social responsibilityย division.

Cerrejon's 'responsible mining' branding
The Cerrejรณn open-pit coal mine was rebranded as โ€œMinerรญa responsable,โ€ or โ€œresponsible mining.โ€ Credit: Noel Healy, used withย permission

In Salem, the new owners of the natural gas-fired plant downplayed the dangers of fracking by claiming that form of extraction can be done safely under appropriateย regulations.

Chomsky echoes these findings: โ€œIt takes a lot of work to see these injustices since they are deliberately hidden from us.ย Coal companies and energy companies make great profit off of a system that depends on our complicity.ย We enjoy cheap electricity โ€” and we donโ€™t have to see the destruction caused by the extraction of theย coal.โ€

As in the case of the Colombian coal mine, it is mainly up to local activists at the site of consumption to make the injustices at the point of extraction visible to the end consumers. Recently, several Massachusetts organizations, including Mothers Out Front and Clean Water Actions, organized a speaking tour by four Pennsylvania activists impacted byย fracking.

For many Massachusetts residents, it was their first exposure to such harrowing tales of schools suffering from benzene pollution; farmlands decimated by drilling wells, trucking, and fracking fluids; and drilling leases goneย awry.

An Energyย Disconnect

As energy production has increasingly shifted across borders, so too has the disconnect between places of energy consumption and those of energyย production.

โ€œThere is a clear โ€˜consumer blindnessโ€™ and citizens and residents are often unaware of where the fuel they consume is coming from and what injustices were inflicted on communities within those sites of fossil fuel extraction,โ€ said Healy. โ€œExposing these injustices of energy โ€˜sacrifice zonesโ€™ โ€” like in La Guajira or Pennsylvania โ€” could be critical for future energy policyย decision-making.โ€

He suggested energy consumers team up with climate and human rights groups. Together, he said, they can call on policymakers to recognize the impacts along a particular energy supply chain when regulators fail to doย so.

Reaching the Paris Agreementโ€™s goals for limiting climate change, however, also means getting off coal and risks perpetuating some of the same injustices as other energy transitions. Healy said the Colombian government should establish plans for what is known as a โ€œjust transitionโ€ โ€” ensuring environmental sustainability along with social and economic justice โ€” for the department of Laย Guajira.

โ€œOtherwise if the mine shuts down tomorrow, a whole region will become stranded,โ€ saidย Healy.

He pointed to Spainโ€™s plans for shuttering its coalย industry.

โ€œThey included early-retirement schemes for miners over 48, environmental restoration in pit communities and re-skilling schemes for new green industries,โ€ he said before proposing who should finance such a transition. โ€œThe close relationship between Cerrejรณn and elected officials meant the mine reaped the benefits of favorable tax breaks. It is clear that Cerrejรณn has benefited most from decades of coal extraction, and it is Cerrejรณn who should be held accountable for reparations for all the damages caused to theย region.โ€

Editor’s note 11/16/18, 12:03 p.m. PST: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Noel Healy’s name. We regret theย error.

Main image: Aย Wayรบu woman makes soup in 2016. According to the Wayรบu, the Cerrejรณn coal mine uses much of the region’s scarceย water, diverting and contaminating the water they need to drink and irrigate their subsistence crops. Credit:ย Nicolรฒ Filippo Rosso, used withย permission

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Itai Vardi is a sociologist and freelance journalist. He lives and works in Boston,ย Massachusetts.

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