8.1 Chapter Learning Objectives and Overview
Patricia Halleran; Kimberly Puttman; and Avery Temple
Learning Objectives
After reading this chapter, you will be able to:
- Explain how climate change is a social problem as much as an environmental problem.
- Discuss how colonization contributes to the environmental crisis.
- Compare Indigenous and Western worldviews to explain the climate crisis and offer opportunities for innovative solutions.
- Analyze intersections between race, class, gender, and other social locations to understand the causes and consequences of climate change.
- Assess whether all human groups are equally responsible for causing the climate crisis.
- Evaluate the effectiveness of changes in individual behavior or collective action that support environmental and social justice.
Chapter Overview
I am grateful to the land, to the forces of life that guide me to where I need to be, to my ancestors who have come before me. I know that nothing I do is done alone. I thank my chosen family, my grandmother, and my more-than-human companions who are beside me on this journey.
– Avery Temple
Thank you also to Patricia Halleran, PhD candidate, whose work on documenting the resistance to the Jordan Cove Energy Project formed the foundation of this chapter. May you be well.
– Kim Puttman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZHlQmtV-2k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqPYvT-iM-U
Our exploration of social problems continues with an examination of the ways that members of a community can work together to solve environmental justice issues, as shown in the opening videos in Figure 8.1. In 2005, Native American tribes and other community members throughout Oregon and northern California learned that a Canadian corporation was actively pursuing permits to construct the Jordan Cove Energy Project (JCEP). The JCEP included a large coastal terminal and refinery site and a 229-mile-long pipeline that would pass through tribal, forest, and agricultural lands. This project would cross 400 streams and rivers and six miles of wetlands. Over 600 private landowners would be threatened with eminent domain––the seizing of property normally reserved for projects thought to benefit the public, such as hospitals or roads. The ancestral territories, cultural resources, and burial grounds of five Oregon and three northern California federally recognized tribes would also be threatened. Community members from diverse backgrounds came together. They forged a campaign to stop the project once they learned about the risks it presented to themselves, the environment, and the climate.
Opponents of the JCEP argued that the project would hardly benefit Oregonians economically, considering it would only produce around 250 permanent jobs. They would not benefit from the energy either since nearly all the gas would be shipped to international markets in Asia.
Many residents were concerned about environmental and health risks posed by the JCEP. The risks of placing a pipeline ca