Indigenous Land Management Practices Are Essential To a Healed Environment

By Catelyn Fitgerald ’23

Staff Writer

As wildfires raging across the West Coast have become increasingly common, some states have taken stock of wildfire management practices to determine how to address the threat of major fires. Recent struggles to properly prevent and manage wildfires come as no surprise to Indigenous peoples, whose land management practices were disrupted centuries ago by colonization. 

Native Americans living in what today is California used to uphold a tedious burning regimen where small, controlled fires would be lit to encourage the growth of specific plants. One such tribe is the Karuk Tribe of California, who use knowledge of weather patterns and the local climate to determine when and where to light fires while posing minimal risk to vulnerable habitats and species. Plants that benefit from regular burning are often important elements of Indigenous life and culture. The North Fork Mono Tribe, for example, uses sumac branches as basket weaving material, and the burning of these plants encourages the growth of straight, flexible branches which are ideal for the craft. Reduced vegetation also leads to greater hunting success, as prey are able to move freely through the forest and are more visible to hunters. 

Not only do burns serve practical purposes for Indigenous life, they are also key to the preservation of healthy ecosystems. Regular fires improve soil quality and are a part of the life cycles of some plants for which fire is a key facilitator of reproduction processes such as spore distribution. Cultural burning represents an important part of Indigenous philosophy, which is that humans are a part of how an ecosystem functions and cycles. It follows that the human relationship with the environment should enhance the ecosystems that it benefits from, rather than simply extracting resources from the environment without replenishment. 

Cultural burning was a key part of the relationship between Indigenous peoples and their environment until colonizers arrived and brought with them an impression of fire as an evil entity and a regimen of fire suppression methods. In 1850, cultural burns were criminalized. When controlled burns no longer occurred at the same rate that they once had, flammable plant matter built up throughout forests in the West, causing fires to have the potential to grow quickly and cause extreme damage. Climate change adds to the favorable conditions for large fires as it worsens droughts and causes weather patterns that facilitate the spread of fires. Today, the use of fire suppression remains predominant in land management, but techniques used to fight wildfires, such as the digging of firelines or aerial dispersal of fire retardant, can pollute water resources and permanently alter physical environments. 

As wildfires have grown more intense in recent years, government officials have begun to listen to Indigenous leaders and give tribes increased authority and space to engage in controlled burning. California has recently set a goal to reduce excess vegetation in 500,000 acres of forest, and several tribes are partnering with the U.S. Forest Service and land managers to achieve this through controlled burning. However, there are still barriers to cultural burning practices, as the necessary permits for burning may still be denied on the basis of air quality and liability concerns. Controlled burning also poses greater risks than it did when it was a common practice centuries ago, due to the buildup of plant matter during the practice’s cessation, which makes even small burns potentially harder to control.

Similar efforts by Indigenous peoples to increase cultural burning are gaining traction in Australia. Australia’s 2019-2020 bushfire season began earlier and was more destructive than it had been in past years. By early 2020, 46 million acres had burned, and an estimated three billion animals were killed or displaced during the span of the fires, many of which were endangered species. Indigenous communities were also affected by the fires, facing the loss of homes, community buildings and extensive damage to local ecosystems. 

The history of Indigenous land management in Australia is similar to that of the U.S. Burning  was commonplace among Indigenous people for thousands of years until it was slowly eradicated following Australia’s colonization in 1788. 

While controlled burning is practiced in Australia today, contemporary methods are considered to be ineffective and Indigenous leaders are urging the government to allow them to restore their burning practices and engage in full-time land management. Recently, the New South Wales government formally accepted a recommendation to increase the use of cultural burns in fire prevention and published a report explaining its benefits. 

As climate change is making extreme weather and natural disasters a reality around the world, national governments are beginning to listen to the urging of Indigenous leaders to incorporate cultural burns and other traditional practices into land management. A healed environment necessitates a reciprocal relationship between humans and the environment, and restoring land management practices is just one step towards the acknowledgment that resources must be cared for rather than exploited. Indigenous land management demands that we ask ourselves what we can do to support the plants, animals and ecosystems that support us.

Nasa’s New Tools Could Help Track Forest Fires

by Dnyaneshwari Haware ’23

Staff Writer

Forest fires have become the most prevalent environmental disaster in both North and South America in recent years. Forest fires on the West Coast of the United States and in the Amazon in Brazil have engulfed acres of flora- and fauna-filled land, illustrating the urgent need for a solution. NASA, along with researchers from the University of California Irvine, has observed this phenomenon and developed a new set of fire analysis tools. The Amazon Dashboard fire monitoring tool will help governments, scientists and other parties decipher the types of fires burning, why they are burning and the chances that they will damage rainforests. 

The NASA-developed tool is satellite-driven, web-based and can almost instantly categorize fires as one of the following: deforestation, understory fire, small clearing and agricultural fire or savanna/grassland fire. Made available Aug. 19, 2020, it has been deemed useful in not only spotting fires, but also encouraging governments to enforce policies and observe their effectiveness on controlling fires. 

In July 2020, the government of Brazil announced a 120-day ban on intentionally setting fires in the Amazon. However, the fire analysis tool indicated there was an increase in fires in deforestation hotspots. The primary cause of these fires was not small farmers using methods like slash-and-burn farming, but rather giant blazes raging over large patches of deforested land.

Researchers have found that increased deforestation in the Amazon coupled with rising temperatures leaves behind dry and highly flammable wood. The majority of deforestation fires are intentionally started as part of a larger process to convert forest lands into use for ranching and agricultural activities. Fires starting in these areas spread further as understory fires by burning the leaf litter and other flammable materials on the forest floor of standing Amazon rainforests. This affects the most vulnerable parts of the rainforest that are not generally used to these fires, thus causing long-term damage. Understory fires could be harder to locate and, thus, spread to large areas. However, tools such as the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer are now being used by researchers to get satellite images through which they can spot increased smoke activity and other indicators of deforestation fires. 

Environmental degradation due to prioritizing economic activity in the Amazon has resulted in damage that could be permanent. Technology has provided ways to better understand the sources of fires, but it has also been used to show that the root causes are being ignored. 

Links Between Fossil Fuel Companies and Police Groups

By Siona Ahuja ’24

Staff Writer

A new wave of investigations by the watchdog network LittleSis has revealed that major fossil fuel corporations are responsible for funding police groups in several cities. Corporate giants like Chevron and Exelon are official sponsors for police foundations — entities that provide grants to local police departments and innovate policing through new technology. The funds provided add to the 20-45 percent of municipal discretionary funding that already exists, ranging from $160 million to $5 billion annually.

Chevron is a corporate sponsor for the New Orleans Police Department and also has a position on the board of the Houston Police Foundation. The energy provider Exelon is a notable backer of police foundations in Baltimore, Chicago and Washington.

Wall Street firms that are the top financiers of fossil fuels are also inextricably linked to police foundations. JPMorgan, Chase, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs have all collectively donated millions of dollars to the police.

Since police foundations are nonprofit bodies and the money is raised through galas or benefits, the gargantuan donations they receive often avoid public scrutiny. Reports from the New York Police Foundation state that it raised roughly $5.5 million from its 2019 annual benefit, the deep-pocketed donors including Goldman Sachs and Blackrock, among others. 

Companies which thrive only through extraction and exploitation are openly weaponizing the police and garnering their support in order to protect their interests in the face of community opposition and environmentalists. Oil and gas companies are disproportionately located in minority communities, which contributes to environmental racism. These areas are often overly policed with little surveillance, creating a dangerous intersection of environmental destruction and racism. 

Demographically, Black, brown and low income communities are disproportionately exposed to toxic wastes and pollutants released by petrochemical facilities, smelters, refineries and waste incinerators. Fatemeh Shafiei, director of Environmental Studies at Spelman College, has found evidence to confirm the adverse effects of living in proximity to such facilities. 

Joanne Kilgour, director of the Pennsylvania Chapter of the Sierra Club, told Pittsburgh’s radio station WESA that drilling for oil is primarily done in low-income neighborhoods because residents cannot afford the legal counsel paramount to combating drilling plans. Kilgour also called these neighborhoods the “front lines” of environmental justice.

For the smooth operation of their industries and to eliminate opponents, oil and gas companies have joined hands in support of conservative legislation that seeks to criminalize pipeline protests. Since 2017, several bills have been put forward in at least 18 U.S. states. Texas, the largest oil producing state (4,637,000 barrels produced every day), recently passed a pipeline protest law that came into effect on Sept. 1, 2019. According to this, an activist having “intent to damage or destroy” a pipeline facility or even trespass a “critical infrastructure” can face a third-degree felony charge, equivalent to that of attempted murder. Similarly, any organization having similar intentions is liable to be fined up to $500,000. 

Enraged activists are pushing for action plans to stop this environmental racism as individuals and in groups. They believe that, to change this situation, a change in white supremacacist ideals in both policing and pollution is required. “The road to solving the climate crisis includes addressing connected predatory systems,” Tamara Toles O’Laughlin, the North America director of the collective 350.org, told the Guardian. Stop The Money Pipeline, a collective of over 130 climate, Indigenous and social justice organizations was launched in January 2020. Their recent campaigns target Wall Street and the fossil fuel corporate giants backed by them, and their demands ring of only one message: to halt investment in climate destruction and racial injustice.  

Shining a Light on the Plastic Industry

By Abby Wester ’22

Staff Writer

Plastic is both a central part of our society and a suffocating pollutant to the earth. Almost anything we buy comes wrapped in plastic, we bag our food in plastic and we wear variations of plastic. Not only does plastic end up littering our oceans and neighborhoods, but over 99 percent of it is made from chemicals derived from harmful fossil fuels. By 2015, over 8.3 billion tons of plastic had been produced, roughly equivalent to the weight of one billion elephants or 80 million blue whales. While this commodity has widespread use, there is little public knowledge about where our plastic goes when we toss it. 

We have all been taught the environmentalist slogan “reduce, reuse, recycle.” This slogan is often accompanied by the calming implication that by throwing your plastic water bottle in a recycling bin, you are helping save Mother Earth. However, in 2014, at the peak of annual recycling in the U.S., only 9.5 percent of plastic was actually recycled. Recent investigations by NPR and the PBS series “Frontline” reported that America’s largest oil and gas companies have known all along that recycling plastic would never be a viable alternative to dumping it in landfills. NPR and “Frontline” detailed that, in a 1974 speech, an unnamed industry insider wrote, “There is serious doubt that [recycling plastic] can ever be made viable on an economic basis.” 

While big oil and gas executives learned of the improbability of recycling on a large scale, commercials still aired across the country that, according to NPR, carried the message of “Plastic is special, and the consumer should recycle it.” These commercials were paid for by the same oil and gas companies that knew the industry was doomed to fail, such as Exxon, Chevron, Dow and DuPont. 

For a while, the U.S. was able to hide its growing plastic problem and ineffective recycling programs by dumping plastic waste in other countries, primarily China. But in 2017, China announced a national policy called National Sword to halt the import of recyclable waste from other countries. The U.S. was then forced to reckon with its own plastic addiction. According to The Intercept, after the implementation of National Sword, the U.S. started burning “six times the amount of plastic it’s recycling,” which, in turn, emits toxic chemicals into the atmosphere, including black carbon, which contributes to climate change.  

Other countries, such as Kenya, have implemented groundbreaking plastic bans, looking to limit the polluter. However, the U.S. oil and gas companies have tried to sully these efforts as well. According to a New York Times report, U.S. fossil fuel companies are attempting to lobby Kenya to reverse its plastic ban and continue importing foreign plastic waste. The battle is now between environmentalists in Kenya, the U.S. and abroad and the fossil fuel lobbyists who are backed by the hundred billion dollar industry.

While it is important to limit personal plastic use and continue to recycle plastics when possible, the issue of plastics extends beyond that. The towering oil and gas industry has held environmentalism hostage for decades with the goal of producing plastic, profits and waste.

Weekly Climate News

September 24, 2020

• China recently announced a plan to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, a significant step forward for global climate action. 

• The U.K. is currently developing plans on climate action before U.N. climate talks to be held in Glasgow during the first two weeks of November, but has been challenged by a resurgence of COVID-19 cases. 

• Forest clearance in Indonesia has spiked during the global pandemic as travel restrictions have stopped environmental law enforcement. 

• Arctic sea ice reaches second-lowest ice coverage ever recorded, higher only than measurements from 2012. 

• 1 percent of the world is currently living in hot zones and by 2070, that could increase to 19 percent. Read this article about what this means for the population through an exploration of climate migration.  

• Some U.S. cities are planning “green recoveries” after COVID-19. Read about it here. 

• A newly released book on climate titled “All We can Save” highlights women climate leaders and offers solutions and encouragement. 

• A new data tool by NASA provides near real-time monitoring of forest fires and could  completely change the maintenance of blazes, particularly in the Amazon. 

• BP and other European oil companies have invested billions in the renewable energy sector, while many U.S. companies like Exxon and Chevron commit to fossil fuels. Read this article on why these companies have chosen divergent stances on climate change. 

Quarantine Continues To Impact the Environment in Unprecedented Ways

by Dnyaneshwari Haware ’24

Staff Writer

In March, when most of the world effectively shut down their industries and economies in response to the global pandemic, there was a sense of panic along with a sense of hope as pollution levels across the globe decreased. Many publications and researchers predicted an improvement in air quality, and videos of aquatic life thriving in the canals of Venice, Italy, went viral, alluding to the presence of cleaner water. However, upon closer observation, these positive environmental effects are more complex than they initially appear. 

A modern person’s lifestyle has been designed for consumption. Consumerism has become an integral part of our lifestyles, festivals, celebrations, sorrows and all other displays of emotion. We have personified things to represent factors like class, comfort and luxury. As a species, humans have limited needs. However, under extreme circumstances like the current pandemic, our needs have increased, swallowing some of our previous wants. According to the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, 42 percent of the U.S. labor force was working full-time from home at the end of June, making internet access and other such amenities a necessity. Because of this, the average consumption of electricity has increased. Commercial and industrial sectors were both found to have experienced decreases of 11 percent and 9 percent, respectively. The consumer electronics industry in particular has major environmental implications as electronic waste is often shipped to developing and less developed countries where limited environmental safety regulations are in place for disposal. Although a growth of about 4 percent was predicted from 2019 through 2020, a report found that COVID-19 has hampered the market and slowed consumerism in this sector. 

Consumption isn’t just restricted to the final goods we consume, but also includes waste generated in the production process. As a result of the pandemic, most of the goods people use are now being delivered, and takeout-only options have increased waste products. Environmental consciousness has largely been sidelined in the decision-making process as many prioritize safety, convenience and affordability. 

Katherine Schmeiser, associate professor of economics at Mount Holyoke, shared her experience of having to choose between the environment and her personal safety. She highlighted that, before the pandemic, many stores had tried to establish a way of reducing waste by placing recycling bins in stores. Now, as in-store populations have drastically reduced, most of them have established delivery services in which they are left with no option but to use more packaging, especially for frozen items. There are still some efforts being made on a small scale in many communities to find effective solutions to this problem. Schmeiser mentioned an organization with local Facebook groups called “Buy Nothing” where people collect leftover packaging as one of the few environmentally friendly options left. Apart from this, a few e-commerce businesses are choosing biodegradable or plant-based packaging, but that makes up a very small percentage of the entire industry. 

This increase in the consumption of electricity, protective gear and essential items is further burdening an already sensitive ecosystem. Large corporations partaking in the encouragement and supply of this consumerism — as well as the lack of enforcement when it comes to policies regarding the conservation and preservation of the environment — are also to blame for the changes climate scientists are beginning to observe.

The Sierra Club Recognizes Its Racist Roots

by Abby Wester ’22

Staff Writer

This summer saw a widespread racial reckoning across the United States in the wake of protests sparked by the police murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade and countless other Black Americans. Systemic racism became a prominent topic of conversation in many industries, causing companies, organizations and movements to evaluate their own past and present contributions to upholding racism. This reckoning and reflection was not absent in the environmental movement. The Sierra Club, an America-based environmental organization, was the most noteworthy group to recognize the racism of their founder and “Father of National Parks” John Muir.

Muir was a Scottish-American conservationist who lived from 1838-1914. He spent years traveling the world and studying the environment, writing articles about his findings, which eventually garnered a following. He played an instrumental role in establishing many of the first national parks, such as Yosemite National Park, Sequoia and Mount Rainier. In 1892, Muir and some of his followers founded the Sierra Club with the goal of encouraging Americans to explore and protect nature. 

However, like many of his fellow conservationists of the time, Muir spewed racism and anti-Indigenous comments in his writings and upheld a white supremacist view of the United States. While he worshipped nature and all of the creatures around him, he still considered Native Americans “subhuman” and often referred to them derogatorily. Muir was closely associated with advocates for the eugenics movement, such as Henry Fairfield Osborn, Joseph LeConte and David Starr Jordan. 

On July 22, 2020, executive director of the Sierra Club Michael Brune posted an article to the organization’s website titled “Pulling Down Our Monuments.” In this article, he discussed the racist rhetoric of Muir and other initial members, acknowledged the historic exclusion of people who were not upper or middle class and white, and made a commitment to be more inclusive of BIPOC. He stated that the organization was “redesigning [its] leadership structure” to allow more organizational decisions to be made by BIPOC, as well as investing $5 million in staff of color and their efforts to tackle environmental and racial justice issues. The Sierra Club has also stated they will spend the next year analyzing their history as well as determining which monuments need to be renamed or taken down entirely.

This apology was the first step in recognizing the exclusivity that has characterized the Sierra Club since its origins.

Climate Education Is Changing, but Lacks Uniformity

by Helen Gloege ’23

Staff Writer

Between rampant fires up and down the West Coast and record-breaking heat across the Northern Hemisphere, the disastrous effects of climate change have been becoming more obvious. A poll by NPR confirmed that 80 percent of U.S. parents and 86 percent of U.S. teachers think climate change should be taught in schools, showing a quantifiably large portion of the population acknowledging the importance of climate change. However, many teachers don’t talk about climate change in classrooms and few parents or guardians discuss it with their children at home.  

Teachers face a multitude of obstacles when it comes to teaching about climate change in classrooms, including possible lack of resources, funding, connection to the subject they teach and support from their school districts. In the United States, it is up to individual schools, school districts and teachers to determine whether they will teach about human caused climate change. These issues, compounded with concerns about the reactions of parents and the political jargon that often surrounds climate change, dissuade other teachers from discussing it in their classrooms. In addition, many teachers themselves may not have learned about climate change when they were in school and may feel ill-equipped to talk about it in their own classrooms.  

Despite the struggles that teachers are facing, there have been several attempts to mandate and strengthen human-caused climate change programs. Since 2013, 19 states and the District of Columbia have adopted the Next Generation Science Standards that strengthen the science education students receive, including teaching human-caused climate change starting in middle school. The Next Generation Science Standards aim to build a comprehensive understanding of science over time and enable educators to create future generations of scientifically literate students. 

Some individual states have gone beyond science education with a focus on specifically climate change based programs. In Washington, a multimillion dollar budget for K-12 science education with an emphasis on climate science was passed in 2017. The result was ClimeTime, which funds training for teachers as well as projects and events that connect public school teachers with environmental organizations in their communities. Within the first year of implementation, about 10 percent of public school teachers in Washington took advantage of the program. The teachers who attended these seminars and trainings said they felt better equipped to teach their students about the topic. This year, the National Center for Science Education compiled 18 pieces of legislation across 10 states focused on climate change education. The bills would increase the amount of climate change, sustainability and environmental science concepts taught in public schools. So far, nine of the 18 bills have died while most others are pending.

Outside of the U.S. education system, other countries are also beginning to tackle climate change education in the classroom setting. Cambodia is leading climate change education in Asia. Cambodian schools are allowing students to become part of the effort to find solutions to climate change. In New Zealand, starting this year, every student will have access to materials about climate change written by the country’s leading science agencies. The program will be offered to all schools that teach 11- to 15-year-old students but won’t be compulsory. On June 17, 2020, a Mexican senator, Clemente Castañeda Hoeflich, presented an initiative that proposes strengthening education on environmental protection and climate change in schools. It encourages students to change their attitudes and behaviors towards protecting natural resources. The Italian government announced that, starting this year, they will become the world’s first country to institute a mandatory course on climate change and sustainable development in all public schools. 

In the international framework, the One U.N. Climate Change Learning Partnership (also known as U.N. CC:Learn) is a collaborative learning platform launched by the United Nations with the involvement of 36 multilateral organizations. Its aim is to help countries achieve climate action through climate literacy and applied skills development. The e-learning platform is the single largest dedicated platform on climate change, with a specific focus on developing countries’ needs. The programs are aligned with nationally determined contributions and the National Adaptation Plan, both of which are part of the Paris Agreement.

Students currently at Mount Holyoke are at the age where the climate crisis was taught as “global warming” throughout K-12 education, if taught at all. With or without a formal classroom education on the topic, students can still imagine what climate change education could look like. 

Acadia Ferrero-Lampron ’23 suggests a more science-based approach with projects and experiments that might highlight concepts or through visuals like documentaries. “[It could be] incorporated into a government class and discussion[s] about laws and polic[ies] that should be made,” said Samantha Pittman ’23. “Once you know what’s happening you can … contact your representatives.” 

Many students have learned about climate change through environmental studies classes or specific Advanced Placement courses. “Environmental science felt like one of the most relevant courses that I took in high school,” said Ellen Switchenko ’23. “Everything we learned was so pertinent as to what’s happening in the real world.” 

Teaching climate change in schools is essential to prepare students for their future of reversing climate change. While we may not know what climate change education looks like at the moment, there is a movement to make sure that students know that climate change exists.