{"id":40638,"date":"2018-11-17T09:52:10","date_gmt":"2018-11-17T14:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=40638"},"modified":"2018-11-17T09:52:10","modified_gmt":"2018-11-17T14:52:10","slug":"what-terrible-injustices-are-hiding-behind-american-energy-habits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=40638","title":{"rendered":"What Terrible Injustices Are Hiding Behind American Energy Habits?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 id=\"page-title\" class=\"page__title title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/2018\/11\/16\/injustices-hiding-energy-habits-cerrejon-coal-fracking\">What Terrible Injustices Are Hiding Behind American Energy Habits?<\/a><\/h3>\n<article class=\"node-13310 node node-blog node-promoted view-mode-full clearfix\">\n<div class=\"field field-name-field-bimage field-type-image field-label-hidden\">\n<div class=\"field-items\">\n<div class=\"field-item even\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/sites\/beta.desmogblog.com\/files\/styles\/full_width_blog_image\/public\/blogimages\/wayuu-woman-soup-dog_credit-Nicolo%CC%80-Filippo-Rosso.jpg?itok=gO3tOJvq\" alt=\"Wayuu woman makes soup in La Guajira, Colombia\" width=\"826\" height=\"551\" \/><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"new-horizontal-social-bar clearfix\">\n<div class=\"new-horizontal-share-wrapper new-horizontal-fb-wrapper clearfix\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"new-horizontal-share-wrapper new-horizontal-email-wrapper clearfix last\">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 from\u00a0view?<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden\">\n<div class=\"field-items\">\n<div class=\"field-item even\">\n<p>New research helps provide some clarity. <a href=\"https:\/\/reader.elsevier.com\/reader\/sd\/pii\/S2214629618306698?token=641A8A9DAFAA512FE6D1FD525AE497B226B200AD0F2BEF28887A9DA9BF82562E6AEF6C986C8525F4B6200E403DA25EB0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">A study led by<\/a> Noel Healy from Salem State University in Massachusetts analyzes the hidden but interconnected injustices that can occur throughout the world\u2019s fossil fuel supply\u00a0chains.<\/p>\n<p>The research project spanned three sites: a power plant in Salem, Massachusetts, recently decommissioned and converted from coal-fired to natural gas; the Cerrej\u00f3n 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 in\u00a0Salem.<\/p>\n<p><strong>A Coal Mine\u2019s\u00a0Impacts<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Healy and his colleagues Jennie Stephens from Northeastern University and Stephanie Malin from Colorado State University reveal what they call \u201cinterlinked chains of injustices,\u201d or how local energy decision-making in one region generates social and environmental injustices in other, distant\u00a0ones.<\/p>\n<p>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 mine\u2019s operations have been linked to widespread pollution from coal dust and the destruction of fishing and hunting grounds, leaving La Guajira plagued by food\u00a0insecurity.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"dquo\">\u201c<\/span>Some villages were bulldozed, communities forcibly removed, like the Afro-Colombian community of Tabaco,\u201d said Healy, who has conducted research surrounding\u00a0the\u00a0Cerrej\u00f3n mine. \u201cOthers were displaced via the \u2018slow violence\u2019 of contaminated farmland and drinking\u00a0water.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What Terrible Injustices Are Hiding Behind American Energy Habits? 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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[5317,23039,328,11577,23040,643],"class_list":["post-40638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-environment","tag-desmog-blog","tag-energy-habits","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-itai-vardi","tag-noel-healy","tag-power"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40638"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40639,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40638\/revisions\/40639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}