We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Monday, September 14, 2015

How Extreme Energy Leads to Extreme Politics

Click here to access article by Aldo Orellana López and Sian Cowman from Foreign Policy in Focus via Uncommon Thought Journal. (I am posting the article this way because I encountered problems with FPIF's website.)
As corporations and governments around the world scramble to access harder-to-reach fossil fuels in fracking wells and tar sands, the struggles of communities on the front lines of this expansion of extractivism are becoming more extreme — and more visible.

And so is the backlash against any who resist.

Indigenous peoples who find themselves “in the way” of extractivist projects are increasingly finding their territorial rights, among others, violated.

A particularly salient example is playing out in Argentina.
This is also happening in Bolivia and Ecuador regarding fossil fuels, and in Honduras and Guatemala (see the latest example here) with metal mining.
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