Yuchi: F’as@^.
English: Good afternoon.
I come from the Yuchi
and Anishinaabe nations.
My home is in Oklahoma.
I have been a community organizer
for Indigenous rights,
environmental justice and climate justice
for more than 30 years.
I don't believe that I'm old enough
to do anything for that long,
but here I am.
(Applause)
I'm an Indigenous woman who lives
in the heart of oil and gas country.
And what that means for me
is that I am in a constant state
of thinking about the environment
and climate change.
And so I want to share
a few things that I know
and have learned
along the way in my work.
One is,
we cannot rely on those
who created the problem to fix it.
(Applause)
Two, we need to move with an urgency
that is not happening now.
And three,
we need leaders
who are experiencing the harm
to be the ones coming up
with the solutions.
So it is clear that world leaders
are looking for solutions
to this climate crisis,
but they are looking for them
through a lens of the economy.
And so that means they are moving
with a casualness
that doesn't make it seem
like there's a real emergency.
And they’re also being sold, then,
solutions that are basically band-aids
and not actual cures to the problem.
They're being sold techno fixes
and market schemes
that really maintain business as usual.
And instead,
we need to be thinking
about what could be different.
So I was recently at the United Nations
Conference on Climate Change, COP26,
that just happened in Glasgow, Scotland,
just this past month.
And it was apparent to me
that those who created the agenda
are also part of the problem.
First of all,
they created an admittance policy
that was really a policy of exclusion
for many grassroots communities
across the world
and especially those of the global south.
That policy also ensured
that the largest badge delegation at COP
were fossil fuel lobbyists.
Can you believe that?
Actually, I can,
because this has been sort of the norm
at COP since its beginning.
Which is why we need a shift
in who are the leaders
that they're listening to.
And the shift in leadership
are coming up with the solutions.
We need the knowledge and expertise
of those at the frontline.
And by frontline
I mean, those communities and peoples
who are experiencing climate change today
and some who have been experiencing
the harmful effects of climate change
for decades now.
Those are the frontline leaders
that we need to be looking to
for their expertise.
So I want you to imagine with me,
if at that negotiating table at COP,
if those who were dealing
with the actual harms today
were in that room
and negotiating the solutions.
What if the people who have been
living sustainable lifestyles
and in relationship with the land
had been some of those folks
in the room making those decisions?
What would it have been like
if grassroots leaders had been given
significant participation
in those negotiations?
What would be different?
Well, first off,
this global climate conference
would not have led with net-zero
as the solution to this
climate crisis we're in.
Net-zero -- not actually eliminating
greenhouse gas emissions --
but net-zero being a sort of greenwashing
of business as usual.
It basically means that you can
wash your hands of pollution
in one community
if you can afford to participate
in a few offset programs.
So, for example,
you can invest in the continued existence
of a forest in South America,
of Indigenous peoples in their lands
that should capture carbon.
What it means then, you are, in theory,
obligated from the harm
that you've caused a pollution
at a facility in another
low-income community --
and very likely community of color --
in another part of the world.
That's just wrong.
And it just doesn't work.
I mean, I know people, real people,
I know their names and their families
on both ends of the spectrum,
of the net-zero spectrum.
I know people who live at the fence line
of harmful oil refineries
who are polluting their communities,
and I know the Indigenous people
who are farming the forests in Brazil.
And neither of those communities
are benefiting from these programs
in ways that are building empowerment
for their communities
and building sustainability
for their communities,
and they're often pressured
into these programs
with little or no choice.
So I want to try to explain
net-zero a little bit differently
in a way that might be
a little more tangible.
If you think about it as, kind of,
like the net part of your paycheck.
You get a job, you negotiate a pay
and you feel really excited about that.
But on that first day, that first payday,
you feel the crunch of it's a lot less
than you thought it was going to be.
And it's the same with the net-zero
emission targets, right?
It sounds good on the front end,
but when it all comes out in the wash,
it's much less than what
we need to have happen
to impact real significant
change right now.
So what we need is a shift in leadership.
We need leaders who are moving
with the urgency
that people are feeling harm
and hurt today.
And we need leaders who are moving
with the values about community
and about the land
and the relationship with land.
Those are the kind of leaders that we need
to have leading with the solutions
and the negotiations of addressing
this problem on a worldwide level.
So that kind of leadership,
if we just shifted those two things
about urgency and values,
that would help all of us worldwide.
Because what we need
is a set of leadership
that is going to do the work
that we need to have done,
which is to move away from dirty,
extractive, harmful energy
to solutions that are local,
community-based, community-held,
regenerative energy models.
And they exist.
They exist in communities
where people are saying,
"Hey, if the government
is not going to help us,
we’re going to do
what we need to do right now.”
And they are doing these projects
in their communities.
So instead of investing
in a carbon capture project
that aims to put carbon
pollution into the ground,
a technology that's not been
proven to really work
and still puts communities at harm
because it relies on the continued
existence and construction
of harmful pipelines that are dangerous,
prone to leaks and even
explosions sometimes.
And so --
But these community projects
are happening and they're having success,
and I want to share a few with you.
So in Richmond, California --
between two cities
and next to a major Chevron oil refinery
that is spewing out greenhouse gases
and other toxic chemicals
into the neighborhood --
community leaders worked
with community organizations
like Asian Pacific Environmental Network,
Rich City Rides, Urban Tilth
and Communities for a Better Environment.
And they took on Chevron
to hold them accountable and won.
And won resources to build
a solar farm in their community.
They also built a bike co-op
to encourage young people
and others to bike in the city
and built community gardens
to grow healthy organic food
for themselves and schools.
(Applause)
In rural Kentucky, a community,
a rural community who has long relied
on coal to fuel their community,
they've been organizing with Kentuckians
for the Commonwealth
and also created a solar project
that is helping low-income families
reduce their utility costs
and created thousands of jobs.
In the Four Corners area of Arizona,
Native Renewables,
a woman-led Navajo Hopi organization
is providing electricity
from solar to off-grid homes.
A community that has long been harmed
by the devastating effects
of fossil fuel extraction,
is now able to rely on an energy source
that is clean and Indigenous-led.
(Applause)
After hurricane Maria devastated
the islands of Puerto Rico,
Organización Boricuá worked
with local farmers
to provide direct and immediate
support to those communities
by providing water, shelter,
health, food,
the weekly agro ecological
brigades and solidarity brigades,
and they rebuilt homes
and rebuilt farming infrastructure
to make sure that they maintained
food sovereignty.
In Brooklyn, New York,
in a highly industrial
neighborhood of Sunset Park,
the community organization UPROSE
helped lead an effort
to create a solar farm,
a first community solar co-op
in the state of New York.
It is an 80,000 square foot
rooftop solar garden
that again is providing
affordable energy to the neighborhood
and to small businesses as well.
The fight against the Line 3 pipeline
in Minnesota and other states
has highlighted the amount of water
that those types of projects have used.
And it's caused a threat
to the natural wild rice
that grows in the lakes there.
And so community people
have worked to hold state
and federal agencies accountable
for water standards
in order to protect
their cultural preservation
and the wild rice.
And in New Jersey,
Ironbound Community Corporation,
along with the New Jersey
Environmental Justice Alliance,
has helped push legislation
that has enabled the state
to deny permits,
any new permits, to already
overburdened, overpolluted neighborhoods.
And it's set a standard
for other states to use,
which has become a historic environmental
justice legislation for the country.
These are the kinds of solutions
that we need to see happen.
These are the kind of leadership
that we need to see happen,
and we need these solutions happening
by the thousands nationwide
and even globally.
Because these solutions
are not only attacking
the emissions at their source,
but they're doing it by providing jobs
and wages and policies
that are addressing racism
and colonialism and economic inequity.
This is the kind of leadership we need.
We need this dramatic
shift to help us all.
This dramatic shift in leadership.
Just these two things:
The urgency in which we move
and the values on which we move with.
My grandmothers taught me
that we need to have care,
responsibility and action
when it comes to our community.
And those are the kind of leaders
that we need leading this fight.
And if we are going to be serious
about addressing this climate crisis,
here are the steps
that I need people to do.
I need you to bring frontline leaders
into those negotiating spaces.
Bring them in.
Ask them what's happening
and the harms that are happening.
Ask them what needs to be done.
And listen, hear them.
And then invest and implement
in exactly what they said
in the exact ways they said to do it,
because those changes are the changes
that are going to stop the problems
that we're having
and then stop the acceleration
of the climate crisis.
And it's going to help slow down
the violence of the storms
and the sicknesses
that people are dealing with,
with conditions like asthma and others.
And it's going to stop, you know,
the continued drought and wildfires.
Those are the solutions
that we need to have happen.
And I need you all to help carry,
not only the ask to shift that
for our communities,
but also those values.
So I ask you, I invite you
to join me in this,
and I challenge you to go out
and challenge our elected
leaders and others.
And if they're not doing the right job,
then tell them who the leaders are
that need to be there.
We need frontline leaders
to be in the spaces.
Thank you.
(Applause)