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Date: March 15, 2021 at 19:09:11
From: ryan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Senate confirms Haaland to lead Interior |
URL: https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/543227-senate-confirms-haaland-to-lead-interior |
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Senate confirms Haaland to lead Interior
By Rachel Frazin - 03/15/21 06:20 PM EDT
The Senate on Monday voted to confirm Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.) to lead the Interior Department, making her the nation’s first Native American Cabinet secretary.
The Senate voted 51-40 to confirm Haaland. Nine members missed the vote.
GOP Sens. Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Dan Sullivan (Alaska), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Susan Collins (Maine) backed Haaland along with the Democrats in attendance.
In a tweet, Haaland thanked the Senate for confirming her.
"As Secretary of @Interior, I look forward to collaborating with all [of] you. I am ready to serve. #BeFierce," she wrote.
Haaland’s opposition to a controversial method of fossil fuel extraction called fracking, participation in a protest against the Dakota Access pipeline and support for the Green New Deal have made her a favorite among progressives but drawn ire from some Republicans.
GOP Sens. Steve Daines (Mont.) and Cynthia Lummis (Wyo.) had placed holds on her nomination, with Daines invoking Haaland's positions on pipelines and fossil fuels and Lummis invoking President Biden's pause on new leasing for oil and gas development on federal lands.
During her confirmation hearing, Daines specifically pressed Haaland on her stances on fracking and pipelines in general and particularly Biden's decision to revoke a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline as well as his leasing suspension.
Haaland’s supporters touted the historic nature of her confirmation and the importance of having a Native American at the helm of an agency with significant responsibility to the country’s 574 federally recognized tribes.
"Before America's public lands were America's public lands, they were Native American lands, and Deb Haaland will be the first Native American to serve in any president's Cabinet and the first to serve as the secretary of this department, so that's kind of a wonderful harmony with history," said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) in a speech ahead of the vote.
The U.S. has had a Native American vice president, Charles Curtis, who served from 1929 to 1933, but has never had an Indigenous Cabinet secretary.
Haaland also sought to persuade critics that she would play a different role as Interior secretary, saying that energy from fossil fuels “does and will continue to play a major role in America for years to come” while stressing the need to find a “balance” between fossil fuels and fighting climate change.
She said that the president’s pause on leasing publicly owned lands and waters for oil and gas development would not be a “permanent thing.”
Facing questions about her stances on pipelines and fracking, Haaland said that she would be tasked with implementing Biden’s agenda, not her own.
Biden has said that he will not ban fracking and does not support the Green New Deal.
After the vote, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), another vocal opponent of the confirmation, said in a statement that Haaland's views are "extreme."
"Representative Haaland’s extreme policy views, lack of substantive answers during the confirmation process, and full support for President Biden’s war on American energy disqualify her for the job of Interior Secretary,” he said. “Her views on American energy fly in the face of the mission of the Department of the Interior."
Ahead of the vote, Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Susan Collins (Maine) said they would support Haaland’s nomination, while Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and Sullivan signaled possible support when they backed Haaland during a procedural vote last week.
Murkowski and Collins noted when they announced their support for Haaland that they don’t agree with her on every issue, but they have brought up matters such as her support for bipartisan conservation legislation and the historic significance of her confirmation.
Murkowski told pool reporters Monday that she still had some doubts.
"I wish that I could say, 'yes, I've got every degree of confidence.' I don't so my obligation is to make sure I am on top of this all the time," she said.
But the Alaska Republican also discussed the history being made.
"It was significant that you have a Native American woman who will be in a position really oversee, if you will, those lands that are part of their homeland," she said. "There is clearly that sense of pride, but as important as that is, it is more important that a woman who has achieved this historic position then lives up to it."
Sullivan, meanwhile, released a statement calling the vote one of the "most difficult I have made during my time in the U.S. Senate" but said he felt he could better advocate for Alaskans at the Interior Department if he voted to confirm Haaland.
"Our state’s economy and our working families are under pressure, stress and assault due to the pandemic and the Biden administration’s initial hostile actions against Alaska and our resource development sector," Sullivan said." I believe that my vote to confirm Congresswoman Haaland as Secretary of the Interior may enhance my ability to successfully advocate for a ceasefire in the Biden administration’s war on the Alaska economy and working families. "
Haaland is expected to play a key role in Biden’s efforts to have the United States reach carbon neutrality by 2050 and in conserving a total of 30 percent of the country’s lands and waters by 2030.
Haaland, asked during her confirmation hearing whether the “30 by 30” effort would seek to conserve all lands or just those that are federally owned, said the initiative would be “not just relegated to public lands.”
The Center for American Progress, a left-wing think tank, estimated in 2018 that the country had conserved 12 percent of its lands.
During her confirmation hearing, Haaland said her priorities will include promoting clean energy and clean energy jobs, increasing access to broadband internet in Native American communities, and dealing with missing and murdered indigenous women.
She also stressed opportunities for jobs related to taking care of abandoned mines and plugging orphaned gas wells as well as Biden’s pledge to create a Civilian Climate Corps, which would create jobs conserving public lands and increasing reforestation.
“I believe there are millions of jobs in a clean energy future for Americans, and if I’m confirmed, I’d be honored to help the president move those forward,” she said at the time.
Haaland was first elected to Congress in 2018 and was one of the two first Native American congresswomen. Representing New Mexico’s 1st District, she also served as vice chairwoman of the Natural Resources Committee and chaired its Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands.
"As former vice chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, Deb Haaland also brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to her role as Interior secretary," said Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) in a floor speech on Monday. "But of all of the qualifications and accomplishments that Deb Haaland will bring to the Department of Interior, there's one that stands out to those who know her best: her empathy."
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Date: March 19, 2021 at 10:29:24
From: ryan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Senate confirms Haaland to lead Interior |
URL: https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/03/19/deb-haaland-growing-up-ecologically/ |
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March 19, 2021
Deb Haaland: Growing up Ecologically
by Robert Koehler
Is it possible that the country is truly rebuilding itself . . . from the soul up?
Deb Haaland has been confirmed as head of the Department of the Interior. A Native American congresswoman and, as she describes herself, 35th-generation New Mexican, has been given the reins of the department that has essentially been at war, not simply with her people but with the planet itself and, therefore, all of us, pretty much since its inception. That is to say, the department’s values are those the European colonialists brought with them to the new continent: steal the land from those who live there, then proceed to exploit it.
The Department of the Interior manages nearly 500 million acres of public lands and coastal waters, approximately one-fifth of all land in the U.S. “The extraction and use of fossil fuels from those public lands account for about one-quarter of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions,” according to NPR.
Haaland brings a different set of values, and a different understanding of Planet Earth, into the game.
“The department has a role in harnessing the clean energy potential of our public lands to create jobs and new economic opportunities,” she said during her confirmation hearing, adding that “America’s public lands can and should be engines for clean energy production.”
In other words, she comes into her new job representing interests other than corporate ones. That doesn’t mean corporate political clout or the power of money have suddenly vanished from government, but rather that a different sort of voice is now present as well, and no longer marginalized. Haaland’s appointment transcends mere “historical significance.” Her presence — so millions of people want to believe — is a step toward profound change: Perhaps the United States has begun to grow up ecologically.
When Haaland’s nomination was announced in December, Simon Moya-Smith, an Oglala Sioux, wrote at NBC News: “A new scintilla of hope has bloomed among us in part because Haaland, like millions of Indigenous peoples, strongly believes in and practices the Seven Generation rule. The rule says that all significant decisions must be made with the next seven generations in mind, and includes preserving and protecting the water, the earth and the two leggeds and the four leggeds for people you will never meet — at least in this life. . . .
“Native Americans have survived 528 years of violence, racism, hatred and even genocide on this land. Prompted by bigotry and shame, America has sought to keep Native Americans as relics of its past rather than welcoming us into its present and allowing us to help lead this country into a shared future.”
Is this what has changed? Has the nation opened itself to a larger wisdom? If so, there will be plenty of pushback against it from the fossil fuel industry. Deb Haaland was definitely not their choice. In the past, decisions involving tribal lands have usually been made with minimal, or no, tribal consultation, which is one reason many Native peoples pushed Joe Biden to counter the corporate status quo in his choice for interior secretary.
One Haaland supporter is the Yurok Tribe of Northern California, whose life and livelihood has been connected to the Klamath River and its salmon population. Government decisions over the past several decades — in particular, the establishment of a huge system of dams and irrigation canals called the Klamath Irrigation Project — have drained, warmed and, good God, poisoned the river, killing many of its salmon. The tribe has been struggling with the federal government for years to save the river.
Salmon have been the center of the tribe’s culture and economy “since time immemorial,” according to Martin Do Nascimento at Earthjustice. “But in recent decades, the river’s salmon population has plummeted.”
In recent years the Klamath River has gotten polluted with algae that releases deadly toxins when it dies. “The cause of the deadly algae,” Nascimento writes, “is well known: large-scale agricultural runoff combining with unnaturally warm water. And recent decades have turned the Klamath River, once one of the highest salmon-producing rivers on the West Coast, into a breeding ground for the toxic gunk.”
The Irrigation Project causing the devastation is upstream from the Yurok, in the Klamath Basin. It consists of “more than 700 miles of canals, seven dams, and 28 pumping stations . . . (and) annually drains as much as half of the water from the Klamath River.
“The lower the river gets, the harder it is for adult salmon fish to make their way upstream to spawn, and the warmer the water running in the river becomes.”
The purpose of the Irrigation Project is to make it easier for farmers in the Klamath Basin area to irrigate crops “in a climate that otherwise couldn’t support the production.”
What all this sounds like is more of the same. While the farmers being supported by the Irrigation Project — the first dam of which was constructed in 1906 — have a point of view in this as well, it’s pretty clear the project was approved and developed by the federal government with zero concern for the Yurok point of view, or for that matter, for the river itself and its salmon. This was just another example of white guys exploiting the environment for their immediate benefit, with no attention given to the possible consequences.
Indeed, as Nascimento points out, the Yurok have been fighting to protect their way of life for centuries. Back in the California Gold Rush days, the unregulated mining and logging operations also decimated the river’s salmon population. By the 1850s, three-quarters of the Yurok tribe members had been killed either by disease or violent conflict with the settlers.
I don’t remember that being taught to me in my history classes.
It’s definitely time for an enormous shift in the consciousness of those who see themselves as exceptional and believe they’re in charge of the planet. Environmental exploitation has profound consequences. No one is going to survive if we don’t begin sharing the future.
Robert Koehler is a Chicago award-winning journalist and editor.
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