Canada’s green-energy dams enable larger industrial destruction

Evidence

Ironically, Canada uses its big dam projects and hydro-electric power plants as proof of its commitment to stemming global warming. Yet it skirts the actual price of this resource-intensive development policy, particularly in Nitassinan. First, consider that because of the dam’s resultant flooding, Newfoundland will allow clearcutting of trees in the water’s path, then additional pulp and paper mill capacity will be added to accommodate the new boom in logging. Then consider that INCO’s Sudbury smelter is presently the single largest source of acid rain–causing emissions in the western world. The Voisey’s Bay smelter, powered by the dams, will exceed the Sudbury smelter and will be located directly over the famed Grand Banks, once considered one of the world’s richest fisheries. — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations, 371

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: The false-green-energy accounting (environmental cost displaced onto Indigenous land) parallels the earlier chapter’s finding that Canada dismissed Innu harm observations while touting clean hydro — a climate-justice inversion worth tracing.
• recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source
• XREF: connects to: Drowned spruce forests leached mercury contaminating 37 percent of surveyed Innu — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for…, 337; Cheap hydro power from new dams lured the corporations that poisoned the river — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for…, 96; Construction of dams was actually destruction of ecosystems

Broader Connections

• Construction of dams was actually destruction of ecosystems #corroborates (0.85)