Breaking Green

When Arctic Climate "Solutions" Become Colonial Experiments with Panganga Pungowiyi

• Global Justice Ecology Project / Host Steve Taylor • Season 5 • Episode 4

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Panganga Pungowiyi, an Indigenous mother and climate geoengineering organizer from Sibokuk in the Dena'ina Islands, shares her community's historical trauma and resistance against experimental climate technologies deployed without consent. Her powerful testimony reveals how colonial patterns of exploitation continue today through geoengineering experiments that ignore Indigenous sovereignty and knowledge systems.

• Military contamination during the Cold War left lasting environmental damage and health impacts including cancer and Parkinson's disease
• Climate geoengineering experiments are being conducted in Indigenous territories without free, prior and informed consent
• Researchers spread silica beads on Arctic ice 
• Carbon capture technologies primarily benefit fossil fuel companies through enhanced oil recovery rather than addressing climate change
• Indigenous cosmovision views humans as part of nature, not above it, making ecosystem manipulation fundamentally problematic
• Outside researchers fail to understand Arctic ecosystems, where ice movement and marine life cycles would be disrupted by interventions
• True climate solutions require addressing oppression and restoring Indigenous rights rather than technological quick-fixes

Text GIVE to 17162574187 to support Breaking Green's work lifting up the voices of those protecting forests, defending human rights and exposing false solutions.


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Steve Taylor:

Welcome to Breaking Green, a podcast by Global Justice Ecology Project. On Breaking Green, we will talk with activists and experts to examine the intertwined issues of social, ecological and economic injustice. We will also explore some of the more outrageous proposals to address climate and environmental crises that are falsely being sold as green. I am your host, steve Taylor. Throughout United States history, indigenous and minority populations have been experimented on without informed or prior consent. Now, the threat of global climate change and the proposal for false solutions presents a repeat of history, and the Proposal for False Solutions presents a repeat of history. In this episode of Breaking Green, we will talk with Panganga Pangoui, an indigenous mother from Sibokuk, located in the Dena'ina Islands in so-called Anchorage, alaska.

Steve Taylor:

Panganga has been involved in many grassroots efforts seeking justice for indigenous peoples, including efforts to protect lands and water from extractive industry. Social justice and healing are recurrent themes within Panganga's personal and professional life. Panganga has spent many years developing and hosting communal healing spaces for historical trauma and, most recently, training as a tribal healer in the so-called Bering Strait region. And most recently training as a tribal healer in the so-called Bering Strait region. Panganga currently serves as the climate geoengineering organizer for the Indigenous Environmental Network Panganga. Welcome to Breaking Green, hi thanks. So thank you so much for joining us on Breaking Green. Joining us on Breaking Green. I've been reading about your work and your contributions in the field of geoengineering and criticizing and analyzing what's going on with that, but could you tell us a little bit about yourself, your heritage and what brings you to this?

Panganga Pungowiyi:

Sure, so I'm a person who is a person who Lawrence Island, or what we call Sipuokok, and we call ourselves the Sipuokok Hipik people. That's the name of our island and then that's also the name of one of the original villages that is still standing. We actually used to have, you know, around 20 communities on the island. Up to like 14,000 to 20,000 people were on the island, where, on the island, one community had about 4,000 people, which is equivalent to the population in Nome. And through history we've faced waves of colonization and other challenges associated with colonization that have depleted our population. So out of those 20, estimated 20 villages, just one was remaining and that's Sivuruk, or Gamble, and then the sister community on the island, now Sivunga that's where I'm from or Sivunguk, and that was actually created a little over 100 years ago through the introduction of reindeer from Sheldon Jackson. This was after. So I'll talk a little bit about the challenges, if that's okay. Sure, I would love to.

Panganga Pungowiyi:

Sailors came from Europe. They were looking for, you know, the oil that was used for perfume and fuel, and they were looking for the baleen, which was used in, like writing crops and corsets, those big hoops that you think about in the 1800s in people's skirts. So they came and they completely decimated our marine mammal population. And around the same time Krakatoa erupted and it caused a plume that was so great that it caused two years of straight winter in Alaska. The decimation of the whale population and the collapse of the marine ecosystem, coupled with that volcanic eruption, caused mass starvation on our island. So that, and then what is referred to as the great deaths, you know the introduction of childhood diseases, or what we refer to as childhood diseases measles, mumps. My great grandmother, who I'm named after, she cared for people who were suffering from German measles and she continued caring for people and then became sick herself and lost her eyesight, and so through those challenges we lost about 99% of our population.

Panganga Pungowiyi:

And we have relations over in Siberia, or what's called Siberia, who are of the same culture, we have the same language, so some of our relations from over there came and helped repopulate the island. They were also suffering famine over there as well, but our island was known for its abundance and its great health, and so they came and helped restore some of our population, and so we were recovering from that. And then the Cold War came and of course we have direct relatives over in Siberia and those relationships were strained or like difficult to maintain during that time, during that time, and it was at this time where they built two defense sites on our island, one at the northeast cape of our island and one near Sivokok, one of the original villages. And they built those bases under the agreement that they would not pollute the Suqui River. And the Suqui River on Northeast Cape was known for its abundance of seals, which are very important to being able to maintain our health and our well-being, and it was full of fish, full of dolly vardens and other species of fish. That drew hundreds thousands of seals, is what I hear. But they polluted that river, so of course the seals are gone, and then the fish were also wiped out.

Panganga Pungowiyi:

And then, when it was time for the military to leave, they didn't want the base usable, and so the soldiers were instructed to take their back heavy metals, solvents, the types of pesticides that they used. They spilled everything out on the land intentionally before they left, and they did the same over in Gamble, except over in Gamble or Sivokov. They buried the contaminants where the community is built, and so there are homes built on those contaminated sites, the school is built on the contaminated site and the health problems you know, like the, it's like not a question of if you're going to get cancer. It's when my grandfather was diagnosed with Parkinson's in his 40s and it's like there was a community out at Northeast Cape as well, and that community is displaced. Of course, we have homes in Savunga and Gamble, but there were a lot of families who had built their homes up there as well, and a lot of people want to go home, they want to go back to, you know, where we were thriving. And then you know, this military era also brought a wave of experimentation. And then, you know, this military era also brought a wave of experimentation. So there were in Alaska, there were radioactive iodine injections in our peoples.

Panganga Pungowiyi:

And if you look, there's this wonderful poem by an artist named Joan Cain. It's called Headline News and she simply took a compilation of news headlines related to native peoples, um, so it kind of showcased the attitude toward us, uh, very dehumanizing. Um, we were not viewed as people, and so I imagine that's why they felt like injecting us was uh, they felt like injecting us was, uh, we've been used as the dumping grounds and the stepping stool for, um, non-indigenous community and for, like Western science, for decades, for generations, um and so like, that's uh, and I don't want to. You know, we're very resilient peoples. Um, we adapt, just in the same way our ecosystems adapt. Um, we've managed to maintain our language, our culture, um, our subsistence lifestyle in the face of all those challenges that have been posed to us over a period of, you know, hundreds of years. But that's the rich history you know, even prior to that, the founding values of our culture, that's what I carry with me into the work that we're going to talk about today.

Steve Taylor:

You know, that's just horrible. I'm sure it was without informed consent. The injection of radioactive iodine. Why were they doing that? I mean, obviously it was some sort of experiment, but what were they telling people?

Panganga Pungowiyi:

Yeah, we hosted a great number of community gatherings in our region talking about our history because we wanted to address historical trauma. I was working in a wellness program at the time. I was running a department that was getting grant money to address things like suicide, substance abuse, domestic violence and through our community conversations we figured out that those things were just symptoms and we were getting into those roots of colonization, historic trauma, institutional oppression. And through community healing discussions elders were sharing with us different stories and one elder was sharing with us that in his community One elder was sharing with us that in his community the children were told that they were going to be a part of the space program and that they were going to go to the moon. They were not. Their parents were not informed.

Steve Taylor:

And it was the children who were people as bodies being sacrifice zones sacrifice zones.

Panganga Pungowiyi:

Yes, there's a parallel between how our lands are treated and how our bodies are treated, and there's a direct connection between the health of our bodies and the health of our communities. So that's reflected so many times throughout history. So if you look back at when I was talking about how, when they decimated the whale population, our population is dependent on the whale population and how well the whales are doing so, when the whales were wiped out, so were we, and so when you do things like intentionally spill heavy metals, solvents, fuel on our lands Of course we're so directly related to our lands our bodies become contaminated just the same. So we've approached the EPA, the military, a number of times over a period of years, and I want to give a shout out to Annie Aloa, who was a health aide on our island. She was a tribal healer, a health aide, and she noticed the low birth weight symptom in our population and she noticed the rate of cancer increasing, the rate of cancer increasing, and she tried to sound the alarm many times and was dismissed many, many times.

Panganga Pungowiyi:

Um, and the EPA and other folks have done quote, unquote studies, um, and try to say things like our diet and like cigarette smoking are the cause of our health issues. But this organization called ACAT, the Alaska Community Action on Toxics, have done studies and have found that the same health issues that we're seeing in our community members are also seen in the fish that are coming back to the Suqayt River. And so there's an undeniable link between what happened at Northeast Cape and the other site and what is happening to our bodies. And so when I say we are sacrifice zones, we recognize, we have recognized, you know, the act of colonization, the act of harming our lands for the gain of resources, what Western world views as resources. They're sacrificing the health of that land, and so those are deemed as sacrifice zones. And in the same way, our bodies are also being used as sacrifice zones in those experimentations and then, and also in extractive industry as well.

Steve Taylor:

You've been very concerned and very active regarding geoengineering, climate geoengineering and how experiments may be done or proposed in your territory. Could you tell us a bit about that in general terms, what geoengineering is and how it may impact your community currently or in the near future?

Panganga Pungowiyi:

Sure. So geoengineering is a theoretical technology or set of technologies that are meant to address the symptoms of climate change. These are meant to address things like the temperature rising or the ice melting, all the symptoms that we see of climate change. Now, climate change is the over-emission of pollutants. It's, you know, that's how we are changing the climate. And then the symptoms are all of these ecosystem responses. You know the way that the ecosystem is responding to the changes that are happening the release of fossil fuels into the atmosphere, fuels into the atmosphere.

Panganga Pungowiyi:

So geoengineering is typically divided into two categories. Sometimes there are other subsets of categories, but essentially carbon dioxide removal in general terms. And then the other one is solar radiation, and sometimes they change it solar radiation, and sometimes they change it solar radiation mitigation, solar radiation management, solar radiation modification, solar radiation manipulation, but usually SRM is the um, it's what they call it. And sometimes you'll see subset categories like marine geoengineering, which is a combination of those two things but done in the marine environment, or Arctic ice management, which usually is solar radiation related, and the solar radiation is managing the amount of sunlight that reaches the Earth's surface or changing it so it's reflected back into space essentially. So it's treating the sun like this, treating it like the sun, is the problem. Um, but there there these theoretical technologies, and I say theoretical because none of them have been done at scale.

Panganga Pungowiyi:

Um and that's something that folks need to keep in mind is the end goal is to always do these at scale, and at scale is ecosystem wide. You know, these are not um technologies that are meant to be deployed in limited regions. They're they're meant to impact entire ecosystems. Um so like. Uh, the one that's been implemented the most is carbon dioxide removal, I'd say, through things like CCS carbon capture and storage or CCUS carbon capture, utilization and storage are developed and pushed by industry so extractive industry, billionaires, large polluters in order to claim that they're doing something to address climate change. And it does a lot of different things. It helps people feel more at ease as though something is being done or something is being developed to address what we can see as the impending doom of climate change, really climate chaos. And then it helps those who are funding and pushing these technologies to escape accountability, so they get to say that they're doing something about all of the pollution and destruction.

Steve Taylor:

So what are your major criticisms or what are the dangers you see with carbon capture?

Panganga Pungowiyi:

And the techniques used to carry out these experiments. The techniques used to get, quote, unquote, community buy-in, if there is any, and then the impacts are so strikingly similar to those used by extractive industry. It's like there's a playbook on these sorts of things, and so things like promising income, promising economic stimulation in communities that are very economically suppressed, right. So if you buy a frozen steak in my community, it's $50. Right, a gallon of orange juice is like $20. Gallon of milk is like $20. These are communities that the cost of living is very, very high and the unemployment rate is also very high. So it's over 75 percent unemployment. And no bank is ever going to invest in our communities. You know, these are communities. The nature of colonization is to try to get the indigenous peoples to move away, so starving us out economically is obviously one technique. So then companies can come in and they can be, you know, the saviors or the promisers of economic growth or opportunity, which is appealing to some people if they're not thinking about how our health and well-being is tied to the lands themselves. So things will be like the jurisdiction who has jurisdiction over our lands, over our waters, over our air and the loopholes that can be formed in places like Alaska. Those are some ways that folks try to get away with experimenting without our knowledge or consent. Experimenting without our knowledge or consent and that's the bottom line is really the issue is about Indigenous rights, indigenous sovereignty and free, prior and informed consent when it comes to things happening on our lands that will impact us. So, rather than looking usually at individual technologies and the pros and cons of those technologies, I usually like to start out with the bigger picture stuff, because the same issues that you see in mining and oil production.

Panganga Pungowiyi:

What happens is so if you go back in history, there was a military tactic to rape and murder indigenous women, indigenous femmes and two-spirit people. It was a tactic for colonization and that tactic has been passed down and the whole purpose of colonization is resource extraction, and so that practice has been passed down through generations as they continue to extract from our lands, and that continues with geoengineering, because in order to develop large-scale technologies like carbon capture, you have to have things like man camps and those are transplants people who don't belong in the community, who are non-native, who live on or near our lands in temporary housing. I've seen communities built out of connexes housing men who come from outside of the community into communities where, historically, if there has been violence, whether it's sexual or physical, against indigenous women, there is a high rate of violence and a low rate of prosecution. And so you mix those two together. You know, with men who come from the outside who recognize if I harm these people, I can get away with it much more easily.

Panganga Pungowiyi:

So that happens in extractive industry, and that this also happens with the development of any technology or infrastructure on our lands that don't belong to us, I guess the infrastructure that is coming in from the outside. So those are like the bigger picture issues that I have. And then also our cosmovision, our original instructions and our value system never puts us above nature. In fact, we're just a part of nature, we are nature, and the notion that we can manipulate nature and that we can change nature goes against the very belief structure that we've held for since time immemorial and um to have technologies, whether or not they're experimented on on our lands or near our lands. If they're implemented, they're going to impact our ecosystems and therefore go against our belief structure, our cosmovision, if that makes sense.

Steve Taylor:

When did the geoengineering start to become an issue in your community and what is pushing them there? I mean, why? What's causing this and why do they? I mean, I think you know, we can probably guess that there's, you know, some of the answer to that, but what's bringing this about and how long has it been going on? Where are we? What does it look like now?

Panganga Pungowiyi:

Yeah, so when I was pulled in, there was a particular experiment happening in Utqiagvik. So the technology or theory is that if you spread silica hollow glass microspheres, these silica hollow glass microspheres, so these tiny, tiny about the width reflective, and it will thicken the ice over time. So that's the theory. The incentive of these sorts of projects is that they bring in carbon offsets or sometimes carbon credits. There's that whole carbon market system which helps large polluters escape accountability. Essentially, they can say that they've done something to address X amount of you know this many tons of carbon or like reverse the effects of climate change this much and therefore are less accountable to the damage that they've done in a different, quote-unquote, different part of the earth. Um, so this team came up to alaska and started experimenting on a lake outside of utqiagvik. They had already experimented in Minnesota and in California and their next phase was to go up to the Arctic. So they went up to the Arctic and they were spreading football fields worth of this material.

Panganga Pungowiyi:

And in our communities we know that silica is quite harmful. A lot of our gravel is made up of silica or has a lot of silica, and we have high rates of tuberculosis and we have high rates of rheumatoid arthritis and kidney disease. And silica is linked to all three of those things. Is linked to all three of those things. So the idea of spreading concentrated amounts in the Arctic in order to thicken the ice and, by their own admission, snow actually reflects more than the silica beads do, more than the silica beads do but to put tons and tons, millions of tons of this into our ecosystem annually was the idea. They wanted to spread between $1 and $5 billion worth of the material annually on the ice.

Panganga Pungowiyi:

That was the goal. Because, remember when I said at scale, we always have to think about these things at scale and we had approached them multiple times. Native Movement had spoken to them that's one organization in Alaska when they were talking about moving their materials to Nome and experimenting outside of Nome because, quote unquote, there was no whaling in Nome, and I think that's the other aspect of this is, um, these are folks who are removed from our communities, they're not part of our communities, not consulting our communities and not knowing our communities, and then saying that they're going to go and do the experiments in Nome because there's no whaling. Well, there is whaling in Nome. They didn't know that because they didn't talk to anybody.

Steve Taylor:

A lot of times we think of glass beads. It's inert, it sits there right. Okay, so they're glass beads, I mean no, they claimed it was non-toxic.

Panganga Pungowiyi:

But the company later shut down their experiments or their project altogether because of the potential for ecotoxology.

Steve Taylor:

Did they conduct any experiments, or was it all just proposed?

Panganga Pungowiyi:

Did they conduct any experiments or was it all just proposed? No, they were spreading the materials on a lake outside of Utqalvik without the free, prior and informed consent of the tribes. So they did not speak to the tribes, they did not talk to the community. They went through one for-profit organization to do that. To do that it was not responsible at all and they didn't consult any of the tribal governments and they actually weren't informing anybody of what they were doing or why. But they did partner with the university, the local university, and used Indigenous kids who were going to that university to spread the materials, which is a whole other issue.

Steve Taylor:

Did you ever approach any government agency or state government about that by chance?

Panganga Pungowiyi:

So a lot of these experiments are so foreign and so new that they aren't categorized under the regulations.

Steve Taylor:

Viewing the Arctic environment as one thing, one thing alone reflectivity and ice. The idea that we're going to preserve the glacier.

Panganga Pungowiyi:

But that stands in quite a contrast to how it's viewed by people who have lived there for thousands of years. And to not include people with the intimate relationship to the land and the water and the ice, to not include us in the conversations when one identifying the problem and two identifying the solution to the problem, that's dangerous. It's not just disrespectful and it's not just going against our sovereign rights. It's not just disrespectful and it's not just going against our sovereign rights, it's also just dangerous and, frankly, stupid.

Steve Taylor:

Because, as you said, these are experiments but if they think, actually be able to predict what's going to happen at scale.

Panganga Pungowiyi:

Yeah, I mean, if you're doing, quote unquote, small scale testing and then you implement, implementation is also testing because, like you, just you can't know what's going to happen. And and we've seen experiments you know happen in the past that um were well-intentioned, you know, things like um, like decreasing the amount of diseased mosquitoes by only allowing males to survive, or like trying to breed them out, and then it just ends up having a completely different effect than was originally intended, anticipated. So nature, just like we actually did some community research, community-based research, collecting qualitative data from indigenous community members in Alaska, without tainting the data or otherwise showing bias around geoengineering. So we presented the idea of geoengineering. You know, shared directly from websites, what the intention of these projects were.

Panganga Pungowiyi:

Um, and you know the, the responses that we got about how you cannot, you cannot overpower nature, like she's always going to, she's always going to punch back or she's going to it's, it's never going to be what you expect. And there was lots of, a lot of warnings and a lot of wisdom that had been passed down from people's you know, grandparents and great-grandparents about warning against doing these sorts of things.

Steve Taylor:

Well, it's very interesting. I mean when you were describing the potential unintended consequences. It's just I realize how much I don't know about ice. You know, as a person who doesn't live in that environment, you know I don't have that knowledge and I don't think culturally you's. There really is a lot of understanding.

Panganga Pungowiyi:

Yeah, I mean there's like there was another experiment that was actually done in Nome. Their idea is to have these water pumps that sit on top of the ice and suck water from underneath and spill it over the top to thicken it. The idea is to have them powered by green hydrogen batteries, and if you look at scientific articles and scientific journals, it shows that you would need to cover about 10% of the ice with such a pump in order to have any impact at all. Um and then like of course, the impact is not going to be what you think it's going to be. One is not going to be what you think it's going to be One.

Panganga Pungowiyi:

Our ice is not static. It moves around, it flips. Our ice can be unpredictable, especially now as the climate continues to change. It's not a stable place. So you're going to have pumps that are dumped into the ocean along with the green hydrogen batteries.

Panganga Pungowiyi:

We also use the water from in the ocean when we're out ice fishing. We use those to keep our holes open. Because the salinity, the difference between Because the salinity, the difference between the salt in the water and then the process used to freeze the ice, there's less saline over time, and so if you add salt to that, it actually has an opposite effect. It eventually melts it or keeps that ice open. And also, um, the blue cod lay their eggs at the bottom of the ice, in the algae that grows at the bottom of the ice, and that algae needs sunlight to permeate the ice in order to grow down there, and the blue cod need that algae to continue their life cycle. And so, like, having a water pump suck water from underneath the ice is going to disrupt that process as well. It's just, there's so many things that people from the outside don't. They just don't know our ice and they don't know our land.

Steve Taylor:

Wow. Has anyone tried to inform them of this?

Panganga Pungowiyi:

Yeah, I mean yes, and there's too much to inform them of, right?

Panganga Pungowiyi:

So they're going to. A lot of the times what happens is they'll say, well, we'll put one of you on our advisory board or we'll we'll uh ask you, you know these 30 questions, and it'll be a consult, and the expectation will be that we share, like thousands of years worth of knowledge with them in those 30 questions. So it's so, even if we it's like I'm not, I'm not trying to be like rude but um, you know, like when you have a kid and they want to do something, um, but it's like dangerous for them to do, but they don't have the capacity to understand right now why it's dangerous, or it would just take too much explaining, or like they're just not, they don't have the capacity to understand, and so that's why they need us and I'm not trying to be paternalistic at all, but we have intimate relationship and intimate knowledge about our ecosystems that we can't simply share in one consult or even five consults Like we need to be there prior to them developing that theory.

Steve Taylor:

And there's also the alternative, too, which I think you've spoken about a lot, which is, like you know, these indigenous environments and indigenous cultures are disproportionately impacted by climate change, and then there's people coming in from the outside wanting to do these things to save our own self, you know, because we're going to have to do something, because but it's not addressing the cause, which is us.

Panganga Pungowiyi:

Right, it's us and it's oppression, and it's oppression and it's like the whole root cause of climate chaos is our ability, our, the imbalance of relationship, you know, like the, the poor relationship that we have with indigenous peoples, and you know our lands and our, our relationship with the water and our relationship with the air. And if there was no if, if our rights were restored and we were not permitted to be sacrifice zones, if that was not something that could happen, if human rights was the thing, um, there would be no over emission of pollution, because you wouldn't be able to harm people, and so climate change wouldn't be a thing. So there's that.

Steve Taylor:

I was looking in one of your statements too, that most of the land that is protected and not that the indigenous people are not responsible for the overproduction of CO2. That 80 percent of the biodiversity exists on indigenous land, but it tends to be the most impacted. And now we have these techno autocrats coming in or want to be techno autocrats, and they're putting more of the onus on indigenous communities.

Panganga Pungowiyi:

Yeah, I mean like even addressing oppression in. Like, even if you just addressed oppression in one area, it would help, right? So if you're looking at things like university funding, a lot of these experiments are housed in universities. The Scopex project with Harvard that David Keith was running and it was funded in part through Bill Gates it was a Gates Foundation $1 million grant that was given to Harvard to develop stratospheric aerosol injection. Aerosol injection which was they tried to experiment on land over reservation land in Arizona and then, when they were chased out of there, they went to Sami territory in Sweden and they tried to experiment on land over there.

Panganga Pungowiyi:

But the accountability or the lack of accountability to universities who get this funding and like send people, permit people to be sent to Indigenous communities where they don't have any relationships. You know, it would make more sense to grant that funding to Indigenous communities to develop those solutions themselves. It would solve a lot of problems, even if it's not addressing oppression on all levels. Even that one small move would make such a big difference, putting the power where it belongs to frontline communities and to indigenous communities.

Steve Taylor:

So what about the carbon capture technology?

Panganga Pungowiyi:

Yeah. So in Alaska, for instance, I'll talk a little bit about big picture legislation stuff and then I'll get into the technology itself. But they just passed like a carbon management bill which would allow for the use of public lands for carbon capture. Um and so this like often in the same way that oil pipelines, infringes on the right of private landowners and also public lands. This is the same sort of thing. They'll use things, they'll find ways to gain power, jurisdiction over private and public lands and privatize it, because it's really about money. So carbon capture, especially in the United States, is about money. 97% of it in the US is used for enhanced oil recovery, where they flush out nearly depleted oil wells, which is what they're going to be doing here, because they're putting those facilities near the Cook Inlet where they had oil production, and they flush out those oil wells to get the rest of the oil and to get it quicker. So they can count the quick process as carbon credits and they count as offsets the capture of the carbon itself, which is then quote unquote stored. But we know that it's really used for enhanced oil recovery. But also there was a carbon capture facility.

Panganga Pungowiyi:

Um, one of the pipes burst, this green cloud of gas came down into a valley where there was a community. Um, people could see the gas coming. They tried to start their vehicles to leave, but there wasn't enough oxygen in the air for their engines to combust and so folks were stuck. The paramedics said that folks were wandering around in the dark, foaming at the mouth, confused. So yeah, I mean it's not great to have near people. It's certainly not great for, you know, any wildlife that's in the area. They're also going to be impacted by that, and the amount of infrastructure that it would take to capture enough carbon. Even if capturing carbon was an effective way to address climate change, which it's not the amount of land that you would need there isn't enough land to use at scale for it to even make a difference, it costs a lot of money make a difference.

Steve Taylor:

It costs a lot of money, it gets large polluters off the hook and it's not safe. Well, we're going to have to do another episode because there's more to talk about, but this has been an enlightening episode and it has been a pleasure speaking with you. It's just so much going on in the Arctic, in your region, than I had anticipated. Thank you for joining us on Breaking Green. Thank you for joining us on donations by people like you. Please help us lift up the voices of those working to protect forests, defend human rights and expose false solutions. Simply text GIVE to 17162574187. That's 17162574187.