PRYOR LAKE, Minn. — I am here at the Native Peoples Native Homelands Climate Change Workshop II, which began this afternoon with a plenary session led by Pat Spears and Bob Gough of the Intertribal Council on Utility Policy, or COUP. Spears is now leading a session on wind energy. If you want to learn more about wind power, I have a few Web sites I’d suggest reading, including Native Wind and Honor the Earth. The NASA sponsored climate change conference ends Saturday. More than 200 earth advocates are here to listen, learn, share sustainable community practice stories and ultimatley make indigenous recommendations to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December. I’ll be Tweeting about the conference @buffalosfire. The four-day event is being chaired by Winona LaDuke of Honor the Earth and Dan Wildcat of Haskell Indian Nations University.
Spears just shared some sobering facts about the need to strive for sustainable energy practices in Indian Country. To wit: Reservation homes are 10 times more likely to be without electricity than the rest of the U.S. population.
Jodi Rave