Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a process designed to collect carbon dioxide generated by high-emission activities, such as coal or gas power production or plastics manufacturing, and transport it for industrial use or underground storage. While CCS has gained traction as a possible climate solution, there are concerns about its effectiveness and long-term impacts.
In this CHE Alaska webinar, speakers will explain how carbon capture and storage is a false climate solution that prolongs our reliance on fossil fuels and enables industry to continue polluting.
Adrienne Blatchford and Panganga Pungowiyi of the Indigenous Environmental Network will explain how CCS continues a legacy of extractive harm in Alaska and beyond. Marlee Goska, attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, will explain the legal, environmental, and policy challenges of CCS implementation and how communities are organizing to stop it.
CCS does not remove existing CO₂ from the atmosphere; it attempts to prevent some carbon emissions from entering the atmosphere. Infrastructure such as pipelines and underground storage sites creates significant health and environmental risks, and in some cases, captured carbon is used to fuel additional carbon extraction. These threats are disproportionately imposed on communities already overburdened by industrial pollution, perpetuating environmental injustice.
This webinar is co-sponsored with the Science and Environmental Health Network.
Featured Speakers
Aakaluk Adrienne Blatchford is Iñupiaq and originally from Unalakleet. She currently resides in Fairbanks with her family. Adrienne has been an advocate for social and ecological justice for over 10 years through many leadership roles and titles. She has worked to promote health and wellness through the practice of traditional knowledge and cultural values. Her role as a mother sets the platform for the rest of the work she does in the community as a healer, teacher, advocate, culture bearer, and organizer.
Marlee Goska is the Alaska Staff Attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, where she works to protect Alaska’s wildlife, lands, and oceans. Prior to joining the Center, she was an attorney in the Western Environmental Law Center’s wildlands and wildlife program and a subsistence law and policy fellow with the Alaska Federation of Natives. Marlee also worked on climate resilience with remote Alaska Native villages; she holds a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School and a B.S. from the State University of New York at New Paltz.
Panganga Pungowiyi is an Indigenous mother from Sivungaq, located in the so-called Bering Strait. She has been involved in many grassroots efforts seeking justice for Indigenous Peoples, including efforts to protect lands and water from extractive industry, MMIWG, and DVSA against Indigenous Womxn. Panganga joined the Indigenous Environmental Network as the Climate Geoengineering Organizer in August 2021. Her work is focused on Climate False Solutions, specifically in dangerous and hazardous Climate Geoengineering Projects, including Carbon Dioxide Removal, Carbon Capture and Storage, Carbon Capture Use and Storage, Direct Air Capture, and Bio Energy Carbon Capture and Storage. She continues to gather information about other false solutions technologies, as the overwhelming majority are tested in Indigenous territories without Free, Prior, and Informed Consent. Panganga says unjust contamination and experimentation are part of her family history. She rallies against such projects as the Arctic Ice Project and works to make educational materials and resource lists available to Indigenous Peoples so they can protect themselves against potentially harmful technologies.
This webinar is hosted by the CHE-Alaska Partnership, which is coordinated by Alaska Community Action on Toxics (ACAT). Driven by a core belief in environmental justice, ACAT empowers communities to eliminate exposure to toxics through collaborative research, shared science, education, organizing, and advocacy.