Science Friday - Native Biodata, Indigenous Carbon Resistance, COVID Boosters Next Steps. Oct 15, 2021, Part 1

Episode Date: October 15, 2021

More Boosters, For More People This week, an FDA advisory committee met to pore over data and debate the role of COVID vaccine boosters. And on Thursday, they voted to recommend Moderna boosters for older Americans, as well as people in certain at-risk groups. This recommendation came just a few weeks after the FDA authorized a Pfizer booster for similar individuals. The recommendations of the panel regarding boosters for Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, as well as the idea of mixing and matching different vaccine and booster types, will now go to FDA officials. The CDC will also weigh in. Amy Nordrum, commissioning editor at MIT Technology Review, joins Ira to talk about the vaccine meeting and other topics from the week in science—including the FDA authorization of an e-cigarette, efforts to map the brain, mysterious radio signals from space, and a mission to explore asteroids near Jupiter.   Indigenous-Led Biology, Designed For Native Communities Monday was Indigenous Peoples’ Day here in the United States: a holiday to honor Native Americans and their resilience over many centuries of colonialism. Due to a long history of discrimination, Native Americans face stark health disparities, compared to other American populations. Illnesses like chronic liver disease, diabetes, and respiratory diseases are much more common in Native communities. This is where the Native BioData Consortium (NBDC) comes in. It’s a biobank, a large collection of biological samples for research purposes. What sets this facility apart from others is its purpose—the biological samples are from indigenous people, and the research is led by indigenous scientists. This is important, say the founders, because for too long, biological samples from Native people have been used for purposes that don’t benefit them. Joining Ira to talk about the importance of having a biobank run by indigenous scientists are three foundational members of the project: Krystal Tsosie, co-founder and ethics and policy director of the NBDC and PhD candidate in genetics at Vanderbilt University, Joseph Yracheta, executive director and laboratory manager of the NCDC, and Matt Anderson, assistant professor of microbiology at Ohio State University and NCDC board member.   Indigenous Activists Helped Save Almost A Billion Tons Of Carbon Per Year This summer, Science Friday and other media outlets covered the protests against an oil pipeline project in northern Minnesota, where Canadian company Enbridge Energy was replacing and expanding their existing Line 3 infrastructure. Native American tribes in Minnesota—whose lands the pipeline would pass through and alongside—organized protests, direct action, and other resistance against the project. The pipeline was completed, and began moving tar sands oil at the beginning of October. But the protests and their non-Native allies drew arrests, news coverage, and social media attention to the debate over continued drilling of fossil fuels. Before Line 3, there were protests at the Dakota Access Pipeline, which was completed against the wishes of the nearby Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, and the Keystone XL pipeline, which President Biden ultimately cancelled after objections and lawsuits from two Native American communities in Montana and South Dakota. So far, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has remained un-drilled, despite multiple attempts, with help from vocal opposition by Alaska’s Gwich’in people. A new report from two advocacy groups does the math on how much carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gas emissions these cancelled or delayed projects would have emitted in the last 10 years. According to their calculations, Indigenous resistance to pipelines and other fossil fuel projects has saved the U.S. and Canada 12% of their annual emissions, or 0.8 billion tons of CO2 per year. Ira talks to the co-authors, Dallas Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network, and Kyle Gracey from Oil Change International, about the value of tallying these emissions in the fight to prevent future oil projects. Plus, why Native American protesters and their allies deserve credit for keeping fossil fuels in the ground—and the bigger environmental justice issue of pipeline projects alongside Native land. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Iroflato. This week, an FDA advisory committee voted to recommend Moderna boosters for older Americans and people in certain at-risk groups. This comes just a few weeks after the FDA authorized a Pfizer booster for similar groups, but still leaves open the question of what boosters J&J recipients should get. Here to talk more about that and other selected short subjects in science is Amy Nordrum, an editor for the MIT Technology Recipient. review. Welcome back, Amy. Thank you, Ira. Great to be here. All right. Let's talk about this. I know that today, all eyes are on the FDA Advisory Committee again. What's going on out there? That's right. There are still tens of millions of Americans who are unvaccinated. So getting them vaccinated is still obviously a

major focus for public health officials. But we're also now in the stage of the pandemic where there's this question about whether those who are vaccinated should get a booster to stay well protected against COVID. And if so, do they need to get the same shot that they got when they were first vaccinated, or can you kind of mix and match? Like if you originally got two shots from Pfizer, could you then get a booster from Moderna? So this week, we got some new data from the National Institutes of Health on that question. And their data and study seemed to show that mixing and matching is probably fine. So anyone who got an MRI vaccine originally will have similar levels of protection, no matter whether they get the booster from Pfizer or from Moderna. But for those who,

originally received the J&J vaccine, which was just one shot, the NIH study found that they might have even better protection if they get a booster from Moderna or Pfizer versus getting one from J&J. So people who received one of those companies, boosters had higher antibody levels than those who got a J&J second dose. So the FDA advisory panel that's been meeting yesterday and today is going to be hearing a presentation on these mix and match results and thinking about this new data as it decides what to recommend moving forward. Yeah, kind of confusing to a lot. of us, you know, well, do I do this or don't I do this? That's right. Yes. The data is still preliminary. It hasn't yet been peer reviewed. And it was just one study. It's a pretty small one, too.

And the advisory panel isn't really voting on this question today of the mix and match. But even if they were, it could very well be that they decide we don't have enough data on this question quite yet. Is there any reason to expect that the FDA would not follow the recommendations of the advisory panel? Sure. That can definitely happen. I mean, the advisory panel doesn't make the rules. It just advises. So it would still then be up to the FDA and the CDC asked how to interpret this and what to do moving forward. And the CDC is actually having a committee meeting next week on this same question of mixing and matching and what to do about boosters. So we could have more clarity and hopefully an answer on this pretty soon.

Let's move on to other FDA news. I know there was action this week with regard to e-cigarettes. What's going on here? That's right. Now, e-cigarettes have been sold in the U.S. for years. And for a while, the FDA was pretty hands-off with these products, but they've gotten a lot of scrutiny, particularly from public health groups, worried that some of the flavors that e-cigarette makers were putting out, stuff like bubble gum and fruity flavors, were going to appeal to teenagers and maybe hook them on nicotine, even though they wouldn't ever have gotten started on regular cigarettes. On the other hand, some adult smokers have switched over to e-cigarettes, and since they produce water vapor instead of cigarette smoke, they're generally considered to be safer than smoking

cigarettes. So the FDA has told e-cigarette manufacturers they have to apply to have their products that were already on the market authorized by the agency so that the agency can kind of weigh the risks and benefits to public health of each product. And they've been going through all these applications. They've rejected millions of them already, particularly for flavored products that might really appeal to teenagers. But this week, it did grant its first authorization for a tobacco flavored e-cigarette. And Catherine Foley wrote a really good piece on this for Politico, just about how much confusion there is around why this particular product got approved and so many others haven't, and then how the FDA is going to regulate this industry moving forward.

Yeah, because, you know, some people say, if I want to get off the habit, I need to wean myself off regular cigarettes or maybe e-cigarettes are the way to go. Exactly. That's the argument for them. And this company, that's what they're saying their product will primarily be used for. And the FDA has said, even though we've authorized this one product, we're going to be monitoring that company's advertising. making sure that they're not targeting minors and that, you know, teenagers aren't getting hooked on

their products because they could revoke it if that happens. All right. Let's move on. We reported last week on the discovery of specialized face recognition cells in monkeys and by extension, probably in people. And there's more news this week on an effort to map the brain. I mean, it's going like crazy. Tell us about it.

Yeah, the brain, as you know, is a very complicated organ. they're thought to be like a thousand different types of cells in the brain, and we don't really know what they all are or how they work together to make our brain function. So for years, scientists all around the world have been working on some really big research projects to try and help us understand that better. And this week we heard from one of those groups. They published 17 new papers all at once, made a big splash in the journal nature describing their work so far. And their mission has really been focused on trying to identify all the different kinds of cells in the brain and make what they're calling a kind of census or an atlas of these. So they started with one specific part of a

mouse's brain and it's motor cortex. And that's what the papers this week mostly describe. So that's only really a small part of the brain that they've looked at. Yeah, it's slow work. It's slow going for sure. So really they've only mapped like 1% of a mouse's brain at this point. And once they finish the mouse's brain, they're hoping to do that by 2023. But then they want to move on and do the same thing for the human brain. And the idea is if you do this for different species, you might be able to see similarities and differences and understand better how different kinds of brains evolve. But it's definitely, it's definitely taking some time. Yeah, so they really want to get down on the cellular level and watch the circuitry working. Exactly. Yeah, be able to see kind of the anatomy of each cell and

its components, even on a molecular level, how these cells interact with each other and communicate. You have some sad news this week about Florida's manatees. Boy, they have been under attack ever since I can remember for decades, either from motorboats, hitting them with their propellers and gashes. And now it's even worse, more bad news? It's true, yes. It's been a really tough year for Florida's manatees. Actually, the deadliest year on record for them.

So the state has lost 10% of its manatee population just this year, almost 1,000 manatee have died so far. And as you said, there's a number of different reasons why the Miami Herald had a nice editorial kind of explaining some of them. One major reason is that manatees eat seagrass. They eat hundreds of pounds of it a day. And there just hasn't been as much of that around because of pollution from agriculture and septic systems along the coast. So a lot of the manatees are actually starving to death. Wow. Wow. I mean, are they on the endangered? They're not on the endangered species list, are they? No, they were for a long time. but they got taken off a couple years ago.

It was a pretty controversial decision. They were changed from endangered to threatened. But there is an effort now to get them back on. So some lawmakers in Florida are trying to introduce a bill to Congress to really quickly get them back on the endangered species list. And we'll see if that actually happens. They are such gentle animals. I have for a TV show I did years ago, I was snorkeling with them.

And this 2,000-pound manatee knew I was there and just kindly moved away when I came swimming by. They're just wonderful animals. And some uplifting news now, I understand astronomers have heard some strange radio signals. Wow. Tell us about that. This is kind of a weird one. So this week astronomers announced they detected new radio waves coming from somewhere within the Milky Way that didn't really fit the patterns.

They'd expect from any kind of object that they know about. And these waves were behaving in ways that are really hard for them to explain, like switch. off and on at random or dialing up or down in intensity. So this has created a big question for them about what exactly is out there emitting these radio waves. And right now they really, really don't know. Do we know which part of the universe they're coming from? Yeah, it's around the center of the Milky Way, but we don't know much more about them. They've been able to detect them on a number of different occasions over time.

So it's not just a one-off instance, but they haven't yet been able to kind of hone in on what the possible source of it might be. So this is not like a pulsar, which has a very, you know, clock-like on, off, signals sweeping past you. This is something sort of random? Yeah, it seems to be. I mean, they thought about, oh, maybe it's a pulsar, or maybe it's a solar flare from a star. There's also these things called fast radio bursts, which I know you've talked about on the show.

It's like a series of, you know, signals that are coming from somewhere in space and repeating or just happening as a one-off event. But of all the things that they've considered, and they looked a lot of possibilities, this signal still seems different since it's changing so much. We always discover so much stuff going on out in the universe. We have no idea what it is. Well, we don't know what 96% of the universe is made out of anyhow

with the dark energy and dark matter. Throw this in with that there. Exactly. Let's look ahead to the weekend. There's a planned launch for a mission called Lucy. Tell us about that. Right. This is happening early tomorrow morning. The rocket has been rolled out to the launch pad in Cape Canaveral in Florida and the weather's looking good and it's all ready to go. So this is a NASA mission. It will be sending a spacecraft out to Jupiter's orbit where there are two huge bunches of asteroids that are orbiting the sun along with Jupiter. So they follow the same route around the sun. And this NASA mission that launches tomorrow is going to be the first to go out and really take a close look at these asteroid clusters. So it's going to really spend the next 12 years exploring eight asteroids in particular. And Ashley Strickland wrote a really nice piece about

this mission for CNN with a lot of good info. And scientists think that these asteroids are left over bits of material from when the solar system first formed. So they're hoping to get a better sense from studying them about how that happened and what exactly they're made of. Besides just having a lot of fun flying around the asteroids, can you give us some details on what the mission is trying to study? Well, scientists have described. these asteroids almost like fossils. So really understanding how they formed and what they're made of could help us know what the solar system was like 4.5 billion years ago when it formed.

And they're also going to be taking a look at things like, you know, do these asteroids have moons or craters? And craters can really help you tell how old they are and when these asteroids formed. So they think these asteroids were sort of, as you say, remnants from the formation of our solar system and just left over pieces. Exactly. Yeah, they're kind of like a time capsule in a way of what early activity might have happened in our solar system. And so maybe by taking a closer look at them, we can kind of learn about how our own planet and others have formed. Yeah, because we've had missions to sort of land on space bodies. No, none of these, Lucy is not going to land on any of these and take a sample or something and bring it back. No, it's just going to be cruising by them, but it is kind of interesting because it's also going to be making a few trips back closer to Earth's gravity to actually reposition itself out where it needs to be by Jupiter, which is a pretty unusual aspect of this mission.

Usually a spacecraft will just kind of go out and stay close to where it's investigating. All of this allows me to say we can end with Lucy's in the sky above Jupiter. So thank you, Ness, with an opportunity. Thank you, Amy. Thanks, Ira. Amy Nordrum editor for the MIT Technology Review. We have to take a break. And when we come back, I'll look inside a research institute for indigenous benefit run by indigenous scientists. Stay with us.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. Last Monday was Indigenous People's Day here in the U.S., a holiday to honor Native Americans and their resilience over many centuries of colonialism. Because of a long history of maltreatment and discrimination, Native Americans' health disparities are stark compared to other American populations. Illnesses like chronic liver disease, diabetes, and respiratory diseases are much more common. This is where the Native Biodata Consortium comes in. It's a biobank, a large collection of biological samples for research purposes.

But what sets this facility apart from others is its purpose. The biological samples are from indigenous people, and the research is led by indigenous scientists. Joining me now are three of the scientists involved in this work. Crystal Sosi, co-founder and ethics and policy director of the Native Biodata Consortium, Ph.D. candidate in genetics and Vanderbilt University. She's based in Phoenix, Arizona. Joseph Hiras Shudda, executive director and laboratory manager, the native biodata consortium. He's based in Eagle Butte, South Dakota, and Dr. Matt Anderson,

assistant professor of microbiology at Ohio State University, board member and treasurer of the Native Biodata Consortium based in Columbus, Ohio. Welcome all of you to Science Friday. Thank you for having us. Thank you. Thanks for having us. You're all welcome. Crystal, talk me through the importance of having a biobank run by indigenous scientists

for the benefit of indigenous people. So for the first time really in history, we have a cohort, a wealth of indigenous expertise in precision health and genomics for the first time. And it's really great that we've been able to get these great minds together to help co-lead and and founder this organization. For too long in the status of biomedical history, data has been usurped from indigenous peoples. And often not to our benefit. So being able to have community members, tribal leaders, and scientists like us, who come from the communities themselves to be able to advocate for how this data is collected and used is really important, especially if we're going to be talking about not just racial justice, but also genomic equity and data equity. Crystal, why do you think there's been such a lack of scientific research to benefit native populations? If you think about how scientists, have entered indigenous communities.

Oftentimes it has been for this very like grand scheme of one day, some point down the line, your data indigenous peoples may benefit you. And this is actually the promise that a lot of scientists, particularly in the mid-90s and early 2000s did for particularly indigenous peoples in Central and South America. They entered our remote communities, took our blood, promised us medicines, and then they disappeared. There's actually a New York Times article in which a reporter from the New York Times came back to the Kirsciana. They reside in Central Amazonia and asked them, did they actually deliver on the promises? Where are the medicines? And the indigenous people's angrily stated,

no, but Coriol cell repositories had been selling their blood and access to the genomic information. And, you know, I talked to a lot of scientists and I ask them, are we perhaps overpromising on what precision health can deliver right here and right now? And scientists, some of them worryingly state, well, that's not our problem. Our focus right now is the research. Maybe somewhere down the line, it might translate into some benefits for the community. And unfortunately, for indigenous peoples, we're dying at disproportionate numbers now. We cannot wait. Joseph, do you have some of the same fears and concerns about biodata being accessed by outside parties?

Yeah, so because of these subtler colonial borders, often native people who share ancestry are thought of as separate and separate legal jurisdictions and separate exposures. And that part is true. But where we do have similarity is people's interest in the genetic part and not so much interest in the health. improvement part. And so they can go over the border into Mexico, Central America, and South America, where those native people do not have sovereignty or any kind of protection and get what they want and still avoid the health improvement part. When you say the genetic part, what do you mean by that? So you've seen some of these instances recently in isolated populations where they find different resistance to disease because of genetic variants.

We saw that with HIV in the Scandinavian countries where about 8% of the population was resistant to HIV because they have a cholesterol variance that prevents the virus from getting into the cells. And so big data and big pharma companies are looking for those types of genetic gifts, treasures, whatever you want to call them to basically help the whole world with health crises. but often at least the indigenous context, the benefits from that type of research won't come very quickly to these communities because of cost and other political issues. And so those are the kinds of genetic treasures that people are looking for. I want to bring Matt into the discussion. Matt, I know you're a microbiologist.

How does microbiology fit into the work of the Native Biodata Consortium? Sure. So when we're talking about microbiology contexts, oftentimes we center that on the individual, the human, the host side. And so you've heard the microbiome being called things like an essential human organ that contributes to overall health and disease states. And that's been shown to be true in a number of cases. So in thinking about performing microbial work, we need to be incorporating the host context and the implications on not just the microbes, but the human as well. So within indigenous communities, the relationship or the viewing of our relationships with different pieces of our environment are going to be a little bit different. And microbes need to be considered not just as these organisms that we're not able to see that can potentially cause disease and live with us.

But they're really, we live in a relationship with them. They determine our health and we impact their community structure, their health. So within a microbiology context, when you're working on microbiome, you're working with different bacterial samples, arquea, fungi, etc., the relationship here that's presented itself between the microbes and use the individual changes. So the approach that needs be taken when performing microbiome studies in particular with indigenous people is going to look different than it does when working within U.S. general populations. there's going to be this understanding of relationality that often doesn't occur within a clinical setting as you're taking samples from patients. Can you explain that a bit more why the microbiome of indigenous peoples will look different than the non-indigenous people? Sure. So the difference in the appearance of that microbiome is really revolving around that relationality.

So the obligations that we have to all the pieces of our environment, including microbial systems that live within our guts, on our skin. We have an obligation to help maintain and protect those organisms because of their exact same role that they have in relationality to us and protecting us as well. So it's more a human-centered approach as to thinking about that relationship between the microbes and the human and how that balance is fundamentally what's going to be important in promoting health of the individual as well as health of the microbiome itself. Would you extend that comparison also to the microbiome in the soil? I mean, there's a huge microbiome in the soil. Do you study that also? So we have some new projects that have popped up specifically around microbiome and the soil,

and this is being done on Shine River based on land usage practices. Based on the way that humans are interacting with the soil, are we altering things in such a way that it's going to be detrimental on the microbes that are found there in promoting the ecological health of the soil that promotes not only the ability to be able to use the land for different purposes that people are interested in revolving around agriculture and ranching, but also in the different types of plants that are able to grow based on the microbillage community profiles of the soil. Are those soils now no longer are able to support plants that are important for medicine, plants that are important for ceremony? So how does the human impact present itself, not only in the microbial contents,

tracing itself back to humans, but also through all the other ecological systems that exist in relationship? I'm also reminded of a legal case that was made into a play called informed consent. And it was a case between the Havasupai tribe in Arizona State University. The scientists were called in to look at the prevalence of diabetes in the communities and see if there was a genetic disorder there. And what they wound up doing was on their own without informed consent from the tribe looking, hey, where did this tribe comfort?

from genetically and they came up with a migration pattern that contradicted traditional stories. And the tribal leaders are very, very upset with this, that they went beyond what they were told to do. Are you familiar with that case? Oh, well, I'm an incoming assistant professor to Arizona State University, which is at the center of that landmark lawsuit. So I'm going to jump in here and perhaps provide a little bit of commentary. Please. There was, of course, an uproar in that this data was collected from 50% of the indigenous community members without even having them sign consent forms, which broadly

consented to the use of their samples and data for anything that researchers felt deemed worthy of the greater scientific good, which is a very common template language at the time. But one of the concerns, of course, was the cultural misalignment of scientific purposes and entering communities to perhaps prove a hypothesis, which is culturally incongruent with how the peoples perceive their own cultural origin stories, because the Havasupai tribe believe that they actually originate at the base of the Grand Canyon. But there were other concerns as well. Another concern is that the researchers promised that they were going to investigate type two diabetes, but really they were also looking at other stigmatizing conditions like

schizophrenia and other mental conditions. And they didn't inform the community beforehand that they were going to use their samples and data for those purposes. One of the concerns, too, is that even though this broad consent to the collection of data was the norm in the early 2000s and mid-1990s when this data collection took place, we've actually shifted back to broad consenting today. There was a period of time in which researchers had to get study-specific informed consent. So if there's any change in the research protocol or the research question, then researchers had to go back into communities and re-ask people to sign informed consents again. and scientists found this too logistically burdensome because, well, scientists are great at collecting data.

They're not necessarily great at, and this is speaking from my own personal experience, they're not necessarily great at connecting with community members and communicating back, or at least they weren't in the mid to late 2000s. And now in this big data era that Joe mentioned, we're now harmonizing data across multiple data sets. And in order to do that, we've again re-eastern. entered this era of broad consenting and which we're asking people to contribute their data and genomic data to data sets for time immemorial without having any consent as to what happens to their data in downstream studies.

So basically, Ira, what it comes down to is respect for indigenous people. So just as Crystal mentioned, informed consent versus broad consent has this, uh, pendulum-like motion in research. So, two, does the idea of self-determination for indigenous people. So, of course, early in our history with Europeans, it was very much a conquest-type mentality. And then later on, it became they need to have some autonomy and self-determination. And now we're, in the current era, we're kind of back at that place where people want natives to assimilate and become part of the broader US fabric. So that idea of whether or not Indians are wards of the state

or whether they're independent nations is at issue. Researchers, as Crystal pointed out, don't have this extra layer of public relations comfort. They often defer to the federal rules or federal policies. And for right now, it's kind of been the state where neither side really wants to push the issue, because both sides. might feel that they would lose some power.

So we, as scientists, are operating in this gray area, and in that gray area is where we are really afraid that lots of things are going to get lost in the mix. Very interesting. Just a quick note that I'm Iroflato, and this is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Joseph, the Bidol Act, that's an older act, is a federal law that lets universities patent and commercialize

what's discovered by their employees and property. Are there issues with keeping these samples and your results in-house and not commercialized? Yeah, it's another gray area. And again, I think both sides are a little bit wary to push that envelope because the decision might not be what they want. And often people don't think of science and research as political, but it definitely has becomes so since the 40s and the Bay Dole Act pushed that even further because a lot of the data that was being generated through public tax dollars didn't have ownership so nobody wanted to develop

it further and so that was one of the concessions that Congress made and a lot of researchers themselves don't know the higher legal administrative policies of the university they work work in and then And that was made even further entrenched in law with the America Compete Act from about 2007 to 2014. Many modifications were made there so that even private corporations can use public tax dollars to generate data for such ventures. Generally, there has been this idea of a need for complication with tribes impacting anything that, you know, their lifestyle, their economy.

their political and intellectual property rights. That's been in the books for quite a while. But what hasn't happened was any kind of consideration in any of these acts for tribes. And right now, the main stakeholder is the universities. And we think that it's high time that tribal groups become recognized as a stakeholder in that data management. Unfortunately, that's about all the time we have for now. We could spend a lot more time talking about all this.

I'd like to thank my guests. Crystal Sosi, co-founder and ethics and policy director of the Native Biodata Consortium, Ph.D. candidate in genetics at Vanderbilt University. She's based in Phoenix, Arizona. Joseph E. Shudda, executive director and laboratory manager, the Native Biodata Consortium. He's based in Eagle Butte, South Dakota, Dr. Matt Anderson, assistant professor of microbiology at Ohio State University, board member and treasurer of the Native Biodata Consortium

based in Columbus, Ohio. Thank you all for taking time to be with us today. Thank you very much for the time. Thank you. Thank you. We have to take a break, and when we come back, when the fossil fuel pipelines get canceled, there's a carbon emission benefit.

Why indigenous activists are taking credit for preventing nearly a billion tons of CO2 released per year. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Iroflato. This summer, we covered the protests against an oil pipeline project in northern Minnesota, where Enbridge Energy was replacing and expanding their existing line three. Native American tribes in Minnesota, whose land the pipeline would pass alongside,

organized protests, direct action, and other resistance against the project, with the help from non-Native allies. The pipeline was completed. and began moving tar sand oil at the beginning of October. But the protests themselves drew arrests, news coverage, and social media attention to the debate over continuing drilling of fossil fuels, even as our climate crisis becomes more widely acknowledged. Before line three, there were protests at the Dakota Access Pipeline

and the Keystone XL Pipeline, which was ultimately cancelled. as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has remained undrilled with the help from vocal opposition by Alaska's Gwichan people. It turns out that all of this resistance has a carbon footprint, a big one, because when a pipeline project is cancelled or delayed, the oil or natural gas in that pipeline does not get burned, so no greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere. A new report from the Indigenous Environmental Network

and oil change international to advocacy groups tallied up that footprint, and the numbers they came up with are staggering. Over 10 years, the carbon not released by canceled or delayed fossil fuel projects amounted to 12% of the total U.S. and Canada carbon emissions budget per year. That's 0.8 billion tons of CO2 per year. And if indigenous people in North America were to win every fight they're currently in, that amount doubles. Here to talk more about the report are two co-authors,

Dallas Goldtooth, an organizer with the Indigenous Environmental Network, focused on Native American Environmental Justice, and Kyle Gracie, senior research analyst at Oil Change International, an organization that researches and communicates the environmental and human cost of fossil fuels. Welcome to Science Friday. Hey, happy to be here. Thank you so much. Thanks for having us. Nice to have you. Dallas, let's start with indigenous resistance to fossil fuel projects. There was a lot of media attention on line three this year, but I understand there's got to be other stuff happening. Yeah, you know, we are oftentimes like, just the way that the media cycle is, we're often focused on one fight at a time. But, you know, over the past 15 years, there have been so many different fossil fuel fights, different pipeline fights that have been ongoing.

Line 3 is the big one. You know, they've just announced that it's going into operation. Before line 3, there was the DAPL fight, which many people remember back in 2016. And ongoing since 2011 was the Keystone XL pipeline fight, all major fights that involved heavy resistance by indigenous frontline groups all across the map. Kyle, in my intro, I gave some of the numbers in this report, 12% of total U.S. and Canada per year, nearly a billion tons of CO2. Can you put these numbers in more context for us? Sure. Another way to think about these is that these are the equivalent of hundreds of the average

annual emissions from coal-fired power plants. Literally more coal-fired power plants than remain in operation in the United States and Canada. So the potential impact of both the pipelines than the other projects that have been stopped, as well as those that we still have the potential to stop through indigenous-led resistance and resistance from non-indigenous allies. It's a tremendous number, and it would be a big impact on the U.S.'s contribution to the climate crisis. Can you give me a little bit of the math of figuring the calculus and how you look at a project like the Keystone XL pipeline and understand that it represents X tons of carbon dioxide emissions? Sure. So we do what's called a life cycle greenhouse gas emissions calculations. So we're looking at the emissions that would be released in relation to the construction operation of the pipeline. And in particular, the biggest contributor is comes from the fossil fuels that are actually in that pipeline as they reach their end markets as they're being burned. And so we have emissions factors that calculate the,

amount of greenhouse gases that come from these different types of pipelines, whether it's tar sands or light or heavy crude oil gas. And so we can use those along with other estimations about the construction operation and in particular for gas pipelines, the leakage of methane through the gas production, processing, transportation, and distribution systems and the total impact that all of those emissions would have on the size of the size of of the climate crisis and the size of the green oil gas pollution coming from the United States and Canada. And Dallas, give me an idea of what the significance of putting a number on the emissions that this resistance has headed off.

Indigenous communities, indigenous peoples have been resistance various forms of colonization for over 500 years. And these fights against these pipelines, these fights against these fossil fuel projects are merely the most recent and ongoing manifestation of that resistance. And it's just key for political leaders to know. It's important for financial investors to know that when these projects get approved without the consultation, without the consent of indigenous peoples, there is tangible risk. What this report shows is that we get the job done,

that it's not just a matter of supporting our rights to defend our lands and our heirs and our body. it's also a matter of protecting the future of all life on this planet. So it's a huge thing to show that, oh, yeah, people say, oh, those are just a couple Indians over there, arguing and fighting, but they're not really making an impact. Well, this report goes to show that, no, we are making an impact, a tremendous impact. And then really, we are literally leading the way in what it takes to address climate change. I mentioned the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Gwichan people. I mean, Anwar has been on and off the table for drilling for decades. How sure can you be that it's the protest of Native Americans that's causing this

and other projects to falter Dallas? You know, obviously there's a lot of different stakeholders at the table when he comes to these fights. You know, there are a lot of these projects like the Keystone Exile Pipeline. I worked hand in hand oftentimes hitting the ground with right-wing land. owners who were really concerned about the impacts that the Keystone XL pipeline would have on their water to feed their animals and their plants. But hearing them directly, they're like, we would not have gotten this far if it wasn't for indigenous communities stepping up. A lot of these fights and projects really are often challenged on the grounds of impacts on treaty rights and

indigenous rights. I mean, that was one of the main decisions between both Keystone and Dakota Access Pipeline. I mean, Dakota Access Pipeline was completed. But in the lawsuits itself, the court cited and said, yeah, you're right. The tribes were not consulted. The tribes treaty rights were violated. And so this project should be shut down. It was the inaction of the federal government that is allowing it to continue to go. But the legal analysis supports us that indigenous rights, the arguments for indigenous rights, the impact on treaty rights is actually having a tangible impact to stop these projects or to delay them significantly. I mean, we cannot ignore the fact that due to the Dakota Access Pipeline,

fight. There has been this renewed interest to divest from the fossil fuel industry. And the fossil fuel industry itself, the energy transfer partners, the parent company for DAPL itself, has said that indigenous resistance has cost them billions of dollars. And they are actually going after folks in the courts to try to hold them accountable. Of course, folks can say, well, there's other people, there's other factors to play in here, but you cannot ignore the time, the energy and the action that indigenous peoples have been taking all throughout this process and for over generations. You're basically saying that you can argue Native American rights, any kind of rights you

want to talk about. It doesn't get you anywhere, but money talks in this country. We are not blind to the fact that as we live in this capitalist system, that, you know, it is the levers of finance that really get the ball moving on projects, but it's also the levers of finance that stop projects in their track. And so with this report, you know, the hope and the intention of this is that different communities, different groups and organizations who are fighting their respective projects can use this in their advocacy work when they're going after the financiers of different projects and say, look, how can you put money

into a project that is violating human rights, that is violated indigenous rights, that is potentially increasing the risk of sexual violence upon, Native women and Native children, at the same time is probably going to be delayed. And there's a good chance it will be delayed because of the very indigenous peoples that they're encroaching upon or violated. Kyle, you also did the math on the battles indigenous people are fighting against projects that have not been canceled yet. And if they were, you're right in the report.

That would double the carbon benefits. Are you hoping that listing these numbers can help convince others to cancel those projects? Absolutely. Maybe President Biden might change his mind about line three? President Biden ought to change his mind about a lot of fossil fuel infrastructure projects and in fact actually has the authority to cancel a lot of these projects from happening. So yes, absolutely. We have two goals in highlighting the projects that are being resisted today. One is to give support and hope to the resistors that their fight matters and that it can have a huge impact if they are successful and also to send a message to policymakers that they have the ability

to stop these projects and that if they do so, not only is that good for the climate and good for our, frankly, our commitments as countries, the U.S. and Canada to improve, to reduce our emissions, but also good for other very important benefits like indigenous rights, environmental justice, the health and welfare of the communities, both indigenous and non-indigenous, who live, live right in the middle of these, where these projects would be cited. And the tar sands is a great example of where the preventing these pipelines has made a difference. The tar sands produce something in the order of 3.1 million barrels per day right now. It wasn't too long ago that the expectation for tar sands growth was something like close to double that, seven million

barrels per day. And those estimates are no longer the case because multiple pipelines that we're supposed to carry tar sands oil have been prevented. So there's a real shift in what we see in terms of production numbers because these fossil fuel pipelines have been canceled. There's an argument that says, well, if you don't build it, then they'll find another way to get the oil out or they'll find another way to get the fossil fuels out. And that's not what we see.

What we see is that these pipelines, this infrastructure, makes the difference between whether this fossil fuels flow out and eventually find their way into the atmosphere or whether they stay in the ground, which is where they should be. But you wouldn't expect, Kyle, for the industry and people's homes and heating to go cold turkey off of oil overnight or natural gas?

We're already seeing a clear energy transition. We've been seeing it for a long time, and we already have technologies available to make that transition off of fossil fuels. Countries and governments are already putting in place things like mandates on no new gas infrastructure for residential and commercial construction. So, no, it's not overnight, but it is already happening.

And what we need now is for governments to accelerate that transition and make it easier for people to transition away from fossil fuels. It's also important on the supply side that we prevent the fossil fuels from getting to market. because what these pipelines do is make it cheaper and easier for these fossil fuels to be consumed in the first place, making it cheaper and easier for people to access renewable energy, for renewable energy to supply people's homes, people's businesses. That's what we need more of. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios.

Dallas, do you agree, does success look like a transition to renewables for you and for indigenous people? Well, in a way, we don't have a choice. I guess, I mean, we do have a choice here. Do we want to continue the path that we're on, which is an addiction to fossil fuels to the detriment of many of our ecosystems and our livelihoods, not alone the billions of people who lives will be lost or are greatly impacted because of climate change? Or do we pick another route? You know, I think that our organization and many groups out there are working diligently to advocate for a just transition away from fossil fuels, to develop better local energy networks and energy systems, to create food systems and restructure in our society in a way that can make

life livable for all of us. And in order to do that, of course, we're going to have to give up some comforts. I mean, that's just a simple fact of it. And that's a big challenge here. We can't take our eyes away from the supply side nature of this fight. Look, most of these pipeline projects, they're not providing oil and gas for demand right now. A lot of these pipeline projects are being created to meet potential demand down the road. They're locking us in. And it's absurd for this idea that we're going to be saying, hey, we need to, it's a code red for climate. We need to take action.

but we're locking ourselves into more development. Like, it just doesn't make sense. At some point in which is right now, we need to see a rapid managed decline of fossil fuel production in order for us to have a future that's suitable and just for all society. Dallas Monday was Indigenous People's Day in the U.S. Do you see the fight against climate change as a good way of focusing attention on that day?

Absolutely. I mean, we just completed an action of civil disobedience in front of the White House on Monday, which we saw over 100 and I think 120 different people get arrested and in front of the White House. And a lot of those were frontline advocates and leaders from different fights across this country. We are connecting the dots in this struggle. everywhere from pipelines to fracking to offshore drilling to petrochemical hubs to Gulf Coast or as well as in Ohio River Valley. You know, we have to connect the dots because the energy is connected in that way. The energy industry is connected in that way. I think that Indigenous People's Day is a great day to refocus us on not only the stuff that has happened in the past and the atrocities and hardship that Native folks have gone through, but to also bring awareness to what's happening right now. The line three fight is not over. The Dakota Access Pipeline fight is not over.

There's a pipeline in the East Coast called a Mountain Valley Pipeline. It's a natural gas pipeline. There's Native folks standing up in the resistance to that right at this, as we currently speak. It's a chance that I encourage everybody to challenge ourselves to say, hey, how are we supporting Native folks right now so that we don't repeat the history of colonization that has plagued this country since it's very Foundation. Gentlemen, you've given us a lot to think about and talk about it. I want to thank you both for taking time to be with us today. Thank you. I appreciate it so much. Thank you. Dallas Goldtooth, an organizer with the Indigenous Environmental Network. He joined us from Chicago

and Kyle Gracie, research analyst at Oil Change International. He joined me from Pittsburgh. And that's about all the time we have for this hour. Here's Daniel Peter Schmidt with some of the folks who make our show possible. Thanks, Ira. Jennifer Fenwick is our director of institutional giving. Ariel Zitch is our education director. Beth Rami is our controller. Nadia Ortelt is our chief content officer. And I'm digital producer, Daniel Petersmith. Thanks for listening. And of course, BJ Leatherman composed our theme music. And if you missed any part of this program or you would like to hear it again, subscribe to our podcasts or ask your smart speaker to play Science Friday. Have a great weekend. I'm Ira Flato.