A Red Paper by Onondaga Nation, Haudenosaunee Environmental Task Force and American Indian Law Alliance.
As we work together to attempt to save the Mother Earth from climate chaos, it is important not to be mis-lead by false claims. We were told that fracked gas [methane] was a “bridge fuel”, as were to transition to renewable energy generations. We learned that fracking was a bridge to nowhere and that fracked gas is actually worse than burning coal, due to the extreme impacts of methane on climate change. Today, New York State and Bill Gates have taken the position that nuclear reactor generated electricity is “green”; but we know this is false, short sighted and once again, fails to account for the entire life cycle of the uranium/nuclear reactor industry.One of the voices that has here-to-fore been excluded from this discussion is that of Indigenous peoples. On December 15, 2018, the Onondaga Nation, joined by the Haudenosaunee Environmental Task Force and the American Indian Law Alliance, filed a motion to join, as Amici Curiae,1 the state court challenge to Governor Cuomo’s 2015 “Clean Energy Standard”, which used the false claim of “clean” nuclear energy to meet his goal of 50 % clean power production for the state by 2030.This red paper is largely taken from the text of the Nation’s General Counsel’s Affirmation in support of that Amici motion, but the legal text that was necessary to meet the standards for such motion has been removed, to make it more readable and hopefully, more useable.
Amicus curiae means “friend of the court” and it is a limited appearance in law suits–not joining as a full party, but raising facts and arguments about issues which other parties have failed to bring to the court.↩
