This article won’t be about the election, unlike most of the things you’ll read today. I am writing before the results come in. I have, at the time of this writing, no idea who will win the presidency or the Senate or even the House for that matter. But the election matters very little in the context of Standing Rock.
Both presidential candidates support the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) that threatens to pollute the drinking water of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe. When asked about the election, one protester said:
Which is fair.
The protesters should be frustrated and angry; they have a right to be. Say what you will about the choices for president this time around, but while the two we’re left with might be different in a host of issues, they are certainly united when it comes to their dedication to economic growth.
Which doesn’t sound like a bad thing. What’s wrong with economic growth, you might ask?
Well, nothing, really.
But, conversely, what’s good about it?
Because really, what does economic growth itself really mean for most people? If you are an economist or statistician, then yes, the “economy” means something for you. You might look at some upward-trending line on a graph or some data point from this quarter that turned out larger than what your statistical model predicted and use those pieces of data to make broad assessments as to the condition of the national economy to see whether it is growing or shrinking, healthy or unhealthy, etc.
But, I think we can agree that this is not what most Americans think of when they hear “economic growth.” More often than not, it is actually just a proxy for measuring how people are doing money-wise. For example, if the economy is growing, you’d expect a higher wage or an easier time finding a job, more businesses starting up and everyone having more money in their pockets. And, if the economy is shrinking, you might expect the opposite — more people losing their jobs, stagnant wages and less money in your pocket.
It should come as no shock that this is what ordinary Americans actually care about: not the fluctuations on some abstract statistic like GDP, but their livelihoods — their financial stability, their ability to provide for their kids and their general quality of life. And that makes sense because these are what people actually want in life. And when people hear “economic growth,” what they’re thinking of (mostly correctly) is an increased standard and quality of life, and that’s why people generally believe that “economic growth” is a good thing. But that’s not always the case.
And that brings us to Standing Rock. And sure, you can argue that the project “generates economic growth” until the cows come home, but the fact of the matter is, to do so requires an immense amount of blindness to the realities on the ground. “Economic growth” is not some end-all be-all justification for every negative consequence, and it certainly isn’t here. Because really, what is the so-called growth going to do for the Sioux?
Frankly, not a thing. The entire pipeline is projected to generate fewer than 40 permanent jobs according to the construction company’s own estimates, so even if the promised economic growth does happen (which is anybody’s guess), the Standing Rock Sioux don’t appear to gain anything from it. And, not only do they not get anything, their water becomes polluted, to add insult to injury.
In other words, with DAPL, not only do the Sioux not stand to gain anything, their livelihoods after the project actually look worse. And, if any economic growth does come about from DAPL, it will be at the expense of the Sioux.
So, the real question is, why would there be people who don’t understand why the protesters might be angry about this kind of arrangement?
Easy, because these are not the people who have to drink the contaminated water if the project is completed.
Contact Terence Zhao at zhaoy ‘at’ stanford.edu.