What is the difference between the story of the Standing Rock protest and the story of protest over Wind Turbine construction?
Is the answer that one group of people are climate champions fighting the evil machine for the greater good of mankind and the other is a tale of selfish individuals preventing the deployment of renewable energy?
Or
Is the answer nothing.
When a group of people protect their own territory, is the action any different depending on what they are protecting it from. Perhaps only from those who do not have a stake in the territory and look on from afar.
In the case of the Standing Rock protests, the message through the media is one of environmental activism, the activists are cast as defenders or in this case more specifically water protectors. Articles depict a tribe of high moral or religious heritage fighting to maintain their traditions.
Similarly casinos built on Indian land also violate these traditions and are sometimes built over sacred land and have been similarly protested. The common thread between thse actions by the natives is clearly not the greater impact on the environment, but the land. Noting that large number of white middle class activists have not joined in with the casino protests.
The point of this post is not to suggest that the native americans are just being selfish, but to raise the question over whether this is really a dispute over climate change or one over territory.
This is an important distinction, as many are falsely reassuring themselves that there are large numbers of people that care about climate change enough to protest whereas the reality is that these people are rare and the majority of protests are actually founded on self interest, a more common human trait.
Unfortunately climate change is essentially an issue of pollution of the atmosphere and if people do not consider it their territory, it is likely that there will ever be sufficient protest to make a difference.