I'm Diné. I wrote this from Tucson, inside the blast radius. My water bill has doubled. The PFAS plume from Davis-Monthan is moving toward my wellfield. My skis are hanging in the garage gathering dust. The unsettling part is how little I had to invent. open.substack.com/pub/drlennec...
Snowpack collapses → Lake Powell hits dead pool → Glen Canyon Dam goes dark → grid loses its fastest power source → electricity prices spike → people in Portland and Phoenix can't afford AC → 5,600 die in the summer of 2027 Each link managed by a different institution.
New piece: THE COLORADO RIVER DOES NOT REACH 2030 8,000 words of near-future climate fiction built from today. Every element drawn from published science or political dynamics already in motion. It's about snow, heat, a dam, a grid, and a 74-year-old woman who couldn't afford her electricity bill.
This is the third essay in my series on the environmental movement’s crisis of relevance.
The first two diagnosed the institution. This one puts it in the body.
open.substack.com/pub/drlennec...
I built my work outside this ecosystem deliberately.
No institutional paycheck. No funder relationships to protect. I compromised enough to understand what compromise costs — and then I stopped.
I can recognize power. The first thing power does is make you dependent on it.
I get told my tone is too direct.
What I know — because people tell me out of earshot of the orgs that sign their paychecks — is that brown, poor, Indigenous, and plenty of white people throughout this world see exactly what I see.
They just can’t say it publicly. I can.
The environmental movement has three theories of change right now:
Bridge-building. Institutional DEI. Narrative change.
All three require the funder’s continued centrality. Communities most affected remain the object of the theory — not its authors.
The environmental groups celebrated closing the Navajo Generating Station in 2019 as a landmark victory.
Before a just transition plan existed.
My tribe is still waiting for the economic future the movement promised.
I have asthma. Coal and oil money funded my education. An EPA fellowship funded my PhD.
I didn’t learn about environmental injustice in a seminar. I lived it in every city I studied in. Cleveland. Pittsburgh. Detroit. The Navajo Nation.
My grandmother died years before him. Likely from the uranium dust he carried home in his clothes.
I think about the phone call I haven’t gotten yet. The one that tells me which aunt, uncle, or cousin got the cancer diagnosis.
That call comes for too many families near those mines.
My grandfather was a Navajo uranium miner. They removed his left lung before he was much older than I am now.
He spent the rest of his life watching the Four Corners plant build its smog on the horizon from his house in Shiprock.
Died from pneumonia.
The environmental movement asked me to find common ground with people who want me gone. Then told me my tone was the problem.
New essay. Thread 🧵
Really excited to see some of my recent writing is getting traction. I’m in the long game for issues on the environment winning the left elections but we have to clean house open.substack.com/pub/drlennec...
Thanks for sharing this piece - happy to chat more if it’s relevant to you - Len
Or not
this is excellent, and broadly relevant well outside of environmentalism open.substack.com/pub/drlennec...
Just dropped a dispatch from the NPR-A—America’s biggest public land unit, and arguably its first petroleum sacrifice zone.
We packrafted 140 miles through thawing permafrost, ancient trade routes, and the edge of a storm system that nearly stranded us.
Recently stepped away from all Meta platforms to create a space for deeper, more meaningful engagement online—and to build a more cohesive political and environmental movement through my work.
To old friends: great to see you here.
To new connections: welcome.
This is the one @1nativesoilnerd.bsky.social
Hey y'all I'm building a list of native scholars and academics out here in #nativesky #indigisky or whatever we are calling it.
I want to create a resource for those of us connected to the academy to connect.
Who should be on this list? Tag them below.
bsky.app/profile/did:...
A bridge over a very dry lake bed with a little water. The dark part of the bridge piers is the normal high water line
A dry lake bed with a stone arch bridge in the distance that was built in 1813
How bad is the drought in the northeast? Here’s the Youghiogheny River Lake Reservoir, at the PA/MD border. Notice the high water line on the bridge piers. Water level is so low it revealed a stone bridge in decent shape on the National Road built in 1813 & submerged when reservoir was built in 1944
Hi! I’m Cali. Colorado based RN, mom, Indigenous creator, political advocate, outdoor enthusiast.
Here to see what all the fuss is about 😏
I’ve been kicking around this thought as well. Let’s chat soon!
