The official announcement came this week that in early February—a dozen years after a quite similar protest helped nationalize the Keystone pipeline fight—protesters will gather for (very civil) civil disobedience outside the Department of Energy, hoping to persuade Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and her crew that the time has come to pause the permitting of new LNG export terminals.
You can sign up here. You don’t have to risk arrest to participate; there will be rallies each of the three days (Feb. 6, 7 and 8) that the protest is underway, and plans are building for distributed support actions elsewhere in the country. If you are willing to engage in civil disobedience, there will be a training session the night before each of the actions. Risking arrest is a big deal, but you will be in the supportive company of calm people who know what they’re doing. We’ve also got online nonviolence training underway at Third Act, and since we don’t check IDs those of you under 60 are welcome to join in!
To review: for several years, local organizers in Louisiana and Texas have been trying to call attention to the vast buildout of LNG export facilities. It took a while, but national groups have joined in decisively behind them. You can read the pubic letter that these campaigners issued Monday night. The coalition issued a press release Tuesday that read in part:
Over the last two months, stopping LNG export facilities, including the massive CP2 project in Southwest Louisiana, has become a top priority for the environmental justice and climate movement. Videos opposing the projects have generated more than 12.5 million views across social media platforms, driving more than 300,000 signatures on petitions urging DOE to pause approvals. In December, more than 170 scientists wrote a letter urging President Biden to stop what they called the “staggering” buildout of export facilities. The administration’s support for LNG exports has also caused what The Hill called a “revolt” within the Democratic Party, with dozens of members of congress opposing the buildout.
The arguments against DOE granting new export licenses will be familiar to those who have been reading this newsletter, but:
- They produce an ungodly quantity of greenhouse gas emissions. Just the next proposed plant, CP2 in Louisiana, will produce 20 times more emissions than the controversial Willow oil complex over its lifetime. If the industry gets everything they’ve asked for, US LNG exports will produce more greenhouse gas emissions than…Europe. All of it. This is the biggest fossil fuel expansion project currently underway on planet earth.
- It’s even dirtier than coal—you get carbon when you burn it, and methane when it leaks before you burn it. And since we now live in a world where solar and wind energy—which produce no greenhouse gas emissions—are the cheapest power, that’s almost criminally dumb
- We told the world in Dubai last month that the time had come to “transition” off fossil fuels. No possible definition of transition includes building giant terminals for the export of fossil fuels that are designed to last a half century.
- It’s almost unbelievably nasty for the people who have to live near these facilities—constant flaring and leaking. Read Roishetta Ozane’s account
- For those Americans still dependent on natural gas for heating and cooking, exporting it to Asia drives up the price. Even American manufacturers know this—Dow Chemical, of all people, quit the National Association of Manufacturers a decade ago over their support for LNG exports. Dow can probably afford the extra cost; the family struggling to heat their home not so much.
- All of which means that the polling shows huge opposition to these exports. That opposition, in turn, means that the Biden administration can do themselves and the planet a good turn by pausing the permitting process. And that’s all anyone is asking for. Again, the modest demands of this protest are worth noting
We need the administration to stop CP2—the next big facility up for approval—and all other facilities by committing to a serious pause to rework the criteria for public interest designation, incorporating the latest science and economics, before any such facility is permitted.
The only real case I’ve heard anyone in the administration even try to make for this boondoggle of a policy relates to Ukraine—the need to supplant Russian gas supplies in the wake of Putin’s grotesque invasion has now been met, and the world is awash in LNG.
In fact, the argument is so one-sided here that I continue to think the administration may do the right thing even without a protest—and I’m hopeful that sometime in the next few weeks I’ll get to write a newsletter saying that organizers have been able to call the whole thing off (and get to work campaigning against Donald Trump, who would clearly sell anything to anyone given half a chance). Indeed, late Monday night Politico Pro moved a story (behind a paywall) saying that administration officials were “reviewing the criteria it uses to approve new liquefied natural gas export projects, according to two people familiar with the plan, a move that could tap the brakes on the fast-growing industry that has made the United States the world’s biggest shipper of the fuel." If that pans out, then the protest will be unnecessary, as organizers have made clear.
The organizers—led by those frontline advocates like Roishetta Ozane, Travis Dardar, John Beard, Sharon Lavigne, Jo Banner, James Hiatt, Gwen Jones, Melanie Oldham, Robin Schneider, and Anne Rolfes—have also made it very clear they don’t want hotheads coming to DC:
For those of who do head to Washington, we agree to keep this action peaceful in word, mood, and action; if your level of frustration is too high to insure that, please stay home and think of other ways to help. We are committed to calm, to dignity, and to giving the Biden administration every possible chance to prove that they are climate leaders on the dirty energy side of the climate crisis as well as the clean.
Some part of me always thinks it’s crazy to have to wear handcuffs to get the powers-that-be to pay attention to physics. But I’ve done it a dozen times, and sometimes it actually works. So I will try it again if need be, and I hope some of you will join me. The authors of the letter have a noble way of looking at it that’s worth mulling over:
“2023 saw the hottest weather on this planet in at least 125,000 years; we think it is an honor to rise in defense of the planet we love, and the places where we live. Thank you for considering joining in.”
