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public interest
Biden Admin Confirms Dangers of LNG Exports But Won't Act to Block Them
"This study mirrors the Biden administration's entire four-year approach to advancing a clean energy future: weak and half-hearted," one advocate said.
Dec 17, 2024
Approving more liquefied natural gas exports would raise domestic energy prices, increase the pollution burden placed on local communities, and exacerbate the climate crisis, the Biden administration concluded in a long-awaited report released Tuesday.
However, the Department of Energy (DOE) stopped short of denying any pending or future approvals, passing the buck to the administration of President-elect Donald Trump, who has vocally supported the LNG boom.
"This study mirrors the Biden administration's entire four-year approach to advancing a clean energy future: weak and half-hearted," Food & Water Watch policy director Jim Walsh said in a statement. "Liquid natural gas exports systematically poison the most vulnerable frontline communities, pollute our air and water, and drive up domestic energy prices. We cannot continue to be victimized by the profit-driven agenda of fossil fuel corporations. President Biden must listen to the warnings of his own government by banning further LNG exports and rejecting pending LNG permits before he leaves office."
"DOE's long-awaited environmental and economic analyses demonstrate what environmental justice and frontline communities have been saying for years—liquefied natural gas export facilities are not in the public interest."
U.S. LNG exports have tripled in the last five years, making the country the leading gas exporter in the world. At the same time, the latest climate research has shown that—due to methane leaks across the LNG life cycle—the so-called "bridge fuel" is in fact worse for the climate than coal.
Following pressure from climate and environmental justice advocates, the Biden administration in January announced a pause on approving LNG exports to non-Free Trade Agreement countries while the DOE updated the studies it uses to determine whether or not gas exports are in the public interest, as Congress has authorized it to do under the Natural Gas Act.
Those updated studies were released Tuesday, along with a statement from Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm. Climate, consumer, and frontline advocates welcomed the findings themselves, which they said were largely consistent with their warnings and experience.
"DOE's long-awaited environmental and economic analyses demonstrate what environmental justice and frontline communities have been saying for years—liquefied natural gas export facilities are not in the public interest," Leslie Fields, the chief federal officer at WE ACT for Environmental Justice, said in a statement. "Not only do these projects compound public health and safety harms to communities, especially in the Gulf and for communities of color, but they also exacerbate the climate crisis and raise energy prices here at home."
Jamie Henn, the director of Fossil Free Media, said on social media that Granholm's statement was "even stronger than I expected."
In it, Granholm emphasized five key findings from the updated studies:
- LNG exports are booming, with the quantities already approved being sufficient to meet global demand for decades in 4 out of 5 scenarios.
- Increasing exports would boost the profits of export facility owners and generate jobs in the industry, but would raise gas prices for domestic industry and consumers overall. Within the U.S., "unfettered exports" would raise prices by more than 30% and add "well over" $100 to the average yearly household energy bill by 2050.
- LNG export facilities are concentrated in communities already exposed to fossil fuel industry pollution, with methane, volatile organic compounds, particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, and other contaminates raising mortality rates.
- Increased LNG exports would contribute to the climate crisis: They are more likely to supplant renewables than coal and add to global emissions in every scenario the DOE examined.
- Regulators should consider where LNG exports will be shipped. Demand in Europe is falling, while China is currently the leading importer and projected to remain so through 2050.
"Today's study makes clear that all pending export applications must be denied as being inconsistent with the public interest, and should result in a reassessment of existing exports to determine compatibility with the public interest," Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen's Energy Program, said in a statement. "Using LNG exports to provide energy abundance for China at the expense of higher utility bills for working Americans is not in the public interest."
Granholm stated clearly that "the effect of increased energy prices for domestic consumers combined with the negative impacts to local communities and the climate will continue to grow as exports increase."
Yet she also said the Biden administration would not act on the findings of the updated studies due to the timing of their release: The report's publication now triggers a 60-day comment period, and the inauguration is only a little more than a month away.
"Given that the comment period for the study will continue into the next administration—and that there are a limited number of applications that are concurrently ready for the DOE 'public interest' review—decisions about the future of LNG export levels will necessarily be made by future administrations," she said. "Our hope is that we can now assess the future of natural gas exports based on the facts and ensure authorizations are reviewed in a manner that truly advances the public interest of all the American people."
While the purpose of the DOE's updated studies had never been to deny or approve exports—rather to inform those decisions—advocates have been pushing the Biden administration to act on its findings. In particular, frontline Gulf groups are concerned about Calcasieu Pass 2 and Commonwealth LNG, two pending export facilities that are currently subject to supplemental environmental impact statements by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission due to concerns about their local impacts.
"We were hoping that this study would be released and with this study would come the denial of permits for these projects," frontline leader Roishetta Ozane of the Vessel Project of Louisiana said in a press briefing.
"It'll be hard for the Trump administration to completely ignore the finding that exports drive up costs for consumers. That's political dynamite."
Several groups responded to the study with renewed calls for permit denials.
"This study confirms that Donald Trump's plans to supercharge LNG exports will come at the expense of consumers and the climate," said Friends of the Earth senior energy campaigner Raena Garcia. "We cannot afford to prop up an industry that continues to threaten our people and the planet for profit. Over the next few weeks, it is not too late for the Biden administration to curb the deadly LNG export boom."
Walsh of Food & Water Watch said: "Secretary Granholm's admission that continuing LNG exports will drive up costs and harm vulnerable communities is a sad reflection on what we have been saying for the last decade. It is time for this administration to start matching its rhetoric with action, and reject new LNG exports while it still can."
But Henn told Common Dreams that this might be a losing battle.
"The administration has indicated it wants to follow the regular process and not jump ahead and deny permits before they leave office, only to have Trump reapprove them," Henn said. "We disagree and think denials would send a strong political signal and potentially strengthen legal challenges. It's unlikely we'll sway them with so little time left, but we're going to try."
Still, campaigners emphasized that the DOE's findings will strengthen the case of any community or group opposing LNG exports going forward.
"This report will serve as a tool for us in fighting against these projects," Ozane said.
This remains the case despite the Trump administration's pro-fossil fuel stance and history of running roughshod over rules and regulations.
"Trump will of course try and ignore the study, but it gives us new political, legal, and diplomatic arguments," Henn told Common Dreams. "Politically, it'll be hard for the Trump administration to completely ignore the finding that exports drive up costs for consumers. That's political dynamite. Legally, if Trump just ignores the findings of this report and rushes approval, that opens the door for challenges."
Natural Resources Defense Council senior attorney Gillian Giannetti pointed out in a press briefing that "because these studies are in the public record, the failure to properly consider them and their relevance would be unlawful under the Administrative Procedure Act."
Slocum of Public Citizen said that groups like his have legal intervention status and can ask a court to review any Trump decision.
"Any court is going to want to know—what does the administrative record say?" he noted. "And this report greatly strengthens the case that requested LNG exports are not consistent with the public interest. So a court can toss out a Trump admin approval."
"These studies show clearly that LNG exports are in gas executives' best interest and nobody else's."
Henn added that the findings could slow the LNG buildout both diplomatically and economically.
"Diplomatically, the climate data in this report makes it less likely that our allies, all of whom have signed the Paris agreement, will be as interested in importing dirty U.S. gas," he told Common Dreams.
"Finally," he concluded, "this report will cause tremors on Wall Street. This report and Secretary Granholm's strongly worded letter indicate that future Democratic administrations won't likely support new export facilities. Since these are long-term investment decisions, that uncertainty will slow down financing for new projects."
The report also undermines Trump's economic argument that more fossil fuel production is better for everyone, revealing it instead for another giveaway to the wealthy.
"Despite claims from the incoming Trump administration that it wants to lower prices, the truth is they are putting billionaire fossil fuel donors ahead of everyday Americans," Greenpeace USA deputy climate program director John Noël said in a statement. "The record is crystal clear: Increasing LNG exports will drive up costs for domestic businesses and consumers. Full stop. Any further investment in LNG will only exacerbate the cost-of-living crisis, while enriching gas industry CEOs who don't have to experience the fallout of living near an export terminal."
Lauren Parker, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity's Climate Law Institute, agreed, saying, "These studies show clearly that LNG exports are in gas executives' best interest and nobody else's."
Parker concluded, "If Trump wants to drive up dangerous gas exports, he's going to have to answer for causing more deadly storms, condemning the Rice's whale to extinction, and socking consumers with higher costs."
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'No Way' We Let Trump Privatize Postal Service, Say Progressives
Instead of privatization, said one Democratic lawmaker, "Fire his former pick for postmaster, DeJoy, and let a real professional run it like it should be run. The first priority is delivering mail. Cut the Pentagon's bloat if you want to save money."
Dec 15, 2024
After weekend reporting indicated President-elect Donald Trump is actively thinking about avenues to privatize the U.S. Postal Service, progressives decried any such efforts and once again directed their ire on the much-reviled Postmaster General, appointed to run the USPS during Trump's first term.
The Washington Post reported Saturday, citing people familiar with recent talks within the incoming team's camp, that Trump is "keen" on a privatization scheme that would give the USPS to for-profit, private interests.
According to the Post:
Trump has discussed his desire to overhaul the Postal Service at his Mar-a-Lago estate with Howard Lutnick, his pick for commerce secretary and the co-chair of his presidential transition, the people said. Earlier this month, Trump also convened a group of transition officials to ask for their views on privatizing the agency, one of the people said.
Told of the mail agency's annual financial losses, Trump said the government should not subsidize the organization, the people said. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect private conversations.
Trump's hostility to government programs that serve the public interest—including Medicare, Social Security, public education, and consumer protection agencies—is well-documented.
"The United States Postal Service is a crucial asset that was built and is owned by all of us, and there is zero mandate from the public to turn it over to an oligarch."
Trump's attacks on the Postal Service, including his blessing of the 2020 appointment of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a former logistics industry executive, sparked alarm about Republican desires to gut the agency from the inside out.
While calls to fire DeJoy from the USPS top leadership post persisted during the last year of Trump's first term and remained constant during Biden's time in office, he remains Postmaster General despite repeated accusations that his ultimate aim is to diminish the agency to such an extend that it will be more possible to justify its dismantling.
While the Post's reporting on Saturday stated that Trump's "specific plans for overhauling the Postal Service" in his upcoming term "were not immediately clear," it did quote Casey Mulligan, who served as a top economic advisor during the last administration, who touted the performance of the private sector compared to a Postal Service he claimed was too slow and costly.
"We didn't finish the job in the first term, but we should finish it now," said Mulligan.
Progressive defenders of the Postal Service responded by denouncing any future effort to privatize the agency, which is one of the most popular among the U.S. public.
"The Post Office is in our constitution," said Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) on Saturday. "There is no way we let Donald Trump privatize it. Fire his former pick for postmaster, DeJoy, and let a real professional run it like it should be run. The first priority is delivering mail. Cut the Pentagon's bloat if you want to save money."
Former Ohio state senator Nina Turner also defended the USPS, saying that "72% of Americans approve of the U.S. Postal Service; it's how many seniors receive medication, especially in rural areas."
Progressive critics of right-wing attacks on the Postal Service have noted for years that the "financial performance" issues directly result from the "burdensome and unnecessary" pre-funding of liabilities mandated by the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act. This act forces the USPS to pay billions yearly toward future postal worker retirement benefits.
"No matter what your partisan stripe," said Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University, "we should be able to agree the United States Postal Service is a crucial asset that was built and is owned by all of us, and there is zero mandate from the public to turn it over to an oligarch."
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Why Elon Musk's Plan to Defund Public Broadcasting Must Be Stopped
Undermining a publicly funded media system makes perfect sense if clearing a path for graft, corruption, and a lack of accountability is the goal.
Nov 26, 2024
Buried deep in the 10th paragraph of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy's Wall Street Journal screed on their new Department of Government Efficiency is a line that should worry anyone who cares about the accountability role media must play to sustain the health of any democracy
“DOGE will help end federal overspending by taking aim at the $500 billion plus in annual federal expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended," they write. One of the items in topping their list of targets is the $535-million annual congressional allocation to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the entity that allocates federal funds to public-media outlets across the country
Zeroing out federal funding for public media has long been a dream of Republicans. But it’s one that’s never come true. Past efforts have run up against a noisy public, including people of every political persuasion, that believes federal funding for public media is taxpayer money well spent.
If anything has a popular mandate, it’s the use of federal funds to support public media.
In 2005, I stood in front of the Capitol Building alongside Clifford the Big Red Dog and then-Sen. Hillary Clinton to protest a George W. Bush-era push to strip public broadcasting of nearly half its funding. “What parents and kids get from public TV is an incredible bargain,” then-Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said at the event. “The question is not, ‘Can we afford it?; but rather, ‘Can we afford to lose it?’”
Millions of people wrote and called their members of Congress to defend institutions like NPR and PBS, a mass mobilization that succeeded in saving public broadcasting from the ax.
The high cost of losing public media
Twenty years later, we face similar headwinds. In 2025, Republicans will control the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives. They will be acting on the false belief that the November election delivered them a mandate to disassemble the federal government and remake it in Donald Trump’s authoritarian image.
But the actual numbers tell a different story. Trump won by a razor-thin margin, securing less than half of the popular vote (a mandate denying 49.9 percent to Kamala Harris’ 48.3 percent). And the Republican majority on the Hill isn’t large enough to dictate such drastic cuts to federal spending; only a fraction of their members would need to defect for Musk and Ramaswamy’s extreme cost-cutting proposals to fail. Having Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene lead the effort in the House is a move that could easily backfire as well.
Undermining a publicly funded media system makes perfect sense if clearing a path for graft, corruption, and a lack of accountability is the goal.
If anything has a popular mandate, it’s the use of federal funds to support public media. According to several polls, Americans routinely rank PBS among the most trusted institutions in the country, and a “most valuable” service taxpayers receive for their money, outranked only by national defense. Moreover, large majorities of the public believe the amount of federal funding that public broadcasting receives is just right, or even too little.
Comparatively, this is true. The United States already has one of the lowest levels of federal funding of public media in the developed world—at approximately $1.50 per capita. That’s nothing next to the United Kingdom, which spends more than $81 per person, or France, which spends more than $75. Head further north and the numbers head north as well: Denmark's per-person spending is more than $93, Finland’s more than $100, and Norway’s more than $110. And it isn’t just a European trend: Japan (+$53/capita) and South Korea (+$14) show their appreciation for publicly funded media at levels that put the U.S. outlay to shame.
It’s about accountability journalism
Trump, Musk, Ramaswamy, and their ilk don’t just want to freeze out Frontline and foreclose on Sesame Street, but to pull the plug on every network, station and program that gets public support—from Gulf States Newsroom to the Mountain West News Bureau, from Pacifica Radio to New Jersey Spotlight News.
And that’s the point. The Trump purge of federal spending is not just about downsizing the government so billionaires like Musk will have no obligation to pay their fair share in taxes. It’s about stripping our democratic system of all accountability mechanisms, including the sorts of journalism that hold our country’s rich and powerful responsible for their misdeeds. (Republicans are also pushing legislation that would empower President Trump’s Treasury Department to falsely label any nonprofit news outlet as a “terrorist supporting organization” and strip it of the tax-exempt status it needs to survive.)
Undermining a publicly funded media system makes perfect sense if clearing a path for graft, corruption, and a lack of accountability is the goal.
The Trump purge of federal spending is not just about downsizing the government so billionaires like Musk will have no obligation to pay their fair share in taxes. It’s about stripping our democratic system of all accountability mechanisms...
A 2021 study co-authored by University of Pennsylvania professor (and Free Press board chair) Victor Pickard finds that more robust funding for public media strengthens a given country’s democracy—with increased public knowledge about civic affairs, more diverse media coverage and lower levels of extremist views.
Moreover, the loss of the quality local journalism and investigative reporting that nonprofit outlets provide has far-reaching societal harms. The Democracy Fund’s Josh Stearns, who’s also a former Free Press staff member, has cataloged the growing body of evidence showing that declines in local news and information lead to drops in civic engagement. “The faltering of newspapers, the consolidation of TV and radio, and the rising power of social media platforms are not just commercial issues driven by the market,” Stearns writes. “They are democratic issues with profound implications for our communities.”
For now, Trump, Musk, and Ramaswamy are leveraging a lie about a popular mandate to redefine the “public interest” as anything that Trump wants. Trump’s totalitarian dream will not be possible with a thriving, publicly funded and independent media sector. To save this kind of accountability journalism we need people to make as much noise today as they have in the past, and deliver our own mandate for a public-media system that stands against Trump’s brand of authoritarianism.
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