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roishietta ozane
This Could Be Start of the Biggest Climate Victory of All
Yes, there are always devils in the details. And it doesn’t guarantee long-term victory, but it sets up a process where victory is possible.
Jan 24, 2024
A few minutes ago The New York Times moved a story saying that the White House has decided to pause permitting for new LNG terminals—if it’s true, and I think it is, this is the biggest thing a U.S. president has ever done to stand up to the fossil fuel industry.
The Times story begins with the next project in line, the mammoth CP2 export terminal planned for Louisiana:
The Energy Department is required to weigh whether the export terminal is in “the public interest,” a subjective determination. But now, the White House has requested an additional analysis of the climate impacts of CP2.
Natural gas, which is primarily composed of methane, is cleaner than coal when it is burned. But methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas in the short term, compared with carbon dioxide, and it can leak anywhere along the supply chain, from the production wellhead to processing plants to the stovetop. The process of liquefying gas to make it suitable for transport is incredibly energy intensive as well, creating yet more emissions.
Whatever new criteria is used to evaluate CP2 would be expected to be applied to the other 16 proposed natural gas terminals that are awaiting approval.
Yes, there are always devils in the details. And it doesn’t guarantee long-term victory—it sets up a process where victory is possible (to this point, the industry has gotten every permit they’ve asked for). But I have a beer in my hand. If the administration backtracks, it will be a disappointment of epic proportion that I can’t imagine them doing it. Here’s what veteran energy analyst Jeremy Symons, who has been a rock in this fight, just emailed campaigners:
I am heartened by several things in this article, including, critically, that the full array of LNG projects are potentially implicated. Also, this: "Within the White House, there is little division over the decision to delay CP2, in part because it is not seen as a major energy security issue, said people familiar with the discussion. That’s because the United States is already producing and exporting so much gas. That capacity is set to nearly double over the next four years, making the need for CP2 less urgent."
As you all know, this is a sea change in how the administration has viewed LNG. It is not by any means a final victory, but we KNOW that the facts will win the day when given a fair hearing. We have never had a fair hearing, until now.
One reason to think the Times story is correct is that the right wing is already screaming. Mitch McConnell took to the floor of the Senate to say
“This move would amount to a functional ban on new LNG export permits,” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said on the Senate floor Wednesday. “The administration’s war on affordable domestic energy has been bad news for American workers and consumers alike.”
As usual, he’s wrong. Exporting natural gas of course drives the price up for American consumers. That’s how economics work—so President Joe Biden’s stand is an actual live inflation reduction act.
And the only other argument that the fossil fuel industry has mustered—that Europe needs more gas in the wake of Putin’s invasion—is simply wrong. We’re already sending them plenty—the world is awash in cheap gas. As Ben Jealous (head of the Sierra Club and former head of the NAACP) said in The Washington Post this morning:
the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis makes clear that European demand for natural gas will steadily drop in the years ahead, because the continent, in the wake of Vladimir Putin’s invasion, dramatically stepped up its conversion to renewable energy.
This decision is brave, because Donald Trump (the man who pulled us out of the Paris climate accords on the grounds that climate change is a hoax) will attack it mercilessly. But it’s also very very savvy: Biden wants young people, who care about climate above all, in his corner. They were angry about his dumb approval of the Willow oil project in Alaska. CP2 alone would produce 20 times the greenhouse gas emissions of Willow. And of course everyone understands that if Biden is not reelected this win means nothing—it will disappear on day one when the ‘dictator’ begins his relentless campaign to ‘drill drill drill.’
I’m holding my breath as I type this post. After pouring my heart into this fight for the last six months it seems almost too good to be true. But there are people who have been pouring their hearts into it for much longer than that. I just got off the phone with the marvelous Roishetta Ozane and she was in tears of joy, so I soon joined her in that condition. There’s James Hiatt, John Beard, Travis Dardar, Ann Rolfes, and many many more like them down on the Gulf, and people like Rev Yearwood of the Hip Hop Caucus who are at home both in the bayous and in the D.C. swamp. There’s the wonder-workers at Third Act who started conjuring together what now looks like it may be an unnecessary protest action in D.C. next month—even this morning they were wrestling with questions like “can we use upper bunkbeds to house people coming for the protest?” There’s a huge pick-up crew of hardy souls from the big environmental groups like NRDC, LCV, and all the other mighty initials; there are TikTok magicians like Alex Haraus; and there are and remarkable behind-the-scenes coordinators like Jamie Henn and Maura Cowley. I could go on almost endlessly, and I imagine I will in the weeks ahead.
The Times gave me entirely too much credit (and, ironically, so did The Wall Street Journal yesterday in their editorial opposing this move, where they called me “chief climate lobbyist”). It was actually, well, you who rose to the call. When I started writing about this at summer’s end, it was hard to get people all that interested in “LNG export,” which does not sound on its face like that sexy a topic. But man did you go to work—writing letters, making calls, signing up to go to jail. I just want to say thanks. This community gets things done.
When we fight, we sometimes win. More often than I’d guess, actually.
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Climate Leaders Announce February Sit-In to Stop LNG
"I won't allow for them to continue to poison my kids," one Gulf Coast environmental justice advocate said.
Jan 09, 2024
Climate advocates and frontline community leaders published a letter Tuesday urging concerned individuals to join them in Washington, D.C., in early February for a sit-in at the Department of Energy where they will demand that it end the expansion of liquefied natural gas exports.
Stopping the LNG buildout has emerged as a major priority for the climate movement in recent months, as just one proposed project, Venture Global's Calcasieu Pass 2 (CP2) facility, would emit 20 times more climate pollution than the controversial Willow oil drilling project in Alaska. But CP2 is only one of more than 20 LNG export facilities planned for the Gulf Coast, which would have combined emissions that exceed those of the European Union or 850 coal plants, Stop LNG said in a statement.
"If [President Joe Biden] wants to be a true climate president, his administration will stop the approval of new LNG facilities. If not we'll keep pushing until they do," letter signatory and Gulf Coast environmental justice organizer Roishetta Ozane wrote on social media. "I won't allow for them to continue to poison my kids."
The action is planned for February 6-8 at the Department of Energy.
"We're writing to ask you to do something hard but important: Come to Washington D.C. in the middle of this winter, to join a demonstration and, if you can, risk arrest in a large-scale civil disobedience action," the letter—which was signed by several prominent activists including Alexandria Villaseñor, Bill McKibben, Jane Fonda, Rebecca Solnit, and Varshini Prakash—begins.
The planned direct action builds on months of pressure on the administration to stop the planned expansion of LNG exports, including a petition to the DOE signed by more than 300,000 people and a letter to Biden signed by more than 170 scientists. Polling from Data for Progress and Fossil Free Media found that 60% of likely voters would support the Biden administration limiting LNG exports.
"We need the DOE to tell the president the truth: Expanding LNG damages our climate, and economy, and the communities forced to live alongside these facilities."
"It's time to convince the Department of Energy to stop licensing new export terminals for liquefied natural gas," Tuesday's letter reads. "Time after time they've approved these proposals, so the U.S. is now the biggest exporter of gas on Earth—and that volume could quadruple if the industry has its way. There's no bigger climate bomb left on planet Earth."
There are signs the administration is paying attention to the growing clamor and may be open to a change in policy. On Monday, Politico reported that the DOE was reviewing its decision-making process for approval LNG projects to make sure that it was considering the climate, economic, and security impacts.
"This would be smart policy and good politics," Jamie Henn of Fossil Free Media posted in response to the news.
The letter states that organizers "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 letter reads.
"We need the DOE to tell the president the truth: Expanding LNG damages our climate, and economy, and the communities forced to live alongside these facilities," it continues. "That includes the land, water, and air in Louisiana and Texas, where most of these facilities are built—it's why some of us have fought on the front lines for years. We've rushed kids with asthma attacks to the hospital, seen our fishing spots and beaches polluted with chemicals, and breathe air filled with poisons everyday. We know what's at stake."
The letter writers said that they had committed "to keep this action peaceful in word, mood, and action."
Those who cannot travel to D.C. may participate in solidarity actions from their home. Those who do plan to participate should sign up on stoplng.org. They will need to complete online training, including one session the night before risking arrest.
"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," the letter concludes. "Thank you for considering joining in."
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The Future of Climate Action Doesn’t End With the Outcome of COP28
Language doesn’t translate into action; it just gives activists one more weapon to use when they return from Dubai to the nations, states, cities, and towns where actual change does or does not get made.
Dec 09, 2023
For two weeks every December, the giant global climate meeting—this year with at least 70,000 delegates, lobbyists, activists, and journalists enjoying the tacky spaceport that is Dubai—provides a cascade of feelings. This year that intensity is concentrated on a sentence in the “global stocktake” section: There’s much drama around whether it will include the phrase “phaseout of fossil fuels.” Friday morning’s update: Canada, gentle giant of the north, has been drafted to draft the relevant sentence.
“We have been asked by the UAE presidency to help find common language that will be acceptable to all parties,” its environment minister Steven Guilbeault toldThe Guardian. “This is what we will be doing in the coming days with many of our allies both north and south,” he said.
“I am confident we have to leave Dubai and COP28 with some language on fossil fuels. Will it be everything we want it to be? We’ll have to see. Even if it’s not as ambitious as some would want, it would still be a historic moment. I’ve been coming to COP since COP1 in 1995 in Berlin. It would be the first time in almost 30 years of international negotiations that we can agree on language regarding fossil fuels.”
I hope every American fighting the good fight in Dubai is ready to come home and fight the real fight here.
Which should tell you something about the climate negotiations, by the way: That it’s taken 28 annual sessions to maybe include some language about the thing that is, you know, the source of the problem is a reminder of the fundamental flaw in the whole process. It is designed less to solve a crisis than to guard the interests of the world’s powers (both political and economic) as they relate to that crisis. This week it’s the head of the Saudi delegation and the conference chair, from host UAE, who are playing the villain, but it’s always somebody. What that means is, the outcomes at COP are just a reflection of the current state of the world’s zeitgeist; if we’ve done enough work to mobilize enough people, then that political pressure is reflected in progress in negotiations.This doesn’t mean the COPs are absurd—given the realities of power, you have to have some forum that lets the world talk things out and pressure each other, and most of the people in attendance are doing useful work. But the COP gives the appearance that it is somehow legislating, which it is not. Let’s say, for instance, that Guilbeault manages to convince everyone to include some phrase about phasing out fossil fuels into the text. It will be vague, ambiguous, unconnected to any particular time—and it will have no authority.
That doesn’t mean it’s useless—the decision, at the behest of small island nations, to include the 1.5°C target in the Paris text arguably reoriented the way the world thought about the climate challenge, and produced real change. But it does mean that language doesn’t translate into action; it just gives activists one more weapon to use when they return from Dubai to the nations, states, cities, and towns (and stock markets) where actual change does or does not get made. Canada, for instance, is currently building big new pipelines to increase its production of tarsands oil and natural gas; if Guilbeault produces good language in the draft he’ll have handed Canadian activists a cudgel with which to beat him around the head and shoulders (and its possible that that’s what he wants; he was, after all, the longtime director of Greenpeace Quebec). But it won’t produce change by itself: Alberta, for instance, continues to threaten to break up the country if any kind of cap is imposed on its oil business.
An even better example is the world’s largest hydrocarbon producer and exporter, the US of A. Our representatives to the COP—which so far have included the vice-president (Kamala Harris), the former secretary of state and now climate envoy (John Kerry), and the former chief of staff to Obama and now a senior adviser to the president (John Podesta)—may or may not sign off on “phaseout” (as I explained last week, Kerry is plumping for ‘phaseout of unabated fossil fuels.’) But even if they do, it won’t necessarily mean much—so far this same constellation of worthies has approved every single proposed new LNG export facility that now threaten a final destabilization of the planet’s climate.
And even if they did the right thing, well—one Donald Trump, currently leading in presidential polls, said last week that he would happily come to work as a ‘dictator’ on the very first day of his presidency, in order to ‘drill drill drill.’ If anyone thinks he will be slowed by the language of an agreement initialed by a bunch of functionaries in Dubai, I’d like to sell you the deed to the world’s tallest building, which as it happens is in Dubai.
So the most important thing that happened this week at the COP may have been the attack on those LNG export plans by 250 environmental groups, an attack voiced eloquently as always by Louisiana activist Roishietta Ozane, who said “there’s nothing natural about natural gas.” Say, for argument’s sake, that those groups won (and stay tuned—by next week I’ll have info on how you can help; for the moment, save up some bail money). If they did, and the Biden administration decided to halt this biggest of all fossil fuel buildouts, then the phaseout of fossil fuels would have taken an actual step. I hope every American fighting the good fight in Dubai is ready to come home and fight the real fight here.
And even if we win that fight on LNG, we still need to defeat Trump come November, or else the effort to rein in coal, oil, and gas will take at least a four-year hiatus, and not just in America. Our political dysfunction is at the root of the failures of the COP negotiations (the rest of the world long since figured out that the U.S. senate would never have 66 votes for an actual treaty, so instead we have this jury-rigged system of voluntary pledges). But we can, as President Joe Biden showed with the IRA, overcome that dysfunction from time to time; the better we do, the better the planet does.
A new poll released Friday morning by CNN should give us heart—it shows three quarters of Americans want government policies that would slash emissions in half this decade; I mean, damn, half of Republicans think so. That’s the result of past activism, and it shows we can win this fight. But the action is right here, and in all the right heres around the planet, as much as it is in Dubai.
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