If you read Steve Coll's 2012 book Private Empire, you might come away with the impression that Rex Tillerson was a more effective diplomat as ExxonMobil CEO than he was as Secretary of State.
Coll makes a convincing case that Exxon functions as a sovereign nation, using its economic and political clout to get its way, particularly in oil-bearing developing nations. The book covers most of Tillerson's decade-long reign at Exxon, as well as that of his predecessor, Lee "Iron Ass" Raymond.
Tillerson's corporate grandeur – his last known compensation package was $27 million a year, with access to nearly a quarter billion in Exxon stock – shrank to a $187,000 government salary, with benefits including being humiliated by the Commander-in-Chief.
In early October, President Trump used his favorite diplomatic pouch – Twitter – to tell Tillerson to "not waste his time" with diplomacy toward North Korea. Ouch.
Soon after, Tillerson reportedly called his boss a "f*cking moron." When questioned about the alleged statement, he didn't confirm or deny. Trump responded in an interview with Forbes, challenging his Secretary of State to an IQ test.
In his Exxon career, Tillerson issued lukewarm acknowledgements of the human influence on climate change even while ExxonMobil funded candidates, advocacy groups, and at least one scientist working to deny climate impacts. The Los Angeles Times and Inside Climate News published investigations revealing that Exxon knew of the dangers of climate change for decades. The Climate Investigations Center released documents linking scientist Willie Soon's funding from Southern Company and ExxonMobil to Soon's scientific papers with cooked-to-order conclusions.
Both before and after his rise to CEO, Tillerson traveled the petro-world to cut deals with many of the 200 nations where Exxon does business. He developed particularly strong ties with Russia, and built partnerships between ExxonMobil and Rosneft, a state-owned oil company. In 2013, Russian President Vladimir Putin awarded Tillerson the Russian Order of Friendship.
Tillerson's Exxon maintained its status as a prime environmental villain, even as it embraced a couple of pro-environment positions. Since 2007, the oil giant has also voiced at least tepid support of a carbon tax.
In 2012, Tillerson endorsed the Law of the Sea Treaty, which would offer some protection against a free-for-all in fisheries or seabed mining. In 2014, the CEO of America's largest natural gas producer joined his affluent neighbors in a lawsuit to halt construction of a water tower intended to serve fracking operations near the affluent enclave of Bartonville, Texas. The 180-foot tower would have been within sight of Tillerson's 83-acre horse farm.
The apparent hypocrisy of a fracking baron practicing NIMHBY (Not In My Horses' Back Yard) led to a media uproar. Tillerson withdrew from the suit two months later following the wave of bad press. The remaining plaintiffs, led by neighbor Dick Armey, the former House Majority Leader, won. The tower was ordered dismantled.
In his brief government career, Tillerson pushed back against Trump's disdain for the Paris Climate Accord. Compared to his counterparts at Interior and EPA, Rex-T's footprint on global environmental issues was modest—perhaps because dozens of key State Department posts went unfilled, including the two top environment-related sub-Cabinet positions.
As he left the State Department, Tillerson skipped the pro forma thank you to President Trump. Not that he needs the money, but the publisher's advance for a tell-all book on his year in Washington would be immense. I'd put it on my shelf next to Private Empire.
Sign of the times, or greenwash? Norwegian oil giant Statoil is taking "oil" out of its name. But they're not exiting the oil and gas business. (Reuters)
Make Mexico Pay for It: Untreated sewage is turning up in a Mexican border town, just across from a U.S. border town's treatment plant. (The Revelator)
Something else that's bigger in Texas: More first-rate reporting from the Texas Observer and Naveena Sadasivam on the dismal record of the state of Texas in enforcing water pollution laws.
A survey by George Mason University's Center for Climate Change Communication reveals obstacles for journalists in reporting local climate change impacts. (Media Matters for America)
Beyond the Headlines: A new milestone for electric vehicles in Japan, the country of Belize declaring 10 percent of their ocean a marine protected area, and look back on the infamous oil tanker, the Exxon Valdez, eventually sold for scrap.
From New York State, the Poughkeepsie Journal urges the state legislature to get its act together on environment.
This Week in Trump
Scott Pruitt's ambition is rumored to have him angling for the Attorney General job. This New York Times piece broadens that ambition to a shot at the Presidency.
Scott Pruitt's plans to de-emphasize science in the EPA's policy decisions. From E&E.
Interior Secretary Zinke stepped in it this week, fumbling an inappropriate response in Japanese during a hearing on World War II internment camp history.
RIP to a Congressional Warrior on Antibiotics
Rep Louise Slaughter died Friday at age 88. This 2015 profile by Julia Belluz in Vox details her relentless effort to combat abuse of antibiotics in agriculture, and the huge commercial forces that opposed her.
This week we're featuring essays from Houston-area eighth graders to hear what the youth think about the state of our planet.
HOUSTON — In honor of Earth Day 2024, EHN is publishing letters from eighth grade students at YES Prep Northbrook Middle School in the Houston-area neighborhood of Spring Branch, Texas.
English educators Cassandra Harper and Yvette Howard incorporated the environment into a series of lessons in December last year. Each student conducted their own research to begin drafting letters to EHN about their concerns or hopes. EHN reporter Cami Ferrell visited their classrooms to share information about her personal reporting experiences in Houston.
The collection of letters, some of which were lightly edited, do not represent the opinions of YES Prep Northbrook or EHN, but are offered here as a peek into the minds of children and their relationship with environmental issues.
Mario Ramos
Is climate change really an issue? Some people might think not, so I am writing to discuss my
opinion on climate change and why we should do more to prevent it. The purpose of this letter is to call attention to the effect that climate change and pollution has on minority communities. I would like to discuss this issue because climate change is having a major effect on minority communities, specifically the Hispanic community, and as a Hispanic (person), that makes this a personal issue.
Refineries are usually built around minority communities. Now normally you wouldn’t think that this is a bad thing, right? Well, unfortunately, it is very much a problem. You see, refineries, specifically ones that work with crude oil, tend to release emissions. Some emissions are discharges of harmful chemicals released into the air, especially from the production of gas.Communities that have refineries built around or close to them, tend to see more illnesses related to gas emissions. Early death, heart attacks, respiratory disorders, stroke and asthma, are all illnesses that are commonly found in communities close to refineries.
Fifth Ward, a neighborhood in Houston, has a history of cancer clusters because of the water being contaminated by toxic waste left over from wood treatment operations.* I have a family that lives in Fifth Ward, and it might just be me but I don’t like the idea of my family getting cancer from the water.
If you live in Houston, you know that the heat is no joke. My dad works in the labor field, as do many other Hispanic people, and they spend hours a day working in the intense heat. I am disappointed. I am Hispanic and I don’t want my people to suffer these diseases and cancers just because we as humans can’t take care of the environment. And this can be personal to any other person of color because, unfortunately, minorities aren’t offered desk jobs away from the heat, or make enough.
Student longing for winter
During the 2010s, my age was only a digit. That one digit in my age made me feel a sense of joy for almost anything winter related.
It was second grade, and I could barely sleep because of all the excitement that I had bundled up in me. It was going to snow the very next morning. As soon as I wake up to go to school, I immediately go outside. The snow softly falling into my hands, it felt like I was in a movie. I was so excited that I even started to eat some of the snow. I felt so joyful for just tiny little frozen water crystals. It felt like it was really December, the December I’ve always wanted to explore and experience, the December that brought me happiness for a kid so young.
But where did that go?
Years passed after the snow of second grade, and it barely ever came back. I wanted it to come back. It has only been at least 3 years since it snowed here, and the joy from that was only temporary, it only lasted for that one day. I’m still waiting for it. 3 years and I’m starting to lose hope for it to come back.
Why isn’t it coming back to me and everyone else?
Greenhouse gas emissions trap the heat around our atmosphere, not letting even a single snowflake fall. I’m starting to think that I might even wait 5 years just for at least a few snowflakes.
It’s gone now.
The winter that I have always wanted.
Katherine Gomez
I want to express my worry about climate change. In today's time it has been the hottest it has ever been and will continue to be. The Arctic is melting which is causing change around the world. In February 2021, Texas was hit by a cold wave that had 700 deaths and cost billions in economic damage. There was a fire in Spring Branch Texas that burnt for days. During this time ash fell from the sky for days and people were concerned for their health as they could not escape it, even inside. This should not happen again.
This issue keeps on happening, but people continue to ignore climate change and it has gotten worse over the years. People expect climate change to disappear or be taken care of. There are people around the globe who are affected, my own community is having to deal with this. My hope is thin for our future generations because of our carelessness now, unless we start caring.
We can start by bicycling to get around places and save more energy or use less than necessary at our homes. Then comes bigger steps where we must adapt by turning to renewable energy. There are new developments of batteries that store renewable energy and capture carbon dioxide from power plants to either store underground or turn into valuable products like gasoline. This is our future. It will make a change for the better.
The actions we take now are our future, so we can pretend climate change is not an issue or take a stand now. Generations of kids– and mine- are in your hands. It might seem difficult or even inevitable, but it is not. Even the miniscule of actions, like writing a letter, is worth everything.
Jose Sotomayor
We all have heard of problems like: violence and inflation, but a problem that I haven't heard talked about much is climate change. As a resident of Houston, Texas I am really concerned how people don't really know about this dangerous situation the planet is facing. I live in a city where the air quality is horrible because of all the gasses being freed into the area from the refineries surrounding the city. Most people think we are safe from climate change, but we aren't because it is slowly affecting our health. Which is why I'm writing this letter to inform you about the dangers of climate change and how we can solve them.
Another thing to think about is that Texas has a lot of diversity when it comes to natural areas as it has a coast, canyons, and flat grasslands; reading this you may think of a beautiful place full of animals and nature; however, that's not the case. In the nearby city of Galveston there is one of most touristic beaches in Texas, but because all the factories and refineries around the water have become extremely dirty and the sand has a lot of trash from people around the city.
It may seem like we are too late, but we aren't, thanks to the technology we are developing scientists have found new ways to make things we all use. For example, electric cars are a new way to help the planet as it doesn't burn fuel that liberates smoke which is one of the major causes of climate change. All these things show that we as a community can make a big impact on the environment and that we still have hope to fix the damage we have caused.
It's sad seeing how human pollution and abuse of resources is affecting the Earth rapidly, it's sad thinking that our future generations will face the consequences of our actions if we don't stop living the way we do now. The Earth is heating up and multiple disasters are coming with it, but it is still not too late. What people don't realize is that we as normal people can make a significant change.
Hector Guerrero
The Earth is a beautiful place, but we are ruining it with issues that are unspoken. If climate change goes unspoken for too long, we are going to do more damage than we have already done. We could at least try to keep it from worsening
Climate change is a huge problem. If we do not try to prevent it everyone could be at risk. People who work outdoors are more likely to get ill from the temperature. In Houston, this affects my Latino community because they mostly do outdoor jobs. Factories and refineries are adding to the problem of climate change, they produce (emissions) that get trapped in the atmosphere that heat the earth. This is going to impact the future of many kids who will grow up in a world where the heat can be unbearable. Climate change is affecting the weather around us; back in 2021, there was snow that was not supposed to be in this city. Because we were not prepared for snow, many people lost their lives because of climate change.
Climate change also fuels natural disasters and they become more dangerous. As a result, there will be more deaths and injured people in the hospital. Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of our time. It affects not only the environment, but also human health, economies, and communities. The evidence is clear: our planet is warming at an alarming rate, with grave consequences. Climate change will also affect animal lives and could cause animals to go extinct.From more frequent and severe natural disasters to food and water shortages, the impacts of climate change are already being felt around the world.
We all must address this issue. We can start by making simple changes in our lives like using renewable energy, planting more trees, and cleaning up plastics and trash. This can cause damage to our economy and the environment around us. Switching to renewable sources would not only be more beneficial, but it will also slow climate change and provide more options that do not emit gas. Furthermore, fossil fuels are limited unlike renewable energy that can be used multiple times.
As a student growing up, I do not want to get an outside job in the future and have an elevated risk of getting ill because of climate change that we caused in the past. We must all act to stop climate change before it gets worse, and humanity could cease to be productive.
CAMERON PARISH, La. — Late into the night, John Allaire watches the facility next to his home shoot 300-foot flares from stacks.
He lives within eyesight of southwest Louisiana’s salty shores, where, for decades, he’s witnessed nearly 200 feet of land between it and his property line disappear into the sea. Two-thirds of the land was rebuilt to aid the oil and gas industry’s LNG expansion. LNG — shorthand for liquified natural gas – is natural gas that's cooled to liquid form for easier storage or transport; it equates to 1/600th the volume of natural gas in a gaseous state. It’s used to generate electricity, or fuel stove tops and home heaters, and in industrial processes like manufacturing fertilizer.
In the U.S., at least 30 new LNG terminal facilities have been constructed or proposed since 2016, according to the
Oil and Gas Watch project. Louisiana and Texas’ Gulf Coast, where five facilities are already operating, will host roughly two-thirds of the new LNG terminals – meaning at least 22 Gulf Coast LNG facilities are currently under construction, were recently approved to break ground or are under further regulatory review.
Although the U.S. didn’t ship LNG until 2016, when a freight tanker left, a few miles from where Cameron Parish’s LNG plants are today, last year the country became the global leader in LNG production and export volume, leapfrogging exporters like Qatar and Australia. The
EIA’s most recent annual outlook estimated that between the current year and 2050, U.S. LNG exports will increase by 152%.
Allaire, 68, watches how saltwater collects where rainwater once fed the area’s diminishing coastal wetlands. “We still come down here with the kids and set out the fishing rods. It's not as nice as it used to be,” he told
Environmental Health News (EHN).
That intimacy with nature drew Allaire to the area when he purchased 311 acres in 1998. An environmental engineer and 30-year oil and gas industry veteran, he helped lead environmental assessments and manage clean-ups, and although retired, he still works part-time as an environmental consultant with major petroleum companies. With a lifetime of oil and gas industry expertise, he’s watched the industry's footprint spread across Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico’s fragile shores and beyond. Now that the footprints are at the edge of his backyard, Allaire is among a cohort of organizers, residents and fisher-folk in the region mobilizing to stop LNG facility construction. For him, the industry’s expansion usurps the right-or-wrong ethics he carried across his consulting career. For anglers, oil and gas infrastructure has destroyed fishing grounds and prevented smaller vessels from accessing the seafood-rich waters of the Calcasieu River.
From the view of Allaire’s white pickup truck as he drives across his property to the ocean’s shore, he points to where a new LNG facility will replace marshlands. Commonwealth LNG intends to clear the land of trees and then backfill the remaining low-lying field.
“You see what’s happening with the environment,” Allaire said. “When the facts change, I got to change my mind about what we’re doing.”
Community bands together
John Allaire, left, purchased 311 acres in Cameron Parish in 1998, and has watched the oil and gas industry's footprint spread to his property.
Credit: John Allaire
During an Earth Day rally in April, community members gathered in the urban center of Lake Charles to demand local oil and gas industries help deliver a safer, healthier future for all. In between live acts by artists performing south Louisiana’s quintessential zydeco musical style, speakers like James Hiatt, a Calcasieu Parish native with ties to Cameron Parish and a Healthy Gulf organizer, and RISE St. James organizer Sharon Lavigne, who’s fighting against LNG development in rural Plaquemines Parish near the city of New Orleans, asked the nearly 100 in attendance to imagine a day in which the skyline isn’t dotted by oil and gas infrastructure.
Not long ago, it was hard to imagine an Earth Day rally in southwest Louisiana at all. For decades, the area has been decorated with fossil fuel infrastructure. Sunsets on some days are highlighted by the chemicals in the air; at night, thousands of facilities’ lights dot the dark sky.
“It takes a lot of balls for people to start speaking up,” Shreyas Vasudevan, a campaign researcher with the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, told EHN in the days after the rally. In a region with its history and economy intertwined with oil and gas production, “you can get a lot of social criticism – or ostracization, as well – even threats to your life.”
Many are involved in local, regional and national advocacy groups, including the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, Healthy Gulf, the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Turtle Island Restoration Network, the Center for Biological Diversity and the National Audubon Society.
“You see what’s happening with the environment,” Allaire said. “When the facts change, I got to change my mind about what we’re doing.” - John Allaire, environmental engineer and 30-year oil and gas industry veteran
But environmental organizers are fighting a multi-billion-dollar industry with federal and state winds at its back. And LNG’s federal support is coupled with existing state initiatives.
Under outgoing Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards — a term-limited Democrat — the state pledged a goal of reaching net-zero greenhouse emissions by 2050. Natural gas, which the LNG industry markets as a cleaner-burning alternative, is cited as one of the state’s solutions. Louisiana is the only state that produces a majority of its carbon emissions through fossil fuels refining industries, like LNG, rather than energy production or transportation. Governor Edwards’ office did not return EHN’s request for comment.
This accommodating attitude towards oil and gas industries has resulted in a workforce that’s trained to work in LNG refining facilities across much of the rural Gulf region, said Steven Miles, a lawyer at Baker Botts LLP and a fellow at the Baker Institute’s Center on Energy Studies. Simultaneously, anti-industrialization pushback is lacking. It’s good news for industries like LNG.
“The bad news,” Miles added. “[LNG facilities] are all being jammed in the same areas.”
One rallying cry for opponents is local health. The Environmental Integrity Project found that LNG export terminals emit chemicals like carbon monoxide –potentially deadly– and sulfur dioxide, of which the American Lung Association says long-term exposure can lead to heart disease, cancer, and damage to internal or female reproductive organs.
An analysis of emissions monitoring reports by the advocacy group the Louisiana Bucket Brigade found that Venture Global’s existing Calcasieu Pass facility had more than 2,000 permit violations.That includes exceeding the permit’s authorized air emissions limit to release nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, particulate matter and volatile organic compounds 286 out of its first 343 days of operation.
The Marvel Crane, the first liquid natural gas carrier to transport natural gas from the Southwest Louisiana LNG facility, transits a channel in Hackberry, Louisiana, May 28, 2019.
“This is just one facility,” at a time when three more facilities have been proposed in the region and state, Vasudevan said. Venture Global’s operational LNG facility — also known as Calcasieu Pass — “is much smaller than the other facility they’ve proposed.”
In an area that experienced 18 feet of storm surge during Hurricane Laura in 2020 — and just weeks later, struck by Hurricane Delta — Venture Global is planning to build a second export terminal Known as “CP2,” it’s the largest of the roughly two dozen proposed Gulf LNG export terminals, and a key focal point for the region’s local organizing effort.
Residents “don’t really want LNG as much as they want Cameron [Parish] from 1990 back,” Hiatt told EHN of locals’ nostalgia for a community before storms like Rita in 2005 brought up to 15 feet of storm surge, only for Laura to repeat the damage in 2020. Throughout that time, the parish’s population dipped from roughly 10,000 to 5,000. “But the wolf knocking at the door is LNG. Folks in Cameron think that's going to bring back community, bring back the schools, bring back this time before we had all these storms — when Cameron was pretty prosperous.”
“Clearly,” for the oil and gas industry, “the idea is to transform what was once the center of commercial fishing in Louisiana to gas exports,” Cindy Robertson, an environmental activist in southwest Louisiana, told EHN.
Helping fishers’ impacted by LNG is about “actual survival of this unique culture,” Cooke said.
In a measure of organizers’ success, she pointed to a recent permit hearing for Venture Global’s CP2 proposal. Regionally, it’s the only project that’s received an environmental permit, but not its export permit, which remains under federal review. At the meeting, some spoke on the company’s behalf. As an organizer, it was a moment of clarity, Cooke explained. Venture Global officials “had obviously done a lot of coaching and organizing and getting people together in Cameron to speak out on their behalf,” Cooke said. “So, in a way, that was bad. But in another way, it shows that we really had an impact.”
“It also shows that we have a lot to do,” Cooke added.
Environmental organizers like Alyssa Portaro describe a sense of fortitude among activists — she and her husband to the region’s nearby town of Vinton near the Texas-Louisiana border. Since the families’ relocation to their farm, Portaro has worked with Cameron Parish fisher-folk.
“I’ve not witnessed ‘community’ anywhere like there is in Louisiana,” Portaro told EHN. But a New Jersey native, she understands the toll environmental pollution has on low-income communities. “This environment, it’s so at risk — and it’s currently getting sacrificed to big industries.”
“People don’t know what we’d do without oil and gas. It comes at a big price,” she added.
Southwest Louisiana’s Cameron Parish is one of the state’s most rural localities. Marine economies were the area’s economic drivers until natural disasters and LNG facilities began pushing locals out, commercial fishers claim.
Credit: Xander Peters for Environmental Health News
Residents “don’t really want LNG as much as they want Cameron [Parish] from 1990 back,” James Hiatt , a Healthy Gulf organizer, told EHN. "But the wolf knocking at the door is LNG."
Credit: Xander Peters for Environmental Health News
For the most part, Cameron Parish’s life and economy has historically taken place at sea. As new LNG facilities are operational or in planning locally, locals claim the community they once knew is nearly unrecognizable.
Credit: Xander Peters for Environmental Health News
A disappearing parish
The stakes are seemingly higher for a region like southwest Louisiana, which is the epicenter of climate change impacts.
In nearly a century, the state has lost roughly 2,000 square miles of land to coastal erosion. In part driving the state’s erosion crisis is the compounding impacts of Mississippi River infrastructure and oil and gas industry activity, such as dredging canals for shipping purposes, according to a March study published in the journal Nature Sustainability. Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority said Cameron Parish could lose more land than other coastal parishes over the next 50 years. A recent Climate Central report says the parish will be underwater within that time frame.
On top of erosion and sea level rise impacts, in August, 2023, marshland across southwest Louisiana’s Cameron Parish burned. The fires were among at least 600 across the Bayou State this year. Statewide, roughly 60,000 acres burned — a more than six-fold increase of the state’s average acres burned per year in the past decade alone.
But while the blaze avoided coastal Louisiana communities like Cameron Parish, the fires represented a warning coming from a growing chorus of locals across the region — one that’s echoes by the local commercial fishing population, who claimed to have experienced unusually low yields during the same time, according to a statement from a local environmental group. At the site of the Cameron Parish fires are locations for two proposed LNG expansion projects.
"The idea is to transform what was once the center of commercial fishing in Louisiana to gas exports.” - Cindy Robertson, an environmental activist in southwest Louisiana
It was an unusual occurrence for an area that’s more often itself underwater this time of year due to a storm surge from powerful storms. For LNG expansion’s local opposition, it was a red flag.
As the Louisiana Bucket Brigade has noted prior, the confluence of climate change’s raising of sea levels and the construction of LNG export terminals — some are proposed at the size of nearly 700 football fields — are wiping away the marshland folks like Allaire watched wither. Among their fears is that the future facilities won’t be able to withstand the power of another storm like Laura and its storm surge, which wiped away entire communities in 2020.
Amidst these regional climate impacts, LNG infrastructure has shown potential to exacerbate the accumulation of greenhouse gasses that cause global warming. For the most part, LNG is made up of methane — a greenhouse gas that’s more than 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Among the 22 current LNG facility proposals, the advocacy group Sierra Club described a combined climate pollution output that would roughly equal to that of about 440 coal plants.
The climate impacts prompt some of the LNG industry’s uncertainty going forward. It isn’t clear if Asian countries, key importers of U.S. LNG, will “embrace these energy transition issues,” said David Dismuke, an energy consultant and the former executive director of Louisiana State University’s Center for Energy Studies. Likewise, European nations remain skeptical of embracing LNG as a future staple fuel source.
“They really don't want to have to pull the trigger,” Dismukes added, referring to Europe’s hesitation to commit more resources to exporting LNG from the American market. “They don't want to go down that road.”
While there will be a tapering down of natural gas supply, Miles explained, “we’re going to need natural gas for a long time,” as larger battery storage for renewables is still unavailable.
“I'm not one of these futurists that can tell you where we're going to be, but I just don't see everything being extreme,” Dismukes said. “I don't see what we've already built getting stranded and going away, either.”
For now, LNG seems here to stay. From 2012 to 2022,U.S. natural gas demand — the sum of both domestic consumption and gross exports — rose by a whopping 43%, reported the U.S. Energy Information Administration, or EIA. Meanwhile, in oil and gas hotbeds like Louisiana and Texas, natural gas demand grew by 116%.
Throughout 25 years, Allaire has witnessed southwest Louisiana’s land slowly fade, in part driven by the same industrial spread regionally. Near where the front door of his travel trailer sits underneath the aluminum awning, he points to a chenier ridge located near the end of the property. It’s disappearing, he said.
“See the sand washing over, in here?” Allaire says, as he points towards the stretches of his property. “This pond used to go down for a half mile. This is all that's left of it on this side.”
A potential global treaty on plastic pollution is being negotiated, with the aim to regulate the entire lifecycle of plastics, from production to disposal.
Contentious debates focus on production limits and transparency requirements among nations and industry.
The negotiations involve a wide range of participants, including nations, industry representatives, scientists and environmental groups, with final talks scheduled for December in South Korea.
Key quote:
"The plastic industry now accounts for 5% of global carbon emissions, which could grow to 20% by 2050 if current trends continue."
— U.S. federal Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory report
Why this matters:
This treaty represents a major global effort to address not only the rapidly accelerating environmental impact of plastics, which pollute landscapes and waterways, but also their significant contribution to global carbon emissions. A growing number of scientists and advocates, however, say the treaty negotiations have not put a strong enough priority on protecting human health. For more on that, read: “Plastic will overwhelm us:” Scientists say health should be the core of global plastic treaty.
The settlement has paid out only a small fraction, with 79% of recipients receiving no more than $1,300 each.
Legal hurdles and strict proof requirements have thwarted many workers' attempts to claim adequate compensation.
Attorneys and experts criticize the settlement and claims process as insufficient and overly stringent.
Key quote:
"I wanted people to get their day in court and they win or lose at trial. Let a jury decide. ...But they weren’t even given the chance to do that."
— Robin Greenwald, plaintiffs' attorney
Why this matters:
Cleanup workers were exposed to hazardous conditions and toxic substances, such as crude oil and chemical dispersants, which have been linked to a range of health issues. These include respiratory problems, skin conditions, and other serious ailments. Many workers have found the compensation inadequate relative to the severity and duration of their health problems, which in some cases require ongoing medical treatment.
If settlements fail to provide sufficient redress, not only do they leave affected individuals and communities struggling, but they also raise questions about the deterrence of future corporate negligence.
The report from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, released days before the start of the next round of negotiations for a global plastics treaty this week in Ottawa, indicates plastic production could consume one-fifth of Earth's carbon budget by 2050.
Plastic production processes are highly dependent on fossil fuels, contributing significantly to greenhouse gas emissions.
Strategies to curb plastic production growth could mitigate severe climate repercussions.
Key quote:
“If this treaty forces companies to significantly cut plastic production – by at least 12% per year by our calculations – we can still keep the world’s 1.5 degree goal alive and stem the climate impacts of plastic.”
— Neil Tangri, science and policy director at the environmental justice group Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives
Why this matters:
The production of plastics predominantly relies on fossil fuels, particularly oil and natural gas, which leads to substantial carbon dioxide emissions. During the lifecycle of plastic, from production to disposal, various greenhouse gases are released, including methane from landfill sites where much of the discarded plastic ends up.
Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ro Khanna aim to prevent water trading to protect essential resources, citing concerns over speculation and profit-making in water-scarce regions.
The proposed bill seeks to block private investors, including hedge funds, from trading water rights, particularly in California where water futures trading is practiced.
This legislative effort, named the Future of Water Act, follows reports of increasing corporate acquisitions of water rights in the western U.S., raising alarms about potential profiteering.
Environmental groups and a U.N. expert have criticized water futures markets, warning they could lead to water commodification and affect real water availability.
Key quote:
"Water is not a commodity for the rich and powerful to profit off of."
— Elizabeth Warren, U.S. senator
Why this matters:
There's a concern that market-driven water trading undermines sustainable water management practices. Profit motives may override conservation efforts, leading to unsustainable water use patterns.
Climate change is exacerbating water scarcity. One example: Climate disruption is resulting in diminishing winter snowpacks and rapid spring runoff, thereby depriving farmers of this valuable asset, and for much of the world, there are no known substitutes.
In 2022, about 70,000 Maasai were forcibly removed from their lands in Tanzania, highlighting a broader issue of Indigenous rights violations.
The UN report details systematic criminalization of Indigenous peoples, often linked to conservation and mining interests.
Key recommendations include revising laws and strengthening protections for Indigenous human rights defenders.
Key quote:
"It’s a very serious concern because the Indigenous people who have been resisting the taking over of their lands and territories, they are the ones who most commonly face these charges and criminalization."
— Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, former UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
Why this matters:
Indigenous communities often inhabit regions rich in biodiversity and natural resources, making them front-line defenders against environmental exploitation. Their traditional knowledge and sustainable practices are crucial in preserving these areas. However, as economic pressures mount to exploit these lands for logging, mining and agriculture, Indigenous peoples frequently find themselves in conflict with powerful interests, including corporations and sometimes their own governments.
Biodegradable food packaging is a step in the right direction, experts say, but when composted carries risks of microplastic and chemical contamination.
Oregon’s Regenyx plant announced its closing in late February, with those involved calling it a success, despite never reaching planned capacity and millions of dollars lost.
