Systemic racism and inequity has always run as a powerful undercurrent through environmental and climate change impacts.
But it's taken a global pandemic and shifting political winds in the U.S. to connect environmental impacts with environmental justice in such a mainstream, widespread way.
That's according to three journalists at the frontlines of climate and environmental issues.
"COVID has changed everything," said Yessenia Funes of Atmos Magazine. "The silver lining is the growing recognition of public health inequities that are intimately entwined in the climate crisis."
Climate change is a particularly acute example: While air, water and toxic pollution hit vulnerable populations hardest, climate change drives the inequities even further. Acknowledging this, President Biden has made environmental justice a central element of his federal climate agenda (Read our overview on environmental justice here; view the Belfer Center's webinar video here).
Underlying environmental inequities
Environmental justice panel organized by Harvard University's Belfer Center Environment & Natural Resources Program.
In the past, national environmental groups would focus on, say, reducing harmful air emissions without thinking of equity or social justice, said Worland, who covers national climate policy for Time. Meanwhile social and racial justice groups would not focus on issues like asthma or air pollution. Today there's "an increasing degree of engagement, borne out of necessity," he said: To get either goal done, the groups need to build political pressure together.
The pandemic, of course, hit communities of color hardest, and that "lifted the lid" on underlying societal inequities, added Sengupta, who focuses on international environmental justice for the New York Times.
"Climate change is that magnified. Climate change ... forces us to confront how to do things better."
"There's no doubt in my mind that 2020—not just in the U.S. but globally—forced us to look at those underlying inequities," Sengupta added.
Indeed, a report issued last week by the Solutions Project found that mentions of communities of color in environmental coverage jumped from 2 percent in 2019 to 13 percent in 2020—a 500 percent increase. Among articles quoting a spokesperson or lawmaker about energy issues, more than half quoted a woman—"a clear tipping point" in the group's analyses since 2017.
The Biden Administration's "Justice40 Initiative" is also driving this, Worland noted. The President's Jan. 27 executive order on climate change stipulated that "40 percent of the overall benefits (of climate action) flow to disadvantaged communities."
"How that's defined is unclear—what does it mean to receive benefits, what's an underserved community?" Worland noted. "But it is a dramatic re-centering of the issues."
Food waste statistics are moving in the wrong direction.
Inflated food prices and intense summer heat are top of mind for both consumers and producers of food around the country.
At the same time, the U.S. continues to struggle with massive amounts of food waste. Fortunately, by reducing that waste, we can help lower grocery bills and mitigate contributions to continued warming.
Food waste is a significant contributor to climate change: its breakdown accounts for 58% of landfill methane emissions. As food waste increases, emissionscontinue to climb, exacerbating climate change and increasingly inhospitable conditions for agricultural production.
Though it may be most visible to consumers, household waste is not the greatest contributor of discarded food. In fact, 38% of food (either domestic or imported) is wasted and nearly half of that waste is generated between harvest and point of sale. This statistic is especially shocking considering that 44 million people in the U.S. experiencefood insecurity. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) datareveal that 9 billion pounds of quality, nutritious food is thrown away each year.
To address this problem, the Biden-Harris administration released itsNational Strategy to Reduce Food Loss and Waste and Recycle Organics on June 12, 2024.This strategy proposes actions that reflect four objectives: preventing food loss, preventing food waste, promoting recycling of organic waste, and supporting food waste management policy.
One action proposed is increasing funding for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture to encourage research opportunities and food waste data collection. Another promotes involvement of the Risk Management Agency with farmers, crop insurance agents, and food rescue organizations to minimize on-farm food loss. The strategy aims to make progress toward theU.S. Food Loss and Waste 2030 Champions Pledge, a joint goal between the USDA, the EPA, and partnering businesses that aims for a 50% reduction in national food loss and waste by 2030.
Despite these efforts, waste statistics are moving in the wrong direction. The most recent 2019 EPA data show a steady increase in waste production since the pledge was announced in 2015. Supply chain disturbances during the COVID-19 pandemic likely slowed progress on food waste reduction, but this cannot be confirmed without updated data. More recent data are needed to provide an objective view of the nation’s current food waste production and a useful benchmark as the 2030 deadline approaches.
Moving the needle in the opposite direction will rely on changes to key policies—in addition to changes in practices by consumers and producers. The current 2024 farm bill reauthorization presents a timely opportunity to kindle progress.
The massive omnibus agricultural bill, most recently signed into law in 2018, provides afoundational framework for continued improvements in waste prevention and management. A 2022 collaborativereport by the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic, Natural Resources Defense Council, ReFED, and World Wildlife Fund proposed opportunities to improve food recovery in the next farm bill. Incorporating food donor protections is critical, considering that 50% of food manufacturers and 25% of wholesalers and retailers surveyed listed liability concerns as their main barrier to participating in food donation programs. Granting the USDA authority to interpret theBill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act can help reduce liability barriers and encourage organizations to donate. Providing protections for direct donations to individuals and non-profit organizations that charge a small fee can also extend the Emerson Act’s reach.
The current 2024 farm bill reauthorization presents a timely opportunity to kindle progress.
TheFood Loss and Waste Liaison position created in the 2018 farm bill is dedicated to coordinating and reporting on the research and management of food waste. ReFED and its collaborators recommend expanding this single position to an office. This would increase research attention, improve reporting capacity, and place an increased focus on food waste reduction strategies.
Existing farm bill programs already help support post-harvest food recovery infrastructure and provide logistical support for food waste distribution. But these grant-funded programs—such as the Regional Food System Partnerships Program and Value-Added Producer Grants Program (both part of the Local Agricultural Marketing Program [LAMP])—can be enhanced to have a broader impact. Making these changes through the 2024 farm bill would support the objectives outlined in the National Strategy with a win-win solution: reallocating food surplus to those in need.
Recent 2024 farm bill frameworks and drafts have been proposed by theSenate andHouse of Representatives agriculture committees, respectively. Disappointingly, neither draft included expansion of the Food Loss and Waste Liaison position to an office or updating the Emerson Act. But one victory for food waste reduction is proposed: increased funding for LAMP in both versions, reinforcing available resources for managing surplus.
Beyond policy, many businesses and organizations are already actively engaged in food rescue strategies, demonstrating the effectiveness of large-scale waste-management efforts. The USDA’sMilestones report highlights “2030 Champions,” corporations that are taking steps to reduce waste by 50% by 2030. Between 2016 and 2022, 45 businesses took this public pledge.
Nonprofit organizations also play important roles, with groups such asFarmlink andFood Rescue US helping to distribute food surplus from retailers and farmers to organizations supporting food-insecure populations. And theCareit app offers an online marketplace to connect restaurants, corporations, retailers, food distributors, and farmers with food pantries and other nonprofit groups that feed at-risk populations. Reallocating food surplus addresses hunger from a new angle, supporting public health and nutrition for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants and other at-risk groups.
TheNational Strategy to Reduce Food Loss and Waste and Recycle Organics was published on the same day that USDA Secretary Thomas Vilsack spoke at the 2024ReFED Summit, a diverse gathering of stakeholders that shared sustainable food rescue solutions. The level of attention presently placed on these topics representing stakeholders across the food supply chain as well as bipartisan Congressional leadership indicates both the gravity of the food waste issue and the substantial opportunity for positive change.
Food waste poses a daunting obstacle to overcome, but simple actions by the public can make a difference. Write to your legislators, contribute local food rescue organizations with your time or resources, and make efforts to reduce food waste in your home and workplace. Stay up to date on new policy changes and vote in favor of the leaders who share common goals. Support local producers and businesses who participate in the 2030 pledge. These actions, even at the individual level, can help minimize food waste, feed the hungry, and benefit the environment.
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.”
Mississippi’s leading Republicans celebrated the groundbreaking of a $1.9 billion electric vehicle battery plant, creating 2,000 high-paying jobs, while former President Trump criticized such green jobs as benefiting China.
Gov. Tate Reeves and Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith celebrated the new electric vehicle battery plant in Marshall County.
The plant, funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, contradicts Trump's stance against green jobs.
Hyde-Smith opposed the Act but supports the plant, which receives $350 million in state incentives.
Key quote:
"Today we broke ground on a project of record proportions — the single largest payroll commitment in Mississippi’s entire history, and the third largest economic development project in Mississippi’s entire history."
— Tate Reeves, Governor of Mississippi
Why this matters:
This plant represents a significant economic boost for Mississippi, highlighting the complex political landscape where local benefits clash with national partisan positions. Former President Donald Trump criticized the move, arguing that such green jobs ultimately benefit China, given the global supply chain for key materials.
This year's proxy season saw major corporations successfully dismissing many climate-related shareholder proposals, raising questions about SEC's role in shareholder democracy.
Climate investors struggled to pass shareholder proposals on emissions and renewable energy, with the SEC approving company requests to exclude 68% of these proposals.
Companies like Bank of America and Walmart were able to block several proposals on greenhouse gas disclosure, while ExxonMobil took legal action against activist investors.
SEC's leniency towards companies this year mirrors the Trump administration's approach, despite Biden’s 2021 directive to support shareholder climate information requests.
Key quote:
“Of all institutions, the SEC should understand the importance of these proposals, the importance of shareholder democracy, the ability to raise issues of concern with companies and management and boards.”
— Danielle Fugere, president and chief counsel at As You Sow
Why this matters:
Shareholder proposals are crucial for pushing companies to address climate issues. The SEC's current stance makes it harder for climate activists to influence corporate policies, potentially delaying necessary actions to combat climate change.
Between July 2023 and June 2024, global temperatures were the highest on record, 1.64C above pre-industrial times.
Scientists warn of increased exposure to extreme weather and potential climate tipping points due to sustained high temperatures.
Key climate metrics indicate a worsening trend unless greenhouse gas emissions are drastically reduced.
Key quote:
"This is inevitable unless we stop adding greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and the oceans."
— Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service
Why this matters:
Sustained high temperatures lead to severe weather events and threaten ecosystems, especially tropical coral reefs. Without significant emission reductions, global warming could exceed critical thresholds, exacerbating human and environmental harm.
Alaska is warming up to three times faster than the global average, severely impacting Indigenous communities reliant on ice and wildlife.
Traditional practices are being adjusted; for example, people in Point Hope adapt by changing their hunting and food storage methods.
Community projects, like building a pool in Bethel, prepare residents for unpredictable conditions caused by climate change.
Key quote:
“You can’t really change the Arctic. You can only change with the Arctic.”
— Priscilla Frankson, Iñupiaq student
Why this matters:
Indigenous communities’ adaptation strategies offer practical examples for dealing with climate change. As extreme weather becomes more common, these approaches highlight the importance of local, knowledge-based solutions.
The El Vado dam, vital for Albuquerque’s water supply, has been out of commission for three years due to structural issues.
Without the dam, farmers and the city rely on finite groundwater, threatening sustainable water management.
Repair efforts are stalled, and alternative water storage solutions are slow to develop.
Key quote:
“We need some sort of storage. If we don’t get a big monsoon this summer, if you don’t have a well, you won’t be able to water.”
— Mark Garcia, local farmer
Why this matters:
Aging infrastructure and climate change challenge water sustainability in the West. The dam's collapse could signal deeper issues within the region's water management infrastructure, potentially linked to climate change. With increasing temperatures and unpredictable weather patterns, the strain on existing water systems is becoming more evident.
As mounds of dredged material from the Houston Ship Channel dot their neighborhoods, residents are left without answers as to what dangers could be lurking.
