PITTSBURGH—Residents of the Mon Valley, a cluster of townships along the Monongahela River 20 miles south of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, endured some of the stinkiest and most polluted air in the nation this Christmas.
Starting on December 21, the region's air exceeded federal safety standards for daily levels of particulate matter—microscopic particles that penetrate the lungs and can trigger heart attacks and respiratory disease—for six consecutive days. One of the region's air monitors recorded the worst air quality in the entire U.S. and registered in the "Code Red" range for several hours on multiple days.
Residents complained that the air smelled like "rotten eggs," "sewer backup," "burning plastic," and "hospital waste," and reported symptoms like wheezing, coughing and choking, nausea, stinging eyes and headaches through the SmellPGH app, which uses crowdsourcing to map smells and symptoms associated with air pollution.
The monitor that registered the Code Red sits near U.S. Steel's Clairton Coke Works plant, which converts coal into "coke" used in steelmaking by cooking it at extremely high temperatures. The plant—one of the region's primary sources of air pollution—is notorious for breaking clean air laws and sickening residents. But this time the facility was operating in full compliance with its permit, according to the Allegheny County Health Department, which oversees air quality in the greater Pittsburgh region.
Clairton Coke Works (Credit: Mark Dixon/Flickr)
The unhealthy air was caused by a combination of U.S. Steel's emissions and a temperature inversion, which occurs during unseasonably temperate winter days when a warm air mass sits above a colder air mass, trapping pollutants that typically blow away close to the ground. The same type of inversion also caused the worst air pollution disaster in U.S. history—the 1948 "Donora Smog," which killed 20 people in the Mon Valley town of Donora, just 13 miles south of the Clairton Coke Works Plant, spurring the creation of the Federal Clean Air Act.
Temperature inversions like these are historically unusual, even in a place like the Mon Valley, which, like all valleys, is especially prone to stagnant air since the surrounding hills and mountains hem in it. But the last five years were the hottest ever recorded on the planet, and inversions are becoming more frequent: While the Mon Valley saw just four inversions of this scale in the previous decade, this was the second one to hit the region so far in 2019.
Some experts say that trend is likely to continue, and that cities around the world could see an influx of similar "super pollution events" as Earth continues to warm.
"For the last at least 60 years we have data for, we can clearly see a trend of increasing temperature inversions in midlatitude regions," Shiliang Wu, an atmospheric chemist and associate professor at Michigan Technological University, told EHN. "I believe this trend will continue in the coming decades, which will likely lead to an increase in extreme air pollution episodes."
Midlatitude regions are the temperate zones between roughly 30 to 60 degrees north or south of the equator. The midlatitudes encompass about 36 countries, including the U.S. and most of North America, and are home to more than half of the world's population.
Wu co-authored a 2016 paper on long-term changes in extreme air pollution meteorology, which he believes was the first to look at six decades of global meteorology data, to learn how events like temperature inversions and heat waves have changed over time. He found that heat waves in the summer and temperature inversions in the winter—both of which can lead to extreme air pollution events—have increased by up to 50 percent in the last 60 years in most midlatitude regions.
Allegheny County Health Department data show particulate matter spikes in late December. (Credit: GASP)
Heat waves often lead to higher ozone levels, while temperature inversions tend to have a stronger impact on particulate matter pollution. Like particulate matter pollution, ozone can also cause chest pain, coughing, throat irritation, and airway inflammation, reduce lung function, and worsen bronchitis, emphysema, and asthma. Particulate matter pollution is also linked to heart disease, heart attacks, and premature death in people who already have respiratory or heart disease.
Extreme air pollution events like the one that recently plagued the Mon Valley have also happened in Salt Lake City, Paris, London, and Beijing in recent years. Many of them were the result of either heat waves or inversions, and some have occurred despite relatively decreased emissions.
There's still some debate in the scientific community about the increase of inversions in winter, and about exactly how future changes in weather patterns will affect levels of particulate matter pollution. Wu believes the data from the last 60 years points to a clear and growing increase in wintertime temperature inversions, and that policymakers in urban areas should take note.
"Certain geographical regions like those in a basin or valley and major urban areas are more likely to be affected by inversions and see this kind of extreme pollution events," Wu said. "What just happened in the Mon Valley is obviously not as deadly as what happened during the Donora Smog, but it's still a serious threat to public health when you have air pollution at this level."
An aerial view of the Pittsburgh region. (Credit: Menghan Zhang/Unsplash)
In the Mon Valley, local environmental organizations have pointed out that this concern is not new to the region, and have continually called for stricter coke oven emission standards in general. Meanwhile, the local health department has acknowledged that climate change will lead to more temperature inversions, and has announced intentions to create regulations that would allow them to require polluters like U.S. Steel to reduce their emissions when they know an inversion is coming.
"[Allegheny County Health Department] recognizes that the increasing frequency of these temperature inversions is associated with climate change," an agency spokesperson said in a statement. "While we will continue to advocate for residents to do what they can to reduce emissions, we must also explore new regulations that would impose corrective action requirements on industry during short-term pollution events."
Other cities—particularly those located in basins and valleys—may need to take a similar approach.
"Air pollution permits are currently designed for average, normal day-to-day conditions, not extreme weather events like heat waves and inversions," Wu said. "I think that will have to change in the future."
“The number of stress-activated health conditions people reported was quite staggering."
PITTSBURGH — Engaging in public participation during permitting for oil and gas pipelines often harms mental health and creates distrust in government, according to a new study.
Numerous studies have examined physical health effects associated with living near oil and gas pipelines, but there’s little research on the mental health impacts associated with these projects.
The study, published in Energy Research & Social Science, was conducted through surveys and interviews with more than 1,000 people living near proposed natural gas pipelines in Virginia, West Virginia, Oregon and Pennsylvania. It documented a long list of mental health symptoms associated with living near pipeline routes, including anxiety, depression, Complex post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD) and suicidality.
“I live in Blacksburg, Virginia, which is one of the places the Mountain Valley Pipeline goes through,” Shannon Bell, a professor of sociology at Virginia Tech and lead author of the study, told Environmental Health News (EHN). “In conversations with community members who are affected by the pipeline, it became very clear there were some pretty significant traumas going on.”
By using screening tools to measure the severity of mental health symptoms, the researchers also determined that the more people engaged with public participation processes related to the pipelines, the worse their mental health impacts were.
“Having a pipeline built through your land is incredibly stressful for many people, but we were surprised to learn that the people who were the most engaged in public participation processes related to the pipeline had significantly greater mental health impacts than people who didn’t engage at all, regardless of whether the pipeline was actually being constructed through their land,” Bell said.
Karen Feridun, an activist who lives in eastern Pennsylvania, has fought two pipeline projects, the PennEast and Commonwealth pipelines, both of which were canceled following community resistance. She’s proud of those wins, but they were difficult for her and the community.
“The PennEast fight went on for seven years,” Feridun told EHN. “People were so dedicated. It was like they made fighting the pipeline their second full time job. Many people expressed how stressed this made them feel, the pain of seeing their property devalued and their beautiful community disrupted, and how unending it all was. It was a lot to endure.” stories like that.”
When the Commonwealth and PennEast pipelines were canceled, Feridun said, there was a lot of relief. “The state of everybody’s mental health improved to the extent that this was over and they could move on with their lives,” she said. However, many of the Pennsylvanians involved in those fights were soon faced with additional oil and gas-related projects in their communities, like fracking wells or related infrastructure, pulling many of them right back into fight mode.
“There’s this constant pressure and feeling of powerlessness that comes with not knowing what’s about to happen,” Feridun said. “For some people it just starts to feel like a never-ending nightmare.”
Bell’s study found that pipeline development and related public participation processes were associated with a long list of physical symptoms including insomnia, high blood pressure, heart problems, teeth grinding, headaches, tremors, irregular heartbeat, shingles, heart problems, chest pain, strokes and brain hemorrhages. At least one person said they were so physically sickened by the stress they felt about the pipeline and the public participation process that they had to move.
“The number of stress-activated health conditions people reported was quite staggering,” Bell said. “It was devastating to read some of the things people had gone through.”
Feridun shared a story about a community member who protested a FERC meeting and had a stroke afterwards. “The family’s feeling was that the pressure she was under contributed to her having a stroke at a very young age,” she said. “There were lots of stories like that.”
Performative public participation creates harm
Bell researched the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), passed in 1969, which heightened the public involvement requirements for federal agencies' decision-making on actions that could significantly affect the environment.
She found previous research that suggested NEPA’s public participation requirements are only intended to diffuse public outrage since government agencies don’t have standardized ways to incorporate public input into decision-making or permitting.
She also learned that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the agency responsible for regulating pipelines, approved 99% of eminent domain cases between 1999 and 2020, allowing pipelines to be built through privately owned land despite widespread public opposition to many of these projects.
"Many people expressed how stressed this made them feel, the pain of seeing their property devalued and their beautiful community disrupted, and how unending it all was. It was a lot to endure.” - Karen Feridun, an activist who lives in eastern Pennsylvania
Other researchers had highlighted the flaws in NEPA’s public participation requirements and FERC’s apparent bias against landowners, but no one had measured how participating in performative public participation processes impacts residents’ mental health.
Bell and colleagues found that people who participated in these processes felt their input was dismissed, that their concerns were not addressed and did not have any impact on decision-making about the pipelines.These feelings created disillusionment and distrust. The more people participated in public feedback processes, the stronger their feelings of disillusionment were.
“Many people talked about feeling betrayed by their government,” Bell said. “A number of our respondents stated that up until this point, they had believed government agencies existed to protect residents. But after spending tremendous amounts of time engaging in public input opportunities, many of our respondents came to believe that these government agencies were actually just there to facilitate the construction of pipelines.”
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved 99% of eminent domain cases between 1999 and 2020.
Credit: Karen Feridun
“The PennEast fight went on for seven years. It was like they made fighting the pipeline their second full time job," said Karen Feridun.
Credit: Tara Zrinksi
Feridun has seen this firsthand.
“In all my years fighting pipelines and fracking,” she said, “I’ve heard so many people say: ‘I thought the government was here to protect me,’ and it comes as this terrible blow to learn they’re actually representing someone else’s best interest, not yours.”
Bell’s research focused on natural gas pipelines, but she said these findings are relevant to any scenario where government agencies invite public participation during the permitting process for industrial projects. For example, permitting for fracking wells and petrochemical plants are often contentious and generally overseen by state regulatory agencies that may invite public input but also typically lack any ways to incorporate it into permitting decisions.
“People aren’t stupid — they realize when their comments aren’t making a bit of difference,” Bell said. “It’s incredibly disempowering when people spend hours and days writing public comments and attending public meetings, just to be ignored.”
“I don’t want to beat up on regulators because this is an institutional problem,” she added, “but wasting people's time and energy by asking for public input without providing a mechanism to act on most of their concerns not only brings substantial harm to these individuals' mental and physical health, but it also violates core aspects of environmental justice."
Feridun said that although she tells people joining pipeline fights that public participation is “just theater and a box regulators have to check,” there are important reasons to participate anyway.
The first is that pipeline route often travel through rural areas where impacted landowners feel isolated and alone in their discomfort about the pipeline, and joining with others who are in the same situation creates strong community bonds and fosters empowerment. During the PennEast fight, for example, municipalities all along the proposed pipeline route passed resolutions stating their opposition to the pipeline. Those could be ignored by FERC, but they made it clear in writing that many communities along the pipeline route were prepared to fight the project in court if needed.
The second reason Feridun encourages people to participate in the permitting process is that even if FERC won’t do anything with public comments, it’s critical to put them in the public record so that a judge can consider them in subsequent lawsuits, which can be a powerful tool in winning pipeline fights.
“That’s part of how we won against PennEast,” she said. “People put so many comments on that docket, they were relentless … and gave lots of ammunition to judges who might one day have to consider those lawsuits.”
No environmental justice without real public input
Under guidance from the Biden presidential administration, federal and state governmental agencies are working to improve environmental justice.
Many states, including Pennsylvania, are developing new environmental justice plans that include additional community input related to permitting for polluting industries, but Bell said few of these plans create ways for environmental justice communities to influence permitting decisions (though there are some indications that this is beginning to shift).
Traditionally, governmental environmental justice efforts in the U.S. tend to focus on “distributive justice” — ensuring equity in the allocation of burdens and benefits. But the principles of environmental justice also include recognition justice, which entails valuing the perspectives of historically marginalized groups; procedural justice, which involves providing these communities with equitable access and opportunities to influence decision-making; and reparative justice, which requires acknowledging past harms against these communities and working to repair them.
Environmental justice communities can’t achieve procedural justice or restorative justice until they’re actually empowered to decide whether new pipelines or polluting facilities should be built in their neighborhoods, according to Bell.
“Environmental justice is not possible if public participation is performative,” Bell said. “If we’re serious about environmental justice, there need to be consistent [ways] for public input to be incorporated into agencies' decision-making processes. It needs to be possible for public input to actually influence agency decisions."
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.”
Takeout containers from restaurants on the side of the road. Discarded coffee cups floating in rivers. Packing peanuts shipped off to landfills.
Plastic foam products are ubiquitous. Now, a proposed congressional bill seeks to reduce this waste.
In December 2023, Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen and Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett jointly introduced the Farewell to Foam Act in both the Senate and House of Representatives. The bill would ban single-use expanded polystyrene food packaging products, coolers and loose-fill packaging products like packing peanuts by January 2026. The legislators cited plastic foam’s environmental and health harms as driving the bill. Though it’s uncertain whether it will move forward, experts and advocates say its introduction is a significant step toward establishing national single-use plastic bans, none of which currently exist in the U.S.
A titanium mine proposed near the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge has sparked significant opposition, raising concerns about the impact on North America's largest intact blackwater swamp.
The mine, proposed by Twin Pines Minerals, promises economic benefits but faces opposition from environmentalists, scientists, and the Biden administration, highlighting risks to the Okefenokee Swamp.
Public debate intensifies as Georgia’s Environmental Protection Division issues draft permits, with a final decision pending based on public comments.
Local communities and environmental advocates emphasize the irreplaceable value of the Okefenokee, citing its unique ecosystem, historical significance, and potential designation as a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Key quote:
"Titanium is a common mineral, while the Okefenokee is a very uncommon swamp.”
— Bruce Babbitt, interior secretary under President Bill Clinton
The Environmental Integrity Project's report criticizes the $5.6 billion in tax breaks given to Louisiana's chemical companies since 2013, underlining the pollution impact on nearby minority communities.
Despite industry claims, 84% of plastics plants violated air pollution permits over the past three years, with significant toxic emissions reported.
The report emphasizes the need for stricter fenceline monitoring and criticizes the lack of enforcement actions against violators.
Key quote:
"In Louisiana, there's an environmental justice component... close to 600,000 people live within three miles of these plants and about two-thirds of them, 66%, are communities of color."
In a legal tussle that sheds light on the government's eye on environmental protests, new details have emerged about the FBI's deployment of informants at the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation during the 2016 Dakota Access pipeline demonstrations.
Up to 10 FBI informants were embedded within anti-pipeline camps, as part of a broader surveillance effort that included social media and radio eavesdropping.
The surveillance was aimed at monitoring the Indigenous-led protests, which drew thousands to oppose the Dakota Access oil pipeline due to environmental and sovereignty concerns.
The FBI's actions are part of a historical pattern of surveillance on Indigenous movements, echoing tactics used during the 1970s against the American Indian Movement.
Key quote:
"We were already cynical, because we’ve had our heart broke before by our own relatives."
— Manape LaMere, member of the Bdewakantowan Isanti and Ihanktowan bands
Why this matters:
Critics argue that the FBI's actions reflect a concerning trend of treating environmental and Indigenous rights activists as potential threats, raising issues about the balance between national security interests and the constitutional rights of free speech and assembly. Supporters of law enforcement efforts, however, contend that the measures were necessary to maintain public safety and order amidst growing tensions.
In a bold move to address the environmental and social toll of fast fashion, France's parliament has green-lit legislation aimed at curbing the industry's excesses.
France proposes penalties and advertising bans for fast fashion to mitigate its ecological impact.
The legislation, aimed at reducing waste and encouraging sustainable consumer habits, targets major players like Shein.
Efforts include enhancing consumer awareness and imposing fines based on the environmental and carbon impact of products.
Key quote:
"Ultra fast fashion is an ecological disaster: clothes are poorly made, widely purchased, rarely worn and quickly thrown away."
— Christophe Béchu, minister of Ecological Transition
Why this matters:
Fast fashion, the rapid production of high volumes of low-cost clothing, has become a significant source of pollution and environmental degradation. This industry model, designed to quickly turn around new styles and trends, encourages overconsumption and leads to a staggering amount of waste.
Public data from a network of state air monitors around the Houston Ship Channel is hard to interpret and is often inadequate, leaving Latino-majority neighborhoods like Cloverleaf unaware of whether the air they breathe is safe.
Los datos públicos de una red de monitores estatales del aire alrededor del Canal de Navegación de Houston son difíciles de interpretar y a menudo son insuficientes, dejando a vecindarios de mayoría latina, como Cloverleaf, sin saber si el aire que respiran es seguro.
While industry claims it could be part of a circular plastics economy, experts say that chemical recycling is extremely damaging to the environment and provides no real benefits.
Algoma Steel continues to exceed Canada’s standard air pollution limits for cancer-causing compounds and struggles with spills as it pushes toward a “green” makeover.