Dr. Robbie Parks joins the Agents of Change in Environmental Justice podcast to give listeners a front row seat at the largest, most consequential climate change conference on the planet.
Parks, a senior fellow of the Agents of Change program and assistant professor of Environmental Health Sciences at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, traveled to Dubai this month for the United Nations’ COP28 conference and, over the course of the week, kept an audio diary as he navigated the bustling conference, ran into old friends, chatted with experts and explored the climate change and health intersection.
The Agents of Change in Environmental Justice podcast is a biweekly podcast featuring the stories and big ideas from past and present fellows, as well as others in the field. You can see all of the past episodes here.
Listen below to Parks, and subscribe to the podcast at iTunes or Spotify.
Power shutoffs or wildfire evacuations can be deadly for disabled people, especially nondrivers who may not have a way to get to a cooling center or evacuation point.
My nightmares about waves started the night our building flooded.
I was living in a commercial loft in Red Hook, Brooklyn, when Hurricane Sandy hit. None of us living in the squat, two-story cinder-block warehouse across the street from the cruise ship terminal took the mandatory evacuation order seriously.
During Hurricane Irene the year before, we waded through the large puddle that formed on our corner, laughing at how scared we had been and how hard it was going to be to get all that masking tape off the windows we’d so carefully taped in giant asterisks.
I felt safe in a big city. Natural disasters were things experienced by people in the country, or other countries. This was New York City. We were protected.
Within the course of a few hours that night, eight feet of water surrounded our home. It came in around the edges of the plate glass door. For a bit, the street lights were still working, and the water on the far side of the door glowed like an eerie fish tank as it rose higher and higher. Then the power was gone and we watched nervously, peering around the corner to the now-inundated mezzanine landing. Would it reach the second floor? At what point should we try to make an escape across the adjacent rooftops?
Eventually, it got late enough and the water didn’t seem to be coming as quickly, so we tried to sleep. But all night I had nightmares of monstrous waves from the harbor crashing through the cinderblock building. To this day, I have trouble sleeping when I can hear the noise of waves or running water. I try to reason with myself, but the destructive power of the ocean is hard to forget.
We woke up the next morning after Sandy to the smell of flooding. The rank scent of seawater blended with gasoline from submerged cars inundated everything: the drywall of our building, the belongings of everyone who lived in first floor or basement apartments, the piles of clothing and furniture and old photos and books that were dragged from ruined apartments and piled on the sidewalks.
I try to reason with myself, but the destructive power of the ocean is hard to forget.
For my job with the Communication Workers of America (CWA) union, I was asked to interview union members whose homes had been destroyed to create a fundraising effort for rebuilding. On Staten Island, I spoke to a woman whose one-story house had flooded to the ceiling. She pointed above her head to the line of grime on the blue wall of her living room. Luckily, she had made it out; her neighbors didn’t.
As I traveled to the edges of NYC documenting these stories, it wasn’t hard to see that the places with the worst flooding and most destruction were the working class, poor or Black neighborhoods. In affluent Park Slope, life continued mostly untouched, the streets full of Halloween trick-or-treaters. In the flood zone of Red Hook, power was off for weeks, and in one of the largest public housing complexes in the country, destroyed boilers left residents without heat or hot water through the winter.
These unequal impacts repeat with each climate change-induced disaster. In Washington State, every summer now we hold our breath, wondering when the wildfire smoke will arrive. For wealthier folks with weather-sealed homes and air filtration systems, it’s liveable.
For everyone else, it can mean weeks of breathing unhealthy air, and, depending on the health of your lungs and heart, it can even be fatal. Power shutoffs or wildfire evacuations can be deadly for disabled people, especially nondrivers who may not have a way to get to a cooling center or evacuation point.
Nearly a third of people in the U.S. can't drive or can’t afford to drive because of age, income or disability. But instead of interventions that would move us away from car dependency–better transit, safer and more comfortable places to walk, bike and roll, and denser and more inclusively zoned communities–much climate funding has focused on swapping out gas-powered cars for electric.
Just as the public health impacts of climate change are much more acutely experienced by poor and disabled people and Black and brown communities, the public health impacts of car dependency fall on the same populations with less power, fewer resources, and less reliable mobility access. People who live near highways or busy roads are exposed to air and noise pollution, the lack of pedestrian access and connectivity, and an increased risk of being hit by a car. Preserving car dependency does and will continue to perpetuate profound public health and access disparities. People who can’t drive and can’t afford to drive will continue to bear these substantial public health burdens so the status quo of easy car-based mobility can be preserved for those it’s working for.
This week I’m at a conference in northern Idaho surrounded by forests of half-dead and dried-out trees. While the Canadian wildfires last summer were massive, it’s difficult to appreciate how much forest across the west still waits – a lightning strike or cigarette butt away from conflagration. As I walk through the woods, I’ve noticed all of the larger stumps have burn scars from a previous fire. When this area burns again, the smoke will blow east. Those who live in airtight homes with nice new HVAC systems will hunker down and be fine, but there will be many apartments with the windows cracked open: better to breathe bad air than roast without air conditioning.
Our reliance on driving means that transportation is the leading cause of carbon emissions in the US. There’s an urgency to address this, but rather than entrenching us further into car dependency by promoting individual electric vehicle ownership, now is our chance to channel climate investments away from a mobility system based around driving. Among those for whom driving is accessible and affordable, a life with less driving may seem both unimaginable and inconvenient. But for those of us who can’t drive or can’t afford to, we are a living demonstration that it is possible. Relying on transit, walking, rolling and biking might not be safe or convenient yet, but with the scale of investments we are putting towards fighting climate change, we could make it a whole lot easier.
With the right housing, land use and transportation incentives we can retrofit our communities so it’s possible to get everywhere you need to go without driving. It’s an open question whether we value that inclusivity more than we value preserving the status quo.
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.”
The U.S. government will stop using single-use plastics in all federal operations by 2035, according to a strategy released by the Biden administration on Friday.
The announcement also set a goal for the federal government to stop buying plastic for food service, events and packaging by 2027. While the strategy isn’t enforceable by law and could change under future administrations, it is the first government-wide strategy aimed at reducing plastic pollution and recognizes that the plastic pollution “crisis” encompasses the entire lifecycle: from the fossil fuels used as building blocks in plastic manufacturing to the microplastic bits lining our shorelines.
“With its multitude of environmental impacts across its supply chain, broad global effects, and severe public health consequences, plastic pollution has become one of the most pressing and consequential environmental problems in the U.S. and around the globe,” said Brenda Mallory and Ali Zaidi, two White House environmental and climate officials, in the joint letter accompanying the strategy document.
Changes in federal purchasing can have huge impacts: The U.S. federal government is the largest buyer of consumer goods in the world, with nearly $600 billion in annual spending. “Because of its purchasing power, by reducing the demand of plastic products through procurement changes, the Federal Government has the potential to significantly impact the supply of these products,” the strategy reads.
"Plastic pollution has become one of the most pressing and consequential environmental problems in the U.S. and around the globe." - Brenda Mallory and Ali Zaidi, White House officials
The announcement comes as the plastic crisis continues to grow. The world generates roughly 400 million tons of plastic waste each year, and less than 10% of plastic ever made has been recycled. Plastic waste is set to triple by 2060.
The crisis has garnered international attention as more than 175 countries are negotiating a global plastics treaty. The talks have stalled over issues such as regulating the chemicals in plastic, production caps, and the role of chemical recycling and bioplastics. There is a High Ambition Coalition of countries that want an end to plastic pollution by 2040. There is also a Global Coalition for Plastics Sustainability — made of nations economically reliant on fossil fuels — that is pushing for a larger focus on addressing plastic waste (via chemical and mechanical recycling and other means) rather than plastic bans or production limits. The U.S. — the largest exporter of oil and gas in the world — is not part of either and has been criticized for not taking a stronger stance on limiting production.
The new strategy similarly does not call for any plastic production caps, but many environmental groups said it is a step in the right direction.
“This report is the clearest articulation to date from the White House of the scale and urgency of the plastic pollution crisis and the threat it poses for our ocean and communities,” Jeff Watters, Ocean Conservancy’s vice president of external affairs said in a statement.
Erin Simon, vice president and head of plastic waste and business for the World Wildlife Fund, praised the strategy for focusing on the entire lifecycle.
“We’re heartened to see this report doesn’t shy away from the negative impacts that plastics have on human health and analyzes the problem through the full life cycle of plastic,” Simon said in a statement. “Cleaning up the global plastic mess must start at home. And today under President Biden and Vice President Harris’ leadership, the U.S. government is doing exactly that."
President Joe Biden has announced he will not seek re-election, endorsing Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee.
Harris has been a key player in Biden’s climate initiatives, including the Inflation Reduction Act and international climate commitments.
As California's Attorney General, Harris prosecuted major environmental cases and created an environmental justice unit.
Key quote:
“We must do more. Our action collectively, or worse, our inaction will impact billions of people for decades to come.”
— Kamala Harris, Vice President of the United States
Why this matters:
In Kamala Harris, advocates and environmentalists would certainly have a strong ally in the White House, one who's not afraid to make bold moves.The big question is: Can she rally Congress to back her vision? Because while the presidency has its powers, transforming climate policy requires serious legislative muscle.
The Center for American Progress found 123 House and Senate Republicans deny the scientific consensus on climate change.
This group includes prominent leaders like House Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise.
Despite the reduction in numbers, these members have collectively received $52 million from the fossil fuel industry.
Key quote:
“It's also concerning because it’s so obvious what the facts are, and to watch so many members of Congress pretend that the science is not settled, it just reveals a willingness to disregard truth.”
— Trevor Higgins, senior vice president for energy and environment, Center for American Progress
Federal workers worry about job security and policy reversals under a potential second Trump administration.
Trump’s new running mate, JD Vance, supports firing mid-level bureaucrats to reshape the federal workforce.
Democrats are divided over President Biden’s re-election campaign amid his recent COVID-19 diagnosis.
Key quote:
“I think he’s learned more about what he needs to do with his incoming administration if he were to be elected.”
— National Park Service employee
Why this matters:
Federal employees are anxious about losing their jobs and seeing their work undone if Trump wins. This instability could impact the effectiveness and morale of the civil service.
Alberta's Canadian Energy Centre, created to counter green energy narratives, has shut down due to impending federal regulations on oil industry advertising.
The Canadian Energy Centre, launched in 2019, aimed to rebut criticisms of Alberta's oil industry but faced multiple public embarrassments and credibility issues.
Funded by oil and gas companies through Alberta's carbon pricing program, the Centre was required to register as a foreign agent in the U.S.
New federal requirements for accuracy in oil advertising led to the Centre's abrupt closure before the regulations took effect.
Key quote:
“You’d have been forgiven for wondering if the sole mission of the [the war room] was to make every other government expenditure seem like a bargain.”
— Andrew Leach, Alberta Energy economist
Why this matters:
The closure highlights the growing impact of regulatory measures on misleading advertising and underscores the challenges Alberta faces in transitioning from fossil fuels to cleaner energy sources.
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.
