The environmental landscape contains a wealth of personalities: Hellraisers and treehuggers; deniers and political hacks; academics and scientists; geeks and ink-stained wretches.
Here are 10 that I find particularly interesting and influential.
Senator Jim Inhofe
Sen. Jim Inhofe (Credit: Gage Skidmore)
Perhaps not the most popular choice for many who read this, but you can't say that James Mountain Inhofe hasn't had an impact. Washington's Slayer of Science, the Duke of Denial, the Sultan of Shibboleth.
Inhofe's Senate career can be distilled to two things: First, he routinely defeats token Democratic opposition by 3-to-1 margins or more. Second, he's America's climate-denial standard bearer.
Robert Bullard
Robert Bullard. (Credit: University of Michigan)
From his academic perch at Texas Southern U, Bob Bullard reigns as "The Father of the Environmental Justice Movement."
In 1990, he published Dumping in Dixie, a book detailing the struggles of African-American communities in the South battling against the siting of toxic factories and landfills.
Maybe the Goldmans are an odd choice, since Richard passed away in 2010 and Rhoda in 1996.
But after striking it rich in the insurance industry, the Goldmans established the Goldman Environmental Prize in 1990. Activists from each of six regions of the world are recognized with the so-called "Green Nobels."
In addition to a six-figure cash award, the Goldman winners are infused with a measure of prestige. More importantly, the visibility of the prize gives honorees from the developing world who take their lives in their hands through their work a measure of protection.
Winning a Goldman prize was not enough to protect one honoree, Berta Caceres, who was murdered in 2016. But what the Goldmans started 30 years ago has no doubt helped protect others.
As a child of Appalachia, Hitt brings a brand of street cred that can only come from the hills and not from The Hill.
Beyond Coal has tallied more than 300 coal-burning power units either shut down or on a phaseout schedule —though Hitt and Beyond Coal are hardly the only ones responsible for the midnighting of coal.
Aubrey McClendon
The late Aubrey McClendon. (Credit: Wikipedia)
McClendon was a no-holds-barred zealot for fracking. He co-founded Chesapeake Energy, then got them in early on the fracking boom of the early 21st Century.
Fracking utterly changed the worldwide energy landscape, vaulting the U.S. into the top position among oil and gas production. Fracking may have dealt the final blow to the domestic coal and nuclear power industries as natural gas became measurably more cost-efficient than either one for electric utilities.
McClendon fell hard, accused of manipulating company holdings for his own benefit. He was forced out in 2012, and a day after he was indicted by a federal grand jury for antitrust violations in 2016, McClendon died in a one-vehicle crash, as he veered off the road at high speed, hitting a concrete bridge abutment head-on. His death was ruled an accident.
Michael Mann
Michael Mann. (Credit: psu.edu)
Years ago, Mann was a mild-mannered, respected climate scientist who stuck to the science and didn't play politics.
His "hockey stick" graph explaining the rapid growth of CO2 and corresponding rise in temperatures has drawn focused attacks for a decade. So has a poorly-worded email that was part of the thousands of stolen scientists' emails in 2009.
Mann deflected a sustained legal challenge from Virginia's Attorney General and much more. All of which has turned Mann into a Happy Warrior – a thick-skinned scientist willing to return denier fire.
Mann is a prolific speaker, author and interviewee, and a sometimes-snarky social media juggernaut.
Daniel Pauly
Daniel Pauly (Credit: ucsc.edu)
Pauly, a professor and researcher at the University of British Columbia, has challenged many industry-influenced studies that he feels downplay the dire state of global fisheries, thus making himself roundly unpopular in fishing communities.
Pauly has often gone beyond fish-counting, wading into related policy matters. He's staunchly opposed to government fishing subsidies, and has warned that global fishing policy is a saltwater "Ponzi scheme" that's waiting to be exposed.
Fred vom Saal
Fred vom Saal (left) (Credit: Brian Bienkowski)
In the 1990's, this soft-spoken University of Missouri researcher linked the plastics additive bisphenol-A (BPA) to human reproductive disorders. Vom Saal and his colleagues have taken predictable flack from industry advocates ever since even as, like climate change, his work is validated more each year.
Ken Ward, Jr.
Ken Ward Jr. (Credit: John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation)
Consider West Virginia's coal industry a politically irresistible force. For 28 years, Ken Ward Jr. was its immovable object.
As politicians and businesses danced to Big Coal's tune, Ward was the hard-nosed reporter who never learned how to dance.
Keeping an entire state honest is tough work, and until his resignation on Feb. 24, Ward was always up to the job. In recent years, the Charleston Gazette-Mail has been downsized, bought and sold, and re-shaped. To date, Ward has been mum about the reasons for his abrupt departure, but promises he'll have a voice soon, and often.
Lois Gibbs
Lois Gibbs (Credit: Goldman Environmental Prize)
It's been more than forty years since massive contamination was discovered beneath the Love Canal neighborhood in Niagara Falls, NY. And Lois Gibbs is still angry.
Her conversion from angry housewife to community activist to national leader is the environmental blockbuster that's yet to be made.
And her Center for Health and Environmental Justice has served as the armory for thousands of urban, suburban and rural communities fighting to protect themselves against bureaucratic inertia, armies of corporate lawyers, and mountains of hazardous waste.
Peter Dykstra is our weekend editor and columnist. His views do not represent those of Environmental Health News, The Daily Climate or publisher, Environmental Health Sciences.
This list of ten could be thousands. Contact Dykstra with your favorites at pdykstra@ehn.org or on Twitter at @Pdykstra.
As water levels at Lake Powell plummet to alarming lows, the Glen Canyon Dam faces significant infrastructure challenges, prompting urgent calls from conservation groups for innovative water management strategies.
Damage to the "river outlet works" at Glen Canyon Dam, which are crucial for water flow when levels are low, was recently uncovered.
This discovery could hinder the regular use of these outlet tubes, potentially affecting water delivery to the Colorado River.
Concerns are growing over the potential for invasive fish species to threaten native fish populations due to the compromised water flow.
Key quote:
"I think it's really important for people to recognize how much of a threat this is to our water delivery system."
— Eric Balken, executive director of the Glen Canyon Institute
Why this matters:
Lake Powell serves as a vital source of electricity through the Glen Canyon Dam, providing power to millions of homes and businesses. However, dwindling water levels are diminishing the dam's capacity to generate electricity, potentially leading to energy shortages and increased reliance on alternative, often less sustainable, sources.
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.”
In Borger, Texas, a strategic prescribed burn effectively prevented a major wildfire from damaging local neighborhoods, showcasing its potential as a fire management tool despite some opposition.
A seven-mile prescribed burn in Borger, Texas, created a barrier that stopped the Windy Deuce fire, saving homes and potentially lives.
Despite its proven effectiveness, the practice of prescribed burning faces skepticism and legal hesitations among private landowners.
The region's increasing wildfire risk due to climate change emphasizes the need for effective fire management strategies like prescribed burns.
Key quote:
"I would bet my next paycheck, if that black line had not been there, we would have lost homes and, it’s quite possible, lives. There’s no doubt in my mind."
— Archie Stone, wildland fire coordinator for Borger
Why this matters:
Prescribed burns have gained traction as an effective wildfire prevention tool, particularly in regions prone to wildfires. By harnessing the power of controlled fire, land managers can proactively safeguard both natural landscapes and human communities from the devastating impacts of uncontrolled wildfires.
Todd Stern, former U.S. climate envoy, criticizes political leaders for their cautious approach to climate change, claiming it jeopardizes global safety.
Todd Stern rebukes leaders who advocate for slowing down decarbonization, arguing it leads to global catastrophe.
Stern emphasizes that advancements in renewable energy and technology prove that achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 is feasible.
He warns against the dangers of right-wing populism in Europe, which may undermine climate action efforts.
Key quote:
"We are slowed down by those who think of themselves as grownups and believe decarbonisation at the speed the climate community calls for is unrealistic."
Missouri legislators are moving forward with a bill that would restrict water exports to address internal drought concerns and prevent resource depletion by water-stressed western states.
Missouri lawmakers are considering a bill to limit water exports, requiring a permit for any such actions, amidst concerns of increasing water scarcity.
The proposal has gained unusual bipartisan support, driven by drought conditions in Missouri and fears of water demand from western states.
Both environmentalists and agricultural groups in Missouri support the measure, highlighting the potential risks of water shortages.
Key quote:
“We feel like we need to be responsible in Missouri and protect what we have.”
— State Rep. Jamie Burger, one of the bill's lead sponsors
Why this matters:
Many states have established water rights systems that allocate water resources to various users based on seniority, historical use, and other factors. Limiting water exports helps ensure that those with existing water rights, including farmers and municipalities, can continue to access the water they need without facing shortages caused by exports to other regions.
Shared e-scooters' climate benefits depend on how companies manage them and ensure rider safety.
Research suggests that while scooters reduce some emissions, logistics operations may offset these gains.
Safety concerns persist, with injuries rising despite efforts to promote safe riding.
Key quote:
"…we do everything we can to inspire the industries around us to decarbonize as well."
— Andrew Savage, Lime’s head of sustainability
Why this matters:
Despite hopes for e-scooters as a green alternative, their true impact on emissions and safety remains uncertain. Industry efforts to mitigate environmental and safety concerns are ongoing, but challenges persist in realizing their full potential as sustainable urban transport options.
A recent study reveals a concerning correlation between extreme weather events and a surge in payday loan applications, particularly impacting vulnerable communities of color.
Extreme temperature fluctuations, like heatwaves and cold snaps, are leading to increased demand for payday loans across the United States.
Higher energy costs during extreme weather, coupled with lost income and medical expenses, are driving individuals towards these high-interest loans.
Communities with higher proportions of Hispanic residents, often engaged in outdoor work, experience more significant spikes in payday loan demand during extreme heat.
Key quote:
“Climate change is just pushing them even further toward this financial brink.”
— Kristina Dahl, principal climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists
Why this matters:
Extreme weather events like hurricanes, heatwaves, and wildfires often lead to property damage, loss of livelihoods, and disruptions in essential services such as water and power supply. These disruptions can force individuals and families, particularly those already facing financial challenges, to incur unexpected expenses for repairs, medical bills, and temporary accommodations.
Vulnerable communities often lack access to adequate insurance coverage or government assistance programs, leaving them with limited resources to recover from such disasters.
Biodegradable food packaging is a step in the right direction, experts say, but when composted carries risks of microplastic and chemical contamination.
Oregon’s Regenyx plant announced its closing in late February, with those involved calling it a success, despite never reaching planned capacity and millions of dollars lost.
