I’ve worn the same old Levi’s for more than a decade, use the same coffee mug every morning and have a handful of the same trails that me and my dog roam most days. But every now and then I’m shaken from my routine and habits and, I reluctantly admit, it’s usually for the best.
In 2023, we added fresh faces and a new direction at Environmental Health News. It shook our newsroom in exciting ways. In this season of reflection, let me share some thoughts on what we’re doing differently, what we’ll continue to do the same and why we are primed to be one of the leading voices on environmental health and justice.
New-look reporting
Let’s start with what I hope is obvious: our newsroom remains committed to hard-hitting, ethical journalism. However, when I started as a staff writer 12 years ago, that looked one way — a lot of text. Now, as we amplify community concerns and hold people in power accountable, our stories look different as we meet readers and listeners where they are at.
Our other social media platforms also underwent a makeover, thanks to Amanda VanJaarsveld, our new social media and engagement coordinator; and Angela Hutchinson, our engagement director. Want to learn how to avoid PFAS? Want to know what a “toxic tour” looks like? Join the more than 1.8 million users who found us on X, Facebook or Instagram this year, where Amanda not only highlights our reporting but gives bite-sized solutions and guides to some of the most complex environmental problems.
Speaking of solutions, in our biweekly podcast, I talk to the next generation of environmental justice leaders to reimagine a just and healthy planet. You can subscribe to the Agents of Change in Environmental Justice podcast at Spotify or iTunes. You can also read all of their first-person essays, where, guided by our assistant editor María Paula Rubiano, the fellows put forth solutions to some of the most challenging environmental justice issues.
Through this Agents of Change partnership — designed to empower scientists from marginalized communities in storytelling, community engagement and policy translation — we’ve trained more than 45 scholars to tell their own stories weaving in research, community action and lived experience.
We’re thrilled to reach these new, engaged audiences — and it’s working.
Impactful journalism
All of this new packaging has the same core — intentional reporting using storytelling to bolster environmental health and justice and have on-the-ground impact.
Our western Pennsylvania reporter, Kristina Marusic, for example, used old-school beat reporting on the fracking and petrochemical industries to once again win an award from the regional Golden Quills competition. She also won a Child Health Advocate Award, in part due to her book "A New War on Cancer: The Unlikely Heroes Revolutionizing Prevention," which was published this May. Her reporting was cited in courtrooms, nonprofit reports and community meetings across the region last year.
Our reporting partnership with palabra, Adrift: Communities on the front lines of pesticide exposure fight for change, represented our largest push yet to integrate Spanish-language reporting into our newsroom. Led by our newly appointed manager of EHN en Español, Autumn Spanne, the series was republished in multiple other newsrooms and prompted follow-up coverage by the Wall Street Journal and NPR.
These are just a couple examples from the more than 230 stories we published in 2023, which reached far beyond EHN.org. We were republished in environmental publications like Truthout, trade journals on woodworking and food and cited in places like the Guardian, Vox and the Bay Area’s KALW.
As we branch out in new ways, we remain dedicated to reporting on the science and health issues important to you. And we’re not just reporting on it — we’re driving it: our newsroom was cited in more than 40 scientific, government and white papers in 2023 alone.
Heading into the new year
We can all admit 2024 is going to be an interesting year. With another U.S. election on the horizon, the news will be fast and fractured.
You can count on our newsroom to bring you the most crucial environmental health science and storytelling. Through the newest digital tools, we’ll be nimbler in getting our audience the latest summaries on key science and environmental reporting from around the globe. Our in-depth storytelling will continue to focus on the communities our reporters are embedded in, and aim for impact — whether that’s elevating voices of those often unheard, providing guidance to our audience on healthy living or highlighting the need for legislative change and action.
I’m so proud of our mighty little newsroom. We continue to punch above our weight class and we plan to throw some real haymakers this year.
Change can be good. The new faces in our newsroom bring new energy and innovative approaches to journalism. This year we will continue to experiment with our storytelling as we probe the petrochemical industry’s economic and environmental footprint, investigate the insidious toxics in our lives and report on the people and communities who have solutions to these problems. If you’d like to support our work, please consider a donation, or subscribe to one of our newsletters to stay in touch.
Who knows … maybe I’ll even buy a new pair of Levi’s in 2024 (but I’m hanging on to the old ones).
If you have a story tip, comment, suggestion, question or concern, please contact senior editor Brian Bienkowski at bbienkowski@ehsciences.org.
Want to learn more about our newsroom and broader organization? Watch the video below.
Colorado is prioritizing transit over highway expansion to combat climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, a move that also has environmental justice implications.
Colorado canceled plans to widen Interstate 25 and redirected $100 million to transit projects.
The state’s Transportation Commission adopted a rule requiring new projects to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or risk losing funding.
Other states, like Minnesota, Maryland and New York, are considering similar legislation to follow Colorado's lead.
Key quote:
“We really regard the Colorado rule as the gold standard for how states should address transportation climate strategy.”
— Ben Holland, manager at RMI, a national sustainability nonprofit
Why this matters:
Reducing highway expansion in favor of transit investments is important in lowering transportation emissions, which are a major contributor to climate change and have disproportionately impacted communities of color. This shift not only aims to improve air quality but also sets a precedent for other states to follow in addressing climate challenges. Read more: Black communities must lead the charge to repair harm from freeways.
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.”
Nearly every day between April 25 and May 27 saw tornadoes in the U.S., marking the most active May for severe weather since 2011, with violent storms, a downburst in Houston, and massive hail.
Tornadoes touched down on 94% of days from April 25 to May 27, surpassing other recent active periods.
The frequent tornadoes are due to a stagnant weather pattern that generated numerous supercells across the central states.
The upcoming large-scale weather pattern change may reduce tornado activity next week.
Why this matters:
The hyperactive tornado season emphasizes the need for preparedness and robust warning systems. With climate change potentially intensifying such storms, understanding these patterns will be important for mitigating future impacts.
India is facing a severe heatwave, with Delhi experiencing temperatures nearing 50 degrees Celsius, causing widespread water shortages and disruptions.
Delhi and other regions in India are experiencing near-record high temperatures, with some areas reporting up to 52.9 degrees Celsius.
The heatwave has led to a water crisis in Delhi, prompting authorities to ration water supplies and implement measures to cool the city.
The heatwave has caused the first heat-related death of the year and significantly increased power demand.
Why this matters:
Environmental experts link this extreme weather event to broader patterns of climate change, which are making heatwaves more frequent and intense.
Farmers in rural areas are particularly vulnerable, as the heat threatens crops and livestock, jeopardizing food security. Urban residents, meanwhile, are contending with the urban heat island effect, which makes cities like Delhi even hotter than surrounding rural areas due to concrete and asphalt absorbing and re-radiating heat.
Governor Phil Scott has allowed Vermont's groundbreaking climate legislation to pass without his signature, marking a pivotal moment in the state's environmental policy.
The “Climate Superfund Act” requires major oil companies to pay for climate change damages in Vermont, calculated based on their emissions from 1995 to 2024.
Vermont's new “Flood Safety Act” introduces stricter building regulations in river corridors, enhances wetland protections, and increases dam safety to mitigate future flooding risks.
Despite concerns about legal challenges and implementation timelines, these laws aim to fund climate resilience projects and reduce future disaster costs.
Key quote:
“What’s incredibly clear is these companies that are responsible for the climate crisis aren’t going to pay Vermont a dime unless we take an action like this.”
— Ben Edgerly Walsh, Vermont Public Interest Research Group
Increased use of renewable energy in the U.S. from 2019 to 2022 reduced emissions and improved air quality, yielding $249 billion in climate and health benefits.
Wind and solar energy generation in the US increased by 55% from 2019 to 2022, providing 14% of the nation's electricity by 2022.
This shift cut carbon dioxide emissions by 900 million metric tons, equal to removing 71 million cars from the roads annually.
Emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, harmful pollutants from fossil fuels, decreased by 1 million metric tons, resulting in $249 billion in climate and health benefits.
Key quote:
“These findings can help us target future wind and solar development to provide the greatest climate and health benefits.”
— Jeremiah Johnson, climate and energy professor at North Carolina State University
Why this matters:
The shift away from fossil fuels can play a critical role in decreasing the pollutants that contribute to smog, respiratory illnesses, and other health issues. For parents, this means fewer asthma attacks and respiratory problems for their children. For healthcare professionals, it translates into a reduction in air pollution-related conditions that burden the healthcare system. For scientists and regulators, these improvements provide valuable data supporting the efficacy of renewable energy policies and initiatives.
Rising temperatures are pushing malaria-carrying mosquitoes to higher altitudes, posing a lethal threat to pregnant women in previously unaffected regions.
Papua New Guinea's highlands are seeing an increase in malaria cases as mosquitoes move to higher elevations due to climate change.
Pregnant women in these regions are particularly vulnerable, with severe malaria increasing the risk of maternal and fetal complications.
The upward shift of malaria mosquitoes threatens to reverse global progress in malaria control.
Key quote:
"When malaria hits new populations that are naive, you tend to get these explosive epidemics that are severe because people don’t have any existing immunity."
— Sadie Ryan, associate professor of medical geography at the University of Florida.
Why this matters:
Climate change is expanding the range of malaria, endangering pregnant women in highland areas who lack immunity. This trend emphasizes a need for enhanced malaria control measures and healthcare access in vulnerable regions. Read more: Coronavirus, climate change, and the environment.
U.S. Steel’s proposed sale to Nippon Steel stokes concerns over labor rights and national security, all while the company continues to break clean air laws in Western Pennsylvania.
