Gina McCarthy, President Biden's Director of the Office of Domestic Climate Policy, has her work cut out for her.
Her job is to implement the president's new climate Executive Order and put the United States on a path to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. "I'm the dude who's supposed to deliver this in a timely way" she noted recently.
We can't imagine anyone who is tougher or better-equipped to do this job than Director McCarthy. But consider what is on her plate. The country needs dramatic and timely reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from major sectors of the economy -- including power, transportation, industry, agriculture, and buildings. To bring this about, she has a small White House staff and a Task Force of federal agencies. Here are some suggestions for managing early challenges:
Bring the public along
It is a long road to 2050 and sustained public support is essential to success. Demonstrating that needed actions are widely shared across economic sectors and different levels of government can help build public confidence and support for the entire enterprise. A good way to model the principle of widely shared commitments is by insisting that all federal departments and agencies integrate greenhouse gas reduction goals into their core missions. Even if the leadership of the Department of Defense, for example, understands that climate change is a security threat, its purpose is to be ready to wage war if necessary, a very energy intensive project. There are ways to move toward energy efficiency that prove to be mission-consistent, like Marines powering technology in the field with solar blankets rather than liquid fuel. Director McCarthy needs to convince federal agencies to pull their weight and then ask other governments and economic sectors to do the same.
Don’t rely on Congress
It's a big gamble to wait for Congress to enact broad new legislation, and waiting could delay deployment of smaller but effective policies. A better strategy is to strengthen existing programs and increase funding while seeking authorization of targeted new authorities where necessary.
Start now to define agency climate budgets
Congress can do a lot with money, whether for existing or modified programs; grants to state, tribal and local governments; or investments in research. There may be opportunities to work with Congress to find funds for some climate actions this summer in the FY 2022 budget. In addition, a key challenge for Director McCarthy is to be sure agencies include a comprehensive set of new climate investments in their budget proposals to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) this September, and to be sure OMB looks favorably on such requests. This process ends up as the president's fiscal year 2023 Budget submission to Congress in February 2022. While Congress will have its own ideas, the budget proposal sets the tone.
Focus, focus
The Executive Order calls for both reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and building resilience to the impacts of a changing climate. The latter is certainly important: climate change is bringing more severe storms, wildfires, heat waves, and rising sea levels. State and local governments play a key role in preparing for these risks, but they need leadership and resources only the federal government can provide. Taking on both these challenges right away would test the most talented administrators and risk a loss of focus that could cripple work to meet greenhouse gas reduction goals. One approach might be for Director McCarthy to hand off the work of building resilience to another senior leader. She could then empower that person to lead an effort to help state and local governments prepare for climate risks that is comparable to and parallel with the work to reduce greenhouse gases.
Don’t overplan
Charting a course to net zero greenhouse gas emissions will require careful planning, but there is a risk of getting bogged down with too much planning at a time when prompt action is critical. Fortunately, the president's Executive Order is not overly prescriptive, which gives Director McCarthy discretion to find the right balance between planning and action. For example, McCarthy could develop greenhouse gas reduction plans for major economic sectors on schedules that reflect readiness to proceed with implementation. The one plan specifically required in the Order is the "Nationally Determined Contribution" for the United States to global greenhouse gas reductions under the Paris Climate Agreement. That document, due this spring, can provide broad goals and a framework for more detailed plans.
Find the right fit for states
In the absence of federal leadership over the past four years, many states and cities have stepped into the vacuum. And they might have to again if politics take a different turn. But asking each state to develop its own comprehensive greenhouse gas reduction plan would be a mistake. The federal government has extraordinary powers that need to be fully exercised to have the best chance of meeting national climate goals. Yet some strategies, such as building codes and retrofits, are more appropriate for state and local governments than for the federal government. Director McCarthy should define which goals are the best fit for state and local governments and then deliver the funds needed to achieve them.
Report progress
Too often, enthusiasm for a new plan shades the reality that plans are simply an educated guess about what is needed, especially when addressing novel challenges. With experience, plans should be revised accordingly. The best way to stay ahead of these problems is to make a gold-plated, up-front commitment to regular and public reporting of progress, preferably by an objective third party, and to make course corrections as appropriate.
Setting the country on a course to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 is arguably one of the more complicated tasks that this country has ever undertaken. Decisions made in the first, early days of this effort will have major ramifications for future success. There is no one we would rather have making these hard calls than Director McCarthy.
She is "the dude" and we wish her well.
Ruth Greenspan Bell is a Public Policy Scholar at Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a founder of The Environmental Protection Network.
Their views do not necessarily represent those of Environmental Health News, The Daily Climate or publisher, Environmental Health Sciences.
Banner photo: Gina McCarthy (EPA Administrator at the time), President Joe Biden (Vice President at the time), and D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser visiting a DC Clean Rivers Project. (Credit: National Archives)
The HHS Climate Action Plan emphasizes resilience without adequately addressing prevention.
Resilience policies overlook the pervasive and constant health threats posed by climate change.
The approach may lead to accepting climate disasters as inevitable, rather than preventable.
Key quote:
"Resilience is the categorical imperative of business-as-usual; it is crisis managers buying time. For others, resilience is exhausting."
— Ajay Singh Chaudhary, author of The Exhausted of the Earth.
Why this matters:
Focusing solely on resilience without prevention leaves populations, especially the vulnerable, in perpetual danger. This approach risks normalizing climate disasters instead of aiming to mitigate them.
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 heat wave has primarily impacted California, Oregon, and Arizona, resulting in record-breaking temperatures and multiple fatalities.
Most victims were elderly and found in their homes; other deaths include a motorcyclist in Death Valley and a baby in Arizona.
Heat-related deaths are often underreported, as they are frequently attributed to other causes such as heart failure
Key quote:
“The extreme nature of the heat last summer and this summer has meant it’s in the forefront of everyone’s mind, including those in charge of classifying health outcomes and deaths."
— Ashley Ward, director of the Heat Policy Innovation Hub at Duke University
Why this matters:
As the climate crisis intensifies, the frequency and severity of heatwaves are expected to increase, posing a serious threat to public health and the environment. This brutal reminder of our changing climate heightens the pressure for action to mitigate the impacts of global warming. Read more: We are undercounting heat-related deaths in the US.
A landmark climate lawsuit in Montana questions whether a state law supporting fossil fuel development infringes on constitutional rights to a healthy environment.
Montana's Supreme Court heard arguments about a law that prohibits considering climate impacts in fossil fuel project approvals, challenged by 16 youths.
Plaintiffs argue the law violates Montana’s constitutional right to a "clean and healthful environment," with potential national implications.
The state’s defense claims Montana's emissions are too minor to affect global climate change, questioning the court's jurisdiction.
Key quote:
“Any environmental case that gets to the Supreme Court is dead on arrival. That’s why people are going to the states.”
— Patrick Parenteau, professor of law emeritus and senior fellow for climate policy at Vermont Law and Graduate School
Why this matters:
The case could set a precedent for constitutional climate rights, influencing environmental policy and legal actions nationwide, especially as federal regulations face challenges. Read more: Youth v. Montana — Young adults speak up.
A recent pipeline shutdown has exposed significant gaps in Manitoba's oversight of its oil and gas industry, raising concerns about the province's regulatory practices.
Manitoba has not updated its pipeline oversight policies despite an oil boom and calls for better practices.
A recent pipeline shutdown revealed deficiencies in monitoring and staffing, with only 13 inspections in five years.
Other provinces have improved oversight following critical reports, but Manitoba lags behind.
Key quote:
“This Imperial Oil incident has really highlighted some of the gaps, perhaps, in governmental oversight.”
— Tracy Schmidt, Manitoba Environment and Climate Change Minister
Why this matters:
Critics argue that this incident underscores the need for stronger regulatory practices to prevent such disruptions and protect the environment. The province’s current oversight mechanisms have been deemed insufficient to address the complexities and risks associated with oil and gas operations. Environmental advocates are particularly worried about the potential for oil spills and other ecological impacts that could arise from such regulatory failures.
The Biden administration is providing $1.7 billion to retool 11 auto factories for electric vehicle production, aiming to secure jobs and support union labor.
The Energy Department's funding aims to prevent the closure of unionized auto plants and save over 15,000 jobs.
This initiative is part of Biden’s strategy to boost EV production before the November election, countering potential policy reversals if Trump wins.
The largest allocation, $500 million, goes to General Motors in Lansing, Michigan, to shift from internal combustion engines to EVs.
Key quote:
“Building a clean energy economy can and should be a win-win for union autoworkers and automakers. This investment will create thousands of good-paying, union manufacturing jobs and retain even more — from Lansing, Michigan to Fort Valley, Georgia — by helping auto companies retool, reboot and rehire in the same factories and communities.”
— Joe Biden, President of the United States
Why this matters:
This funding supports the transition to electric vehicles, crucial for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It also aims to secure jobs in an evolving auto industry, promoting economic stability in key states.
China has 339GW of wind and solar power under construction, compared to 40GW in the US.
By 2024, China will reach 1,200GW of installed wind and solar capacity, six years ahead of schedule.
Despite renewable growth, China’s coal consumption and new coal plant approvals continue to rise.
Key quote:
“It is obviously important for China to keep on adding more renewable energy to meet its targets. But it’s not as simple as you just keep building and it will be solved … [because] there is no sign that the country is trying to steer away from its coal consumption.”
— Li Shuo, director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Policy Institute
Why this matters:
China's rapid renewable energy expansion sets a global precedent, but rising coal use and geopolitical tensions challenge its environmental goals.
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.
