When you think of cities impacted by the urban heat island effect, you probably think of steamy Houston or the concrete jungle of New York. Missoula, Montana probably doesn't come to mind.
But, thanks to climate change, Missoula is getting hotter, with average temperatures expected to climb 2-5 degrees Fahrenheit over the next couple of decades.
In a city where extreme heat is new and air conditioning is rare, rising temperatures can be deadly—especially for the elderly and other vulnerable groups. Worse, the city sits in a valley that collects smoke from wildfires, which are expected to get worse in a warming world. So, when residents throw open their windows to cool off, they are often assaulted by unhealthy air.
Missoula is tackling this problem head-on. The city recently partnered with scientists affiliated with the Thriving Earth Exchange, a project of the American Geophysical Union, to map heat patterns and vulnerable populations. Armed with that data, the city and its nonprofit partners are devising strategies to keep Missoula cool.
Missoula was already ahead of the curve on climate adaptation. The city formalized a farsighted Conservation and Climate Action Plan in 2013, and appointed an Energy Conservation Coordinator, Chase Jones, whose job is to "lose sleep" over implementing the plan. (Jones likes to joke that he has increased his coffee intake as a result.)
While it is still in its earliest stages, the story of Missoula's work-in-progress suggests lessons for other cities and towns facing similar conditions.
Understand the threat
It's important to know that extreme heat is the deadliest climate impact, causing at least 1,100 deaths each year in the U.S. — more than any other weather-related hazard. Heat kills directly, by heat stroke (or hyperthermia); and indirectly, by exacerbating chronic conditions such as cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, and diabetes.
Cities are hardest-hit, because their expanses of concrete and asphalt absorb and hold heat. That is why air temperatures in cities can be as much as 22°F higher than in the surrounding countryside. Higher temperatures drive increased energy use, which contributes to poor air quality.
Air pollution, in turn, exacerbates asthma and other respiratory conditions.
In Missoula and elsewhere, the urban heat island effect disproportionately affects the most vulnerable, including low-income households, children and the elderly.
And higher latitudes are no guarantee of safety: in fact, the CDC reports that some of the deadliest recent heat waves have taken place in Northern cities that are ill-prepared for extreme heat.
Build partnerships to map the problem
Downtown Missoula. (Credit: Micah Sheldon/flickr)
The city of Missoula and Climate Smart Missoula had already done the hard work of devising a plan to reduce carbon emissions. But adapting to excessive heat required different kinds of data and expertise. So, the city reached out to connect with the Thriving Earth Exchange (TEX).
TEX, which works to help solve environmental problems by matching communities with knowledgeable scientists and nonprofits was an instant, natural fit. "TEX really suited Missoula's situation," says Chase Jones, "because it recognizes that there is sometimes a gap in capacity and skills and resources in local governments around energy and climate change issues."
TEX connected the city with an expert right in their backyard: Anna Klene, a professor of geography at the University of Montana. Klene was joined by climatologist Nick Silverman, and then recruited graduate student Julie Tompkins to create a detailed map of Missoula's heat problem.
Layer the data
As a first step, Silverman used satellite imagery to map the city's land surface temperature. But the city wanted to add a socioeconomic component to better identify neighborhoods most at risk. "We wanted to look on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood, block-by-block basis and see where the most sensitive populations in Missoula are impacted by heat," says Julie Tompkins.
So Tompkins delved into block-level data from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey, focusing on factors – including age, income level and type of housing – that help determine susceptibility to heat impacts. Those data were layered with the heat map, showing literal hot spots and vulnerable populations.
Then, using the layered data, "I could go to those neighborhoods and see, 'There is low-income housing here. There is a mobile home court here. There is senior housing here.'" Tompkins says.
Get information to those who can put it to use
The next step was to get the mapping data "in the heads and in the work plans of those who could apply it," says Chase Jones. To that end, the team shares its findings with health officials, the City's Energy and Climate Team, planners and others.
The goal is to show how warming impacts the people of Missoula, and build that into city services and plans. For example, parks officials can use this map, together with additional research and mapping efforts, to prioritize neighborhoods for tree-planting and pocket parks, and build shade structures on exposed trails.
Health and social service agencies can initiate efforts to educate, look after, and provide resources for vulnerable residents. Planners can find ways to slow the march of concrete and asphalt.
Development agreements can incentivize cooling strategies such as light-colored roofs and shade features, while preserving the urban forest and integrating green infrastructure.
Much of that work is already under way in Missoula, says Jones. But the new data "emboldens them to do even more of the good work they're doing," he says, "so that we break up that concrete; we have cool, shady places; and everyone can access it no matter what their income level or health situation."
The heat data are also advancing a conversation about the mental health impacts of climate change, says Amy Cilimburg, Director of Climate Smart Missoula.
For example, rising temperatures are linked to an increase in domestic violence. "That means that police and first responders need to find ways to cool down the temperature as well as the situation," says Cilimburg, "because people are not at their best when they are hot."
A holistic approach
The city of Missoula and its nonprofit partners are beginning to use multilayered data to consider how rising temperatures connect to a broad range of problems, from asthma to violence. Linked problems require holistic solutions: "You can't look at heat impacts in isolation," says Cilimburg, "A cross-sector approach will get you farther as a community."
That approach is bearing fruit in Missoula, where extreme heat is becoming part of the conversation on public health, housing, development, parks and more. In this way, Missoula is "mainstreaming" climate adaptation.
"It's a way to build capacity, understanding and innovation that's better than building your own little silo around climate," says Jones. He adds that, "Intentional integration into existing agency, systems, planning and community is an approach that we hope results in broader change and more expansive impact."
There are practical benefits to this holistic approach. Because, just as the problems compound one another – as when extreme heat worsens air quality – the solutions can have positive synergistic effects. For example, cooling the city with shade trees and light roofs will result in lower energy use and reduced greenhouse gas emissions—a win for mitigation.
Those efforts will also improve air quality and reduce health impacts.
And the biggest beneficiaries of those positive changes are the city's most vulnerable people: low-income families that can't afford air conditioning; people with chronic health conditions; children and the elderly.
That's a win for equity, says Jones. And for resilience, because "in the end, our city is only as strong as its most-vulnerable residents."
A recent study reveals that climate change is severely disrupting nutrient retention in alpine ecosystems, particularly impacting the nitrogen cycle vital for plant and soil health.
Alpine regions are experiencing enhanced warming, resulting in decreased snow cover and increased shrub migration, affecting the ecosystems' ability to retain nutrients like nitrogen.
Seasonal dynamics are crucial; disruptions in spring and autumn significantly diminish nitrogen uptake by plants, impacting overall ecosystem health.
Experiments in the Austrian Alps have demonstrated how altered snow patterns and shrub growth negatively influence the nitrogen cycle.
Key quote:
“[The study] really added to the literature, arguing that it’s really important to understand the interaction among the different elements of an ecosystem and what the effects of climate change will be.”
— Olivier Dangles, author of Climate Change on Mountains.
Why this matters:
Alpine ecosystems are biodiversity hotspots and serve as home to species uniquely adapted to cold environments. As the climate warms, these species face increased risk of extinction if their habitat changes too quickly for them to adapt. In addition, A reduced snow cover and altered precipitation patterns could lead to water shortages, affecting agriculture, drinking water supplies and hydroelectric power generation.
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 Solar for All program will fund solar and battery installations in low-income neighborhoods, benefiting approximately 900,000 households.
Funding will be managed by state, municipal and tribal governments along with nonprofits, with implementation slated for the summer.
The initiative will help achieve the administration's clean energy goals and reduce energy expenses for families by an average of $400 annually.
Key quote:
“Low income families can spend up to 30 percent of their paychecks on their energy bills. It’s outrageous.”
— U.S. President Joe Biden.
Why this matters:
As President Biden noted, many low-income families spend a significant portion of their income on utility bills. Solar energy can drastically reduce these costs, easing financial burdens and increasing disposable income for other essential needs.
Students at Columbia, Tulane and the University of Virginia have legally challenged their universities' investments in fossil fuels, claiming these are illegal and breach institutional obligations.
Students argue investments in fossil fuel companies contradict the schools’ missions of promoting " socially beneficial ends."
They highlight conflicts of interest with faculty and board members receiving payments from the fossil fuel sector.
Legal actions align with broader divestment efforts and increased scrutiny of fossil fuel influence in academia.
Key quote:
"Universities occupy a unique position as a bastion of values and morals the best of society should strive for. When Columbia refuses to commit to divestment, it hinders those very same principles and continues a blatant disregard of the important climate work its own faculty, students and affiliates do."
— Nicole Xiao, second-year Columbia student studying climate systems science.
In an effort to combat long-standing energy inequities, Navajo Nation organizations are employing solar energy to bring power to off-grid homes for the first time.
Organizations like Navajo Power aim to address energy injustice in the Navajo Nation by powering homes with solar energy.
A development ban law known as the "Bennett Freeze" hindered development in Navajo and Hopi nations from 1966 to 2009, leaving many without power for decades.
Partnerships with groups like Native Renewables harness the cultural importance of solar energy, connecting Navajo homes to the grid and creating jobs.
Key quote:
" The Navajo Nation served as the battery for the West for decades (...) We're solving issues using our own resources; it's derived by people from here, built by people from here, and for people that are living here."
— Brett Issac, founder and executive chairman of Navajo Power.
Why this matters:
This initiative aims to provide energy independence for the Navajo nation, where currently more than 15,000 homes don't have power.
Researchers and startups are developing innovative marine carbon dioxide removal techniques to increase the ocean's carbon absorption capabilities. However, doubts about its potential impacts remain.
The ocean absorbs 30% of global CO2 emissions. Private companies, venture capitalists and governments are developing new methods to "enhance" this capacity.
Startups like Running Tide are experimenting with sinking biomass into the ocean to store carbon, leveraging the ocean's natural capacity to do so. Others are experimenting with algae and kelp or pumping seawater through electrodialysis filtering systems.
Scientists express concerns about the unknown effects and efficacy of marine carbon dioxide removal methods on global warming and marine ecosystems.
Key quote:
“We’re intervening in the natural world, which means we need to be very careful about what we do.”
— Kristinn Hróbjartsson, general manager of Running Tide in Iceland.
Why this matters:
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has made it clear that carbon sequestration needs to be part of the strategies to limit global warming to between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius. Enhanced marine carbon sequestration could play a role in meeting the threshold.
California's Attorney General announced an impending decision on potential legal actions against Exxon Mobil Corp over its role in global plastic pollution.
The investigation, started in 2022, examines the oil and petrochemical industry's contributions to plastic waste and misinformation about recycling.
Exxon, facing scrutiny for misleading public claims about plastic recyclability, is promoting the contentious chemical recycling, also known as advanced recycling.
Despite ongoing projects, criticisms point to significant delays and failures in Exxon's recycling advancements.
Key quote:
"We are soon going to be ready to get to a decision based on all of our investigations in the coming weeks."
— Rob Bonta, California Attorney General.
Why this matters:
Many consumers believe that recycling their plastic waste sufficiently addresses the problem, but the reality is that a significant portion of plastic is not recyclable, and existing recycling systems capture only a small fraction of the total plastic waste. Most plastic accumulates in landfills, oceans and other ecosystems, where it can take hundreds of years to degrade, releasing harmful chemicals and microplastics that can be ingested by wildlife and enter the human food chain.
Biodegradable food packaging is a step in the right direction, experts say, but when composted carries risks of microplastic and chemical contamination.
