This weekend, America will pause to honor the thousands of men and women who fought and died to preserve ExxonMobil’s First Amendment rights, and protect it from the tyranny of justice.
Or at least that’s the way a lot of Congressional leaders and climate deniers are playing it.
The effort to cast Exxon as victim of a cabal between state Attorneys General, environmentalists, and other ne’er-do-wells followed reports by journalists from InsideClimate News, the Los Angeles Times, and the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. They uncovered a howlingly hypocritical contrast between Exxon’s longtime internal embrace of climate science and its external support for climate denial.
Decades ago, Exxon began to ignore its own scientists’ warnings on the prospects for global disruption from climate change, opting instead to focus on climate change’s threat to the fossil fuel business model. Following the pattern set by tobacco, pesticide, asbestos and tetraethyl lead producers, Exxon circled the tankers and fought against progress on climate.
And just as Red State Attorneys General massed to assail Obama’s Clean Power Plan, their Blue State counterparts gathered to investigate whether Exxon’s concealing information that could impact public health, the environment, and the economy, constituted criminal behavior. The A.G. of the U.S. Virgin Islands subpoenaed forty years’ worth of Exxon records and hired a major class-action law firm, which seemed to jolt Exxon acolytes into action.
When the American conservative media machine kicks into action, it is an awesome thing, taking no prisoners while apparently serving as a real job-killer for the fact-checking community. I found dozens of opinion pieces, editorials, and unbalanced news stories in the three-week period from March 31 to April 22, all embracing ExxonMobil’s trampled free speech rights in the face of investigative reports and meddlesome Attorneys General. Curiously, not a single one of these First Amendment themed tomes made mention of the years of harassment, threats, bottomless FOIA requests, and Congressional inquiries targeting actual climate scientists.
The Washington Post ran not one but two Exxon-victim pieces on April 22 (Happy Earth Day ya'll!!)
From “mainstream” sources like Bloomberg and USA Today to movement mouthpieces like the Washington Times and National Review to countless ideological blogs and websites, the message repeated as if it were spit out of a photocopier.The Washington Post ran not one but two Exxon-victim pieces on April 22 (Happy Earth Day, y’all!)
To be sure, there were a few creative touches—The Washington Times piece likened the AGs’ investigation to the Spanish Inquisition, and an earlier piece in The Federalist posited a sort of ass-backwards Domino Theory: “The real target is everybody smaller than Exxon.”
On May 18, the meme took root in Congress. Lamar Smith, chair of the House Science Committee and his 12 Republican colleagues sent letters to seventeen Attorneys General and eight environmental groups demanding “all documents and communications” between the AG’s and the groups. The Committee’s press release asserted its “responsibility to protect the First Amendment prerogatives of academic institutions, scientists and nonprofit organizations.” Intentionally or otherwise, they forgot to mention Exxon.
Playing the world’s second-largest corporation as a victim of Big Climate sounds like a stretch (I can’t get that “Spanish Inquisition” image out of my head – Bill McKibben as Torquemada?), but let’s take a walk down Meme-ory Lane and recall how this business works, and why it’s so noxious.
Energy poverty: This one hit Peak Meme in 2015, when a horde of climate deniers made a pilgrimage to Rome to “advise” Pope Francis that his concern about climate change would hurt the poor in a most un-Christian way.
It’s also a favorite of those who would distract from climate change rather than deny it outright like economist Bjørn Lomborg, among others. A website backed by Peabody Energy, “Advanced Energy for Life,” dutifully contrasts the benefits of coal (or “sustainable coal,” as one study listed on the site puts it) versus the looming menace of renewables.
I’m not a scientist: Marco Rubio helped this one take a brisk run through the headlines in 2014, with former House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell close behind.
The climate is always changing: Rubio again, and several of his rivals in the 2016 race. But Rush Limbaugh says it best.
Sunspots!! A favorite of Willie Soon, the astrophysicist who was discovered to have promised his corporate funders “deliverables” on his research minimizing human influences on climate.
Climate scientists are only in it for the money: So says Roy Spencer, a skeptical climate scientist. While Spencer has said “there is no fingerprint of human-caused warming,” he bristles when described as a climate “denier,” and has likened his critics to the Nazis. “Climate scientists need there to be a problem in order to get funding,” he told an interviewer in 2007. Public records from the University of Alabama system show Spencer has also avoided food stamps, with a base salary of nearly $191,000 in the last full fiscal year.
Polar Bear politics: Science has consistently demonstrated that polar bears are at dire risk due to the decline of Arctic ice cover. While some deny that the ice cover is shrinking, many have decided despite evidence to the contrary that polar bears are not only fine, but they’re breeding like hamsters. I wrote about this several years ago.
I could go on: There’s been no global warming in 18 years. Antarctic ice is growing. There’s global warming on Mars, so it’s not us. It’s us, but it will be awesome to be able to grow our own mangos in Winnipeg. Carbon dioxide is our friend. Al Gore and the U.N. are poised to take over the world. But let’s get straight to the one meme that puts this all in perspective.
The guys in the barn: In 1998 following the Kyoto climate agreement, a father-son team operating out of a converted barn in Cave Junction, Oregon, launched the Oregon Petition Project, which purported to collect tens of thousands of signatures from degree-bearing scientists who did not believe climate change posed a threat, if it existed at all.
Almost immediately, Art and Zachary Robinson’s petition came under fire. The credentialed scientists who signed the petition included one of the Spice Girls, and nearly the entire cast of the M*A*S*H TV show, along with a British fellow named Charles Darwin. They also received a sharp rebuke from the National Academy of Sciences. But as a meme, the Oregon Petition shot to the top, and the Robinsons were climate denial rock stars.
Nineteen years later, for some, the petition lives. The liberal website Scholars and Rogues counted 18 citations of the petition since 2008 on the conservative news site Newsmax. A Fox News story cited it just this past week.
So happy Meme-orial Day, and to all the memes, thank you for your service. I’m afraid that anyone who thinks climate denial will sacrifice its life any time soon are in for a disappointment.
And if you’re headed to the beach for the weekend, good news – it gets a tiny bit closer to you every year.
Paris 2024 will use existing venues and low-carbon construction for new sites to minimize environmental impact.
The Games will feature extensive use of recycled materials, plant-based food and local agriculture.
Transport will prioritize electric connections and cycling infrastructure to reduce emissions.
Why this matters:
Sustainable practices at large events like the Olympics can set a global standard, encouraging broader environmental responsibility. Addressing carbon footprints is crucial to combating climate change and preserving the planet for future generations.
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.”
A Philippine oil tanker sank in Manila Bay, potentially causing a major spill, after being battered by waves, prompting the coast guard to rescue 16 of 17 crew members.
The Terra Nova, carrying 1.4 million liters of industrial fuel, sank after battling huge waves.
Aerial surveys show a 2.3-mile oil spill near the sinking site, but it might be engine fuel, not cargo oil.
The coast guard is preparing for potential shoreline contamination in Manila and considering siphoning the fuel.
Key quote:
“There’s a big danger that Manila would be affected, its shorelines, if the fuel leaks because this happened within Manila Bay. It’s part of the contingency we’re preparing for. The effect on the marine environment would not be good.”
As extreme heat events and wildfires become more frequent and intense, America’s growing elderly population faces escalating health and safety threats.
Older adults are especially vulnerable to heat-related injuries, which are increasing alongside global temperature rises.
Heat exacerbates existing health conditions in older adults, potentially causing thousands of additional deaths annually.
Community centers with air conditioning and regular check-ins by family or neighbors can help mitigate risks.
Key quote:
“It’s easy to say, ‘Oh, buy central air,’ but people are struggling financially everywhere, so it’s just not an easy fix.”
— Ian Neel, geriatrician and associate professor at UC San Diego School of Medicine
Why this matters:
Extreme heat and wildfires disproportionately endanger older adults, who are less able to cope with these conditions due to mobility issues and chronic health problems. Community support and awareness can significantly reduce heat-related health risks for the elderly.
The Biden administration announced a plan to reduce nitrous oxide emissions from chemical plants, aiming for significant greenhouse gas reductions through cooperation with China.
The U.S. and China aim to reduce nitrous oxide emissions, a potent greenhouse gas, through a cooperative agreement.
Nitrous oxide, 273 times more potent than CO2, significantly contributes to climate change and ozone depletion.
Industry leaders and policymakers discussed these initiatives at a White House summit, emphasizing voluntary industry participation and carbon credits.
Key quote:
“This is a big opportunity. The fruit is large, it’s low [hanging], it’s ripe.”
— Manish Bapna, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council
Why this matters:
Nitrous oxide emissions are a major driver of climate change and ozone layer depletion. Reducing these emissions could have a substantial impact on global greenhouse gas levels, comparable to removing millions of cars from the roads.
Project Prosperity aimed to exchange Israel's water surplus for electricity from Jordan's solar farms, but the October 7 Hamas attack halted progress.
Jordan, heavily affected by regional instability, canceled the deal and is accelerating its own desalination project to ensure water security.
The collapse of the deal highlights the broader impact of the Israel-Hamas conflict on regional cooperation and climate initiatives.
Key quote:
“Why would we collaborate with someone killing us and controlling our resources? How can I collaborate with someone occupying me? Controlling me?”
— Anonymous Palestinian official
Why this matters:
The conflict disrupts not only political relations but also crucial climate cooperation in a region severely affected by water scarcity and climate change. Without such collaborations, effective climate adaptation in the Middle East becomes even more challenging.
Power shutoffs or wildfire evacuations can be deadly for disabled people, especially nondrivers who may not have a way to get to a cooling center or evacuation point.
