So great is my devotion to my work that I donned the protective gas mask and watched Tuesday's State of the Union address.
While behind him Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi acted up and Vice President Mike Pence stared his trademark smitten gaze into the back of his boss's head, President Donald J. Trump held forth.
Absent from the festivities was Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, this year's Designated Survivor. That's the Presidential cabinet member with the grim duty of sitting it out in a secure location lest an attack or other calamity take out everyone in attendance.
The Secretary missed out on the few sentence fragments that pertained to his beat. But it should be noted that Bernhardt rose from oil industry lobbyist to potential Emergency President in less than two years. Don't pretend you aren't impressed.
Lest you think the title of this piece misleading, Trump gave so little time to energy and environment that there was no room for his trademark falsehoods. At the top of the speech, he boasted of slashing "a number of job-killing regulations." A few minutes, and 26 pauses for huzzahs and applause from his partisans, he pronounced America energy independent.
Some would disagree. But in any case, Trump praised the oil and gas industry, without mentioning the death spiral of coal and nuclear industries as domestic power sources. Nor did he mention the rapid growth and bright future of clean energy.
Fast forward for another 54 cheer breaks, plus a boo-break for Obamacare and the poignant awarding of the Presidential Medal of Freedom to talkshow host Rush Limbaugh. The cancer-stricken Limbaugh is only the second virulent climate denier to receive this coveted honor. Astronaut Buzz Aldrin is arguably the first.
Then, the Commander-in-Chief went full Lorax for an entire sentence:
"To protect the environment, days ago I announced the United States will join the One Trillion Trees Initiative, an ambitious effort to bring together government and private sector to plant new trees in America and all around the world."
The Trillion Trees Initiative was inspired by a much-criticized study that calculated that those trillion trees could suck up one-third of global carbon emissions. It picked up global momentum last month at the World Economic Forum, the annual Billionaires' Burning Man in Davos, Switzerland. But the trillion trees thing, admirable though it may be, has its own problems, so let's get out the calculator.
For the sake of argument, let's assign every one of the 7.7 billion of us on Earth our fair share of plantings. That's 130 trees for every man, woman and child in the world. The conventional wisdom in the tree business is that you've got to plant two to have a fair chance of getting one fully-grown, carbon-eating tree. So let's make that 260 trees for each one of us.
And where, you may ask, do we find the available land not already covered by trees, or farms, or cities – bearing in mind that deserts and tundra can't count as viable tree habitat? An estimate showed that in order to offset its carbon output, the U.S. would have to locate and set aside land twice the size of Texas.
That land doesn't now exist, and as Mark Twain said, they're not making any more of it.
So plant your trillion trees, but let's not pretend it comes close to solving such an immense program any more than banning plastic straws will cleanse the oceans of plastic.
Of all Trump's self-congratulations and dissembling, the biggest environmental consequence may come from an utterance near the end of his one hour, seven minute speech. It came another 14 cheers and one boo (sanctuary cities) after the trillion trees:
"We have recommended 180 new judges to uphold our Constitution as written. This includes (new Supreme Court Justices) Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh."
Those lifetime appointments, reportedly vetted by anti-regulatory groups like the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society, will decide many environmental lawsuits over decades. One of the main tools of environmental activists, the Federal courts, will be at least partially blunted.
Fifty years ago, Richard Nixon said this in his 1970 State of the Union Address: "Restoring nature to its natural state is a cause beyond party and beyond factions. It has become a common cause of all the people of this country."
So even if Trump barely mentioned environment, the contrast with a nearly-impeached Republican predecessor from a half century ago is both stark and tragic.
The State of the Union is bleak.
Peter Dykstra is our weekend editor and columnist. His views do not represent those of Environmental Health News, The Daily Climate or publisher, Environmental Health Sciences. He can be reached at pdykstra@ehn.org or on Twitter at @Pdykstra.
Thousands gather in Ottawa to draft a legally-binding treaty aimed at halting the surge of plastic pollution worldwide. Will it protect the environment and human health?
Global representatives are working to finalize a treaty that could dramatically alter plastic production and its environmental impacts.
The treaty's scope may include limits on production, hazardous chemicals and waste management, influenced by various international interests.
By the end of 2024, nations aim to adopt the first legally binding treaty to significantly reduce plastic pollution worldwide.
Key quote: "People globally are disgusted by what they see. The straw in the turtle’s nose, the whale full of fishing gear. I mean, this is not the world we want to be in."
— Inger Andersen, executive director of UNEP
Why this matters:
This treaty seeks to address not only the visible effects of plastic pollution but also its underlying ties to fossil fuel use and climate change. Progress was slow in the first three rounds of talks, which started at the end of 2022. Some countries, like the U.S., have largely supported voluntary measures to control plastic pollution -- a position that advocates say is insufficient to solve the plastic problem as global production continues to ramp up. As negotiations move forward in Ottawa, some groups are pushing the Biden administration to take a leadership role in the plastic treaty talks.
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.”
HOUSTON — This week EHN is publishing letters from eighth grade students at YES Prep Northbrook Middle School in the Houston-area neighborhood of Spring Branch, Texas.
English educators Cassandra Harper and Yvette Howard incorporated the environment into a series of lessons in December last year. Each student conducted their own research to begin drafting letters to EHN about their concerns or hopes. EHN reporter Cami Ferrell visited their classrooms to share information about her personal reporting experiences in Houston.
The collection of letters, some of which were lightly edited, do not represent the opinions of YES Prep Northbrook or EHN, but are offered here as a peek into the minds of children and their relationship with environmental issues. Read the first and second set of letters.
In the quiet seaside village of Capesterre on Marie-Galante island in Guadeloupe on April 18, 2023, the air-quality monitoring institute Gwad’Air issued a “red alert” to warn people away from coastal areas.
The culprit was sargassum. After washing ashore for days, the floating seaweed was emitting a dangerous level of hydrogen sulfide gas as it rotted on the beach.
The problem was not new for residents of Marie-Galante, a sleepy agricultural island of 11,000 inhabitants that is part of Guadeloupe’s biosphere reserve.
Since the first mass strandings more than ten years ago, rotting sargassum has frequently plagued residents and tourists and forced several businesses and restaurants to close their doors for months at a time.
Among the struggling proprietors are sisters Marie-Louise and Lyselène Bade, who recently shuttered their small hotel Le Soleil Levant.
En el tranquilo pueblo costero de Capesterre, en la isla Marie-Galante de Guadalupe, el 18 de abril de 2023, la Asociación de Monitoreo de Calidad del Aire, Gwad’Air, emitió una “alerta roja” para advertir a la gente que se alejara de las zonas costeras.
La causa: el sargazo. Después de haber llegado durante días a la costa, esas algas flotantes se descomponían en la playa y emitían un nivel peligroso de ácido sulfhídrico, un gas cuyo olor a huevos podridos puede afectar la salud de quienes lo aspiran por periodos extensos.
El problema no era nuevo para los residentes de Marie-Galante, una tranquila isla agrícola de 11,000 habitantes que forma parte de la reserva de la biosfera de Guadalupe.
Desde las primeras acumulaciones masivas ocurridas hace más de diez años, la descomposición del sargazo ha afectado con frecuencia a los residentes y turistas, y ha obligado a varios negocios y restaurantes a cerrar sus puertas por meses.
Entre esos propietarios que luchan por sobrevivir están las hermanas Marie-Louise y Lyselène Bade, quienes recientemente cerraron su pequeño hotel Le Soleil Levant.
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.
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.
Biodegradable food packaging is a step in the right direction, experts say, but when composted carries risks of microplastic and chemical contamination.
