Ten days ago Joe Biden did something remarkable, and almost without precedent – he actually said no to big oil.

His administration halted the granting of new permits for building liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals, something Washington had been handing out like M&Ms on Halloween for nearly a decade. It’s a provisional “no” – Department of Energy experts will spend the coming months figuring out a new formula for granting the licenses that takes the latest science and economics into account – but you can tell what a big deal it is because of the howls of rage coming from the petroleum industry and its gaggle of politicians.

And you can tell something else too: just how threadbare their arguments have become over time. Biden has called their bluff, and it’s beautiful to watch.

To give you an idea, politicians beholden to the industry are using this week and next to hold hearings about natural gas in Congress. Joe Manchin – who has received more lobbying money from big oil than anyone else in Congress, and is the founder of a coal brokerage business – is convening a session in the Senate on Thursday, but on Tuesday the House began the action with a hearing before a subcommittee of the House committee on energy and commerce.

One “expert” summoned by the panel, Toby Rice, owns the company that produces more natural gas than any other in the country. And he immediately deployed the sleight of hand that his ilk have used over and over again. I’ll try and slow it down enough that you can see the hand dealing from the bottom of the deck.

The fracking revolution, Rice said, “has powered our economy and prevented us from being reliant on foreign sources of natural gas – all the while driving over 60% of the emissions reduction the United States experienced since the turn of the century by displacing coal-fired power generation”.

The key word here is “emissions”, by which Rice means carbon dioxide. And indeed fracked gas, when burned in a power plant, produces fewer emissions than coal. But there’s another major greenhouse gas – methane – and that’s basically what “natural gas” consists of. When it leaks from a well or a pipeline, it’s 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, molecule per molecule, at trapping heat.

And so much is leaking that – when you combine those emissions with the carbon that still comes from burning gas – America’s total contribution to global warming has probably not gone down at all over the last two decades. Far from being a boon, natural gas has been a trap, one that the industry now wants to catch the rest of the globe in.

What’s more – as new research this fall showed – when you put fracked gas on a boat and send it on a long ocean cruise, so much leaks out that it’s far worse than coal. If the White House had kept granting all the permits that industry wanted, within a decade US natural gas would be producing more greenhouse gas emissions than everything that happens on the continent of Europe. It’s the biggest fossil fuel expansion project on Earth.

That’s half the problem with Rice’s argument. The other half is, it’s not coal that Rice’s gas mostly undercuts. We now live on a planet where the cheapest way to produce power is to point a sheet of glass at the sun; there’s no reason not to go straight from coal to renewable energy, with no intermediate stop at gas. The idea that it’s a “bridge fuel” is a decade out of date, but it’s an argument that big oil wants to extend four or five decades into the future, because that’s how long this new infrastructure is supposed to last.

If Rice’s arguments were deceptive, the other industry witness was simply sad. Eric Cormier represented the Chamber Southwest Louisiana, where most of this infrastructure is located. It’s his neighbors – environmental justice crusaders like Roishetta Ozane and James Hiatt – who have led this fight, pointing out the damage that these installations are doing to the air and water. Cormier, though, said LNG development was necessary because the region had taken such an economic hit from Hurricanes Laura and Delta, which had caused $17bn in damages, damaged 44,000 homes, and dropped the population by about 7%.

He’s not wrong about the damage – Lake Charles, the big city in the region, is arguably the blue tarp capital of the planet. But think about his argument for even a second: the climate crisis is causing such grievous loss along the coast of Louisiana that … we need to make the climate crisis worse to pay for all the damage.

What? If any place on Earth should viscerally feel the urgent need to get off fossil fuels, the disappearing Louisiana coast would be it. But if you’re the Chamber SWLA, short-term profit is the only metric you understand.

This brand of greenwashing has been going on for years, of course. But big oil is having an ever-harder time making their argument, especially after a new economic survey published last week showed that continuing to build out the LNG export infrastructure would raise energy costs for Americans by 9 to 14%. And polling shows pretty conclusively that Americans don’t want to frack their country to send cheap gas to China.

That won’t stop the industry from shouting. At this point, bypassed by new renewable technology, their only real hope is political gamesmanship. But it’s getting far easier for enlightened leaders to stand up to them. In December, in Dubai, the world signed a pledge to “transition away” from fossil fuels. Last month, in Washington, Joe Biden started to show that he meant it.

February 2021. A rare Valentine’s Day winter storm wallops Texas with snow and a deep freeze.

The storm knocked out power for at least 69 percent of people across the state. More than 200 Texans died.

That was Winter Storm Uri. Many of us probably remember it as the storm that sent Senator Ted Cruz packing for a vacation in Cancún while his constituents suffered.

Captain Selena Xie, president of the Austin Emergency Medical Services Association, was enraged when she read from a local reporter at the time: “One reader who emailed me about the issue described the power and water outages as a ‘minor inconvenience’ for most Texans.”

One of Xie’s first calls the morning after the storm was for a man who had planned to die at home, peacefully and surrounded by loved ones. That didn’t happen.

Xie recounted, “When his oxygen, which was making him comfortable, went out, he started making awful grunting sounds. It is not acceptable to die like that, in agony. We had no other options at the time than to take the person to the hospital to keep him comfortable, but not before we let his wife cry against his chest for five minutes, which was all we felt comfortable sparing at the time.”

Emergency responders started receiving carbon monoxide calls that evening. With the power out, people were so desperate for heat they burned furniture in their homes to keep their families warm. That caused carbon monoxide poisoning.

Just last week, much of the country got pummeled with below-freezing temperatures and winter storms. Many are rightly nervous about the reliability of their power grids.

When grids fail, people die. Medical equipment like dialysis machines and oxygen pumps cannot run without power.

What’s the best way to protect grids and make them more reliable? Power them with renewable energy sources like solar and wind, which are far more resilient than coal, oil, and gas.

The five winter storms we have had since 2011 that knocked down power grids should be a lesson to us all. Fossil fuel power plants are prone to mechanical and supply failures in extreme cold, when energy demands are often at their highest.

Just look at what happened during December 2022’s Winter Storm Elliott in the eastern and central US. In the mid-Atlantic, nearly 90 percent of the power plant outages when demand was highest were coal and gas plants. In the central region, coal and gas plants accounted for 75 percent of the power plant outages during peak demand. In Kentucky alone, more than 1.5 million homes lost electricity in sub-zero temperatures due to coal and gas failures.

Increasing the use of renewable energy sources is one part of the solution. Incorporating green technologies in demand response, energy efficiency, storage, and upgrading our transmission grid is the other. Together, they offer us the chance to make our electric grids more reliable and resilient than ever. But we need to deploy them at scale to receive these benefits.

If we choose not to do this, we need to understand the human toll.

As she has reflected on the events from Winter Storm Uri—and storms that have knocked out or threatened to knock out power since then—Xie worries about unhoused populations. When the shelters and businesses where unhoused people typically seek refuge are without power, the consequences for this already vulnerable population are lethal.

“When we have our 911 system completely overwhelmed by calls from the housed population, the unhoused population gets overlooked,” Xie said. “EMS and other emergency workers are aware of people living on the streets or in the woods and would be checking on those at-risk people. But we end up beyond our capacity, responding to calls for emergencies—and some less-than-emergencies—at people’s homes, delivering charging sticks and other relief, while unhoused people are suffering hypothermic events and dying.”

Xie also said that while media reporting often focuses on death tolls during these emergencies, the high number of amputations from conditions like frostbite go underreported and underappreciated.

“People are often able to protect their cores but not their extremities. Not having adequate gloves or footwear means more amputations. These create lifelong disabilities that continue to haunt both the people suffering from them and the public health and emergency response systems that need to provide for their care and services.”

Emergency responders should not have to choose between who they can help and who will be left on their own. Families should not have to choose between freezing to death or risking their health by burning furniture for heat.

There is a way to help ensure the power stays on during harsh winter storms. It is a future powered by clean energy.

James Hiatt lives in an area along the Mississippi River in Louisiana that has been dubbed “Cancer Alley.” In a region teeming with chemical plants and oil and gas refineries, the air the residents breathe contains more carcinogens than anywhere else in the country.

One of those oil and gas facilities is the Calcasieu Pass liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal, which has further devastated public health, local livelihoods, and marine wildlife. Last week, the Biden-Harris administration’s Department of Energy paused the permitting of new LNG projects. The decision stops the gas industry’s plans for the even larger CP2 LNG terminal right next door.

This move was perhaps the boldest rebuke ever from a US president against the oil and gas industry. President Biden, Vice President Harris, and Secretary of Energy Granholm—whose support for the move was especially crucial—did the right thing. Millions of us are celebrating along with James Hiatt, who says, “I’m thankful for this pause in granting gas export licenses; the DOE has finally heard the wake-up call. The gas industry was planning to inundate my hometown with LNG terminals.”

American families’ pocketbooks will be thankful as well. Any word you hear from the fossil fuel industry or the politicians in their pockets about how this decision harms American consumers or the economy is a lie. As Hiatt points out, “exporting LNG drives up domestic energy costs, affecting everything from home heating to food prices.”

Pausing the LNG boom will keep global energy markets more stable. It will help move economies and electric grids toward using less expensive and more resilient renewable energy sources. It will keep 681 coal plants’ worth—or 548 million gasoline-powered cars’ worth—of planet-warming greenhouse gases out of our atmosphere each year.

All of this is critically important. But so is Hiatt’s point about the “finally heard wake-up call.”

For years, activists, along with scientists and others, have been sounding the alarm to get those in power to wake up. Some of the most powerful voices have been those of young people. And we should all appreciate what it has taken for those young people to maintain their determination.

The American Psychological Association defines “eco-anxiety” as “a chronic fear of environmental doom.” In 2021, Lancet Planetary Health surveyed more than 10,000 young people, ages 16 to 25, in 10 countries. Anxiety about climate change impacted the ability of more than 45 percent of these young people to function in their daily lives; 75 percent were “frightened” of the future. And it exposed a key feature of eco-anxiety: hopelessness.

Half the young people in the study described feeling helpless and powerless. Now, we know that despite the fear, young activists have been among our fiercest leaders in the fight against the climate crisis. They have not given in to the lingering despair. But, as a piece on eco-anxiety in the Harvard Political Review pointed out, young people have felt like they are alone in the fight. And, “if no one is listening and no change is happening, then pushing forward can feel hopeless.”

That is why, aside from the emissions numbers, aside from the economic and energy security benefits, the Biden-Harris administration’s LNG decision is a win for hope. And hope is a powerful thing. In his statement about the decision, President Biden said, “We will heed the calls of young people and frontline communities who are using their voices to demand action from those with the power to act.”

This victory for climate-concerned people the world over—and the planet itself—is proof that organizing works. Grabbing the bullhorn and telling your story—even if the crowds don’t listen right at first—matters.

This LNG decision is a momentum builder. And a clarion call for even more organized action on the climate crisis—especially from young people.

Northern Manitoba is seeing temperatures above zero. We’ve had weather that’s unheard of these last two months. Thousands of people in our region depend on winter roads to survive – and climate change is putting these roads and entire communities at risk.
 

 
The Liberals have failed to act quickly to combat the climate emergency that is hitting Indigenous communities and our North the hardest. Our region needs urgent investments in climate adaptation: an airport in Wasagamack and all-weather roads for St Theresa Point, Oxford House, York Landing and more. Today I called on the Liberal Government to step up and act now.