by More than 200 nations pledged last week in Dubai to “transition from fossil fuels”. Some cheered and some scoffed; we will soon know if the world’s largest oil and gas producer – the United States – meant what it signed, or if it was just more (literal) hot air.
That’s because the US Department of Energy (DoE) must decide whether to stop rubber-stamping the world’s largest single fossil fuel expansion, the construction of natural gas exports from the Gulf of Mexico. So far they have granted every export license that anyone has asked for, and as a result America is the largest exporter of gas on the planet. If they keep it up, veteran energy analyst Jeremy Symons says US exports of liquefied natural gas will produce more greenhouse gases than everything that happens in continental Europe.
They should have stopped a long time ago – in part because of the damage these huge terminals are doing to the people, fish and air of Louisiana and Texas. But if the Department of Environment continues to approve these licenses now, it will fly against their promise in Dubai. “Moving off fossil fuels” does not mean stopping the use of coal, gas and oil tomorrow; Unfortunately, that is impossible. But it clearly means not building new infrastructure expansion produce and sell hydrocarbons.
That is why 230 groups, including those we represent, have asked the Department of the Environment to suspend all new export licenses until they completely overhaul their procedures to determine the these permits are, as the statute requires, “for the public good”. At the moment, the government uses the 2014 standard to make that decision – but since 2014 the price of renewables has dropped like a rock, and temperatures have risen higher than at any time in human history.
When you live on a planet the cheapest way to produce power is to point a sheet of glass at the sun, fill a tanker with liquefied natural gas and send it halfway around the world. It’s also a ruin: new data from Cornell scientist Bob Howarth showed this fall that so much methane is leaking on these ships that it’s even worse for the climate than exporting coal.
If the DoE gives Biden up-to-date information, this should be the worst of all. He has made strong promises about his commitment to environmental justice, and the communities he is sacrificing on the Gulf are mostly poor and people of color. He promised to fight inflation, and exporting natural gas drives up the price for those Americans who still rely on it for heating and cooking.
That probably helps explain why a new poll shows a large majority of Americans in key battleground states want to put the brakes on these export plans. We are already exporting enough to make up for the stuff Putin used to supply Europe; the only beneficiaries going forward are a handful of fossil fuel companies that want to be locked into markets in Asia for years before they can build solar farms and wind turbines.
In fact, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm could perform a minor political miracle for the president. Earlier this year, Biden approved the large new Willow oil complex in Alaska. It was a big climate mistake but it was also an electoral mistake, because millions of young people had written in to ask for his help; their predicament helps explain the president’s falling poll numbers with youth voters. But if Willow is big, this construction of liquefied natural gas is much bigger – only the next terminal to be discussed, CP2 in Cameron Parish, Louisiana, will be involved during its lifetime with 20 times more greenhouse gases than Willow.
Which means if the Department of the Environment stalls the permitting process, Biden (who already has, thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, can claim to have done more to build clean energy than he any president before him) has a legitimate pride that he has done more than any president. its predecessors to slow down dirty energy. Yes, it’s a low bar – but it would be a big step. That’s why we plan to come to Washington for a (very civil) civil disobedience outside the Department of the Environment in early February.
Biden can’t stop CP2 or any other plant – they haven’t applied for their license yet, perhaps because they sense the growing opposition. But if the administration pauses the permitting process and sends the old criteria back for serious reform, it will have the same effect. And it will send a very powerful signal to the world: the largest exporter of oil and gas will change its ways.
America’s climate envoy, John Kerry, said at the end of the talks in Dubai: “This is a time when … people took individual interests and tried to define the common good.” We still don’t know if he was just blowing (literal) smoke – that’s up to Granholm and Biden in the coming weeks.
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The Vessel Project, a Louisiana environmental justice group, was founded by Roishetta Ozane
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Bill McKibben is the founder of Act Three, which organizes people over the age of 60 for action on climate and democracy
