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read moreHow TikTok catapulted Louisiana climate activists into the political spotlight
Modern video platforms like TikTok are aiding activists in southwest Louisiana in a yearslong fight against the long-established liquefied natural gas industry.
President Joe Biden’s decision to pause approvals for LNG export projects, announced in January, may provide the first case study of TikTok’s power to enhance local advocacy and influence federal policy.
On Jan. 26, the Biden administration said it was temporarily halting pending decisions on LNG exports to countries where the U.S. does not have free trade agreements. This would allow the Department of Energy to assess the effects of increased LNG exports on energy costs, national security and the environment, the administration said.
Burning natural gas produces cleaner energy than coal or oil, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. However, some experts say liquefying and exporting natural gas, which is necessary to ship it overseas, creates methane leaks that might offset those environmental benefits.
Decision reverberates in Louisiana
Some regarded the decision to pause new export projects as a huge step, especially because the U.S. is the world leader in LNG exports. If the pause leads to a ban on exports or future terminals, it would greatly limit the future supply of LNG, impacting gas prices and foreign relations.
Three of the country’s seven major LNG export terminals are located in southwest Louisiana. One more is already approved and under construction, and four terminals pending DOE approval are affected by the pause, the biggest being Calcasieu Pass 2 in Cameron Parish, Louisiana. The proposed terminal would be the largest of the five in operation on the Gulf of Mexico, with 22 more proposed or already approved.
Earlier this year, the president’s senior climate policy advisers, Ali Zaidi and John Podesta, organized meetings with activists opposing the proposed project, known as CP2.
Activists have criticized the company, Venture Global LNG, for its conduct at the existing Calcasieu Pass terminal, which has operated since 2022. They accuse the company of frequent flaring, explosions, releasing toxic chemicals and greenhouse gases, destroying the local fishing industry and failing to provide long-term jobs or other financial support for the local community.
“The health and safety of our employees and the surrounding community, as well as compliance with all federal, state, and local environmental requirements, are Venture Global’s highest priorities,” a Venture Global LNG spokesperson said in a statement to the Medill News Service, citing “stringent” regulations from federal and state agencies protecting public health and the environment.
Among those who met with the White House were longtime southwest Louisiana residents including James Hiatt and Roishetta Sibley Ozane, who have worked on anti-LNG campaigns for years.
“They are permitted to pollute. There’s no community benefit, we pay them to pollute us so we die early and suffer in the meantime,” Hiatt said. “That doesn’t have to be that way.”
But someone else’s invitation to meet with the White House drew more attention from critics of the pause.
Bringing TikTok on the scene
In October, Alex Haraus, a 25-year-old social media influencer and professional photographer from Colorado, knew little about the intricacies of LNG. He hadn’t even heard of CP2 yet.
But he had hundreds of thousands of TikTok followers from previous environmental campaigns, where he encouraged viewers to sign petitions against oil and gas drilling leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Willow oil drilling project in Alaska.
“I actually just learned the other day that the Department of Energy is planning whether or not they should build 20 new LNG export terminals along the Gulf of Mexico,” Haraus said in a Nov. 10 video.
Like many other viral TikToks, Haraus’s first videos were simple, talking straight to the camera with few edits.
Hiatt had been making some TikToks himself, posting videos of both the LNG terminals and the wildlife off the Gulf Coast in his county, and of community members sharing their stories of harm from LNG locally. Most of his videos got hundreds of views.
But Haraus’s videos were regularly getting thousands, even hundreds of thousands of views.
Later videos were thoroughly researched and edited, showing maps of Louisiana, footage of oil and gas infrastructure and a printed EPA report. In each, he called on viewers to sign the petition linked on his profile.
“He puts so much care into his videos and reviewing them. I would argue that he’s meant to do this work. He’s good at it. His heart is in it,” said Alyssa Portaro, another southwest Louisiana activist.
When Hiatt came across Haraus’s videos, he reached out right away. He sent footage of the area for Haraus to use, and in December, they organized a trip for Haraus to come in person to Cameron Parish.
They drove out on fisherman Travis Dardar’s boat to Calcasieu Point, the location of the already-operating Driftwood LNG terminal and three more proposed terminals.
“It’s the only place you can watch the sunset over a river at a public park, and not watch it set on top of a bunch of distillation towers with flares, smoke and all of it,” Hiatt said. “There’s river otters, bald eagles, pelicans and all these birds. It’s absolutely beautiful. And this is what we’re trading.”
Haraus recorded Dardar sharing about the struggles of fishermen in Cameron, whose families make up nearly the entire town’s population. Their catch last year was the worst ever, Dardar said, and the fishermen suffer from heart attacks, headaches and asthma.
They also visited Calcasieu Pass, met with Louisiana elders who have been fighting environmental racism and injustice for decades and visited nearby sites harmed by the fossil fuel industry, including the predominantly Black town of Mossville and an area of the Calcasieu River where a Conoco gas pipeline leak released 1.6 million pounds of ethylene dichloride into the water in 1994. As of 2016, crews were still working to clean the area.
“It’s just a terrible situation. I don’t know why you would want to add more industry to this area,” Haraus said in one video.
Throughout his campaign, Haraus posted TikToks celebrating the fast-growing list of signatures on petitions to stop LNG, from 30,000 on Nov. 19 to 350,000 on Dec. 21.
However, the social media effort has its detractors. In a House hearing in February on the Biden administration’s pause, Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) criticized the president for making decisions based on meetings with Haraus.
“I can’t believe I’m talking about this while we’re talking about LNG exports and national security,” Armstrong said. “Do you think it’s proper to have Mr. Haraus, a 25-year-old internet star, to be influencing such monumental national security and economic decisions?”
“He has a right to express his opinion,” responded witness Eric Cormier, the senior vice president of entrepreneurship and strategic initiatives at the Southwest Louisiana Chamber Economic Development Alliance. “All I would ask is that if anyone has anything to say about how southwest Louisiana and southeast Texas are impacted, come visit and talk to everyone.”
The TikTok platform itself is coming under scrutiny in Washington because of its ownership by a Beijing-based company, as the House passed a bill that would force its owner to sell or shut down the app.
Local LNG industry remains strong
The long-established natural gas industry has numerous supporters among state politicians and residents alike.
CP2 will create more than 1,000 new permanent jobs and thousands of construction jobs in the area, then-Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards celebrated in a joint press release with Venture Global LNG. They said that direct new jobs will have average annual salaries of $120,000 plus benefits, but did not include an average salary for indirect or construction jobs.
“Residents in the Lake Charles MSA have historically supported industry since the early 1900s. These industries create jobs! The taxes generated allow our local governments to operate,” Kim Montie, director of the Cameron Port, said in a statement to the Medill News Service. “Not having these industries keeps people from living the American dream… financial independence.”
Over the years, different industries have come into Calcasieu and Cameron Parishes, bringing thousands of jobs with them as they build plants. But once construction is complete, those jobs go away, Hiatt said.
Meanwhile, major hurricanes destroyed properties and raised insurance prices. Almost all Cameron residents, who could no longer afford to live in the area, moved further inland. Only fishing families, who depend on the water to make their living, remain in lower Cameron, Hiatt said.
“I’ve heard this said by Cameron residents, that these LNGs, when they come, maybe we’ll have a place for our kids to work, and they don’t have to move away,” Hiatt said. They hope the industry will revitalize the economy in lower Cameron, where there is now one gas station, one food truck and no grocery store.
“But we already have the industry here, and people haven’t moved back,” Hiatt said.
According to the U.S. Census, the populations of Cameron and Cameron Parish fell dramatically from 2000 to 2020 (from about 2,000 to 315 and from 10,000 to 5,000, respectively).
Continuing activism on the ground
Hiatt still viewed the campaign as a success, and it bodes well for future efforts using TikTok to influence federal policy.
As with TikTok trends, the widespread attention can leave as quickly as it comes. With or without the platform, local activists like Hiatt and Portaro will continue to focus on advocacy on the ground, holding community meetings and giving people knowledge and resources to take action.
Hiatt also noted that most people in the area rely on more traditional media outlets, like newspapers and cable news. It still takes engaging with people in person to build a movement pressuring local industry.
“We’ve been raised to think this is normal, this is what we have to put up with,” Hiatt said. “It doesn’t have to be this way, and it actually cannot continue down this pathway and have a life for young folks, who will endure the majority of the suffering. I don’t think there’s a person on this planet that wants something worse for their kids.”
Biochar Is ‘Low-Hanging Fruit’ for Sequestering Carbon and Combating Climate Change
Since David Laird was young, the “lush, green forests” of the western United States meant an annual summer trip to hike, camp and fish. But the last time Laird was in Wyoming’s Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest, a bark beetle had ravaged an estimated two-thirds of the forest’s lodgepole pines.
For Laird, a professor at Iowa State University, the brittle, brownish-orange pine needles on the trees represented a grave danger to the land: wildfires.
With more than three decades of experience as a soil researcher, Laird believed these dead trees had to be removed so the forest ecosystem could regenerate without risking a lightning strike or “careless cigarette” sending it aflame. He also knew that the trees could be repurposed into a “market-based tool” with the potential to combat climate change while increasing crop production and creating rural jobs. This tool? Biochar.
Biochar is made from burning organic material in an oxygen-deprived environment. It enhances soil fertility and increases the ability of soil—one of the world’s largest carbon sinks—to capture and store carbon, absorbing the emissions from fossil fuels that human activity releases into the air.
The practice of using organic material to enhance soil fertility goes back thousands of years to when Indigenous people in the Amazon built up large piles of nutrient-rich soil mixed with charcoal, food residue and other waste.
Carbon dioxide emissions by humans have to be zeroed out by 2050 to keep Earth’s average annual temperature from going—and staying—more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, as targeted by the Paris climate agreement.
If the planet—as now projected—warms beyond that threshold permanently before 2050, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says it would require removing at least six gigatons of CO2 annually by 2050 to bring the global temperature back down in the second half of the century. The exact amount of CO2 removal required in the future depends on how much is still being emitted, with different scenarios outlined in the IPCC’s 2023 synthesis report.
Last year, 125,000 tons of CO2 were removed worldwide by the durable carbon market—a carbon credit marketplace for human CO2 removal projects—of which biochar was responsible for 92.9 percent, despite having received only 7 percent of carbon credit purchases. These numbers do not reflect the CO2 sequestered naturally in the ocean and forests.
Laird said biochar alone cannot achieve the 2050 goal, but it’s the easiest and most economically viable first step. He called biochar “the low-hanging fruit.”
“We need multiple, multiple efforts, multiple different processes all working together,” Laird said. “Biochar is one of those.”
What Does Biochar Do?
When mixed with soil, biochar creates favorable conditions for root growth and microbial activity, which reduces greenhouse gas emissions from the earth. It also helps soil retain water and absorb nutrients, repairing nutrient-deficient soil to increase crop production.
Biochar is typically made from wood, but researchers have found that using different types of biomass can bring forth various strengths from the char.
Dominique Lueckenhoff, the chief executive officer of a pollution treatment and applied environmental research group called Ecochar Environmental Solutions, developed manure-based biochar to enhance the performance of green infrastructure, like rain gardens and porous pavement.
Green infrastructure, which uses nature to mitigate the effects of climate change, like flooding and high temperatures, in urban environments, is getting more common, especially since President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act incentivized investment in it with grants and loans.
Lueckenhoff said this infrastructure is designed to catch water where it falls, rather than treating the water or the soil for pollutants.
“In urban areas, the soils are not only dead,” Lueckenhoff said. “They’re also contaminated.”
Lueckenhoff began developing manure-based biochar to depollute water after a 2010 Environmental Protection Agency study found dangerously high nutrient levels from agricultural runoff in the Chesapeake Bay.
Manure-based char counterintuitively absorbs up to 99 percent of harmful pollutants from water, according to Lueckenhoff’s research, acting as a natural purification system.
Lueckenhoff’s group is now partnering with the D.C.-based green infrastructure company, Rainplan, to add custom biochars to green infrastructure.
“It’s about turning a big problem into a multi-beneficial solution,” Lueckenhoff said. “I can reduce the nutrient impacts, I can create markets for farmers to turn that into a beneficial treatment, I can eliminate toxic exposures for people and the environment, animals, etcetera and I can drive new economies.”
Lueckenhoff’s chars have also been used to augment the growth speed and strength of hemp crops and treat superfund sites for toxins.
Since pollutants particularly harm disadvantaged communities, biochar can be a potent environmental justice tool for removing these toxins.
A Bipartisan Solution
Another testament to biochar’s utility: It has bipartisan congressional support. A bill to fund biochar research, introduced in March 2023, is now pending before a Senate Agriculture Committee.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) was one of four senators who cosponsored the bill.
“Biochar presents an exciting opportunity for farmers looking for a low-cost way to improve soil quality while sequestering carbon,” Grassley said in a written statement to the Medill News Service.
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), another cosponsor, said he aims to get provisions for biochar research into this year’s farm bill, which funds crop insurance, conservation, nutrition and commodities.
“The research will give another tool to farmers, who understand the environment and understand climate and understand productivity of their land,” Brown said. “This can lead to better productivity and better, ultimately, prices for them.”
Biochar is made by putting biomass into structures, like a covered kiln, and heating it without oxygen to convert organic carbon to a long-lasting form of carbon that does not easily break down. The resulting product is made up of small, black porous bits of char.
“The pollution from making biochar is no worse, and sometimes it’s better, than pollution from just burning biomass,” said Tom Miles, the executive director of U.S. Biochar Initiative. “And the emissions are better than in a lot of fireplaces.”
Biochar is currently expensive to make in the U.S. because large amounts of biomass must be shipped to fewer than 50 small-scale production facilities in the country.
According to Miles, farmers typically pay no more than $50 per acre for crop treatment using fertilizer. Even though biochar lasts hundreds to thousands of years, farmers struggle to afford it at $500 per ton of biochar per acre.
Many researchers envision a nationwide network of medium-sized facilities using local biomass to create the char, which would create jobs across the country, especially in rural communities with access to organic material.
This means facilities in Wyoming could use dead trees like the ones Laird saw in the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest to clear the wildfire risk and create a char to help revitalize dried-out soil. Pennsylvania facilities, on the other hand, could produce manure-based char and reduce the amount of nutrient leaching that would have to be resolved downstream in the Chesapeake Bay.
Only a “fraction of a percent” of U.S. agriculture currently uses biochar. But according to Miles, “there’s a real dollar and cents market opportunity that we could approach with biochar.”
Lueckenhoff said her manure-based char is a cheaper water treatment than the alternative, granular activated carbon, but it is not widely used in this way because she is one of the few researchers doing “strong work on the toxic side.”
Biochar prices dropped by 38 percent from 2022 to 2023, according to a 2023 CDR.fyi carbon capture report. With around a quarter of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions coming from agriculture, forestry and other land use, conservation techniques in the agriculture sector have both strong environmental and economic potential
“As we address climate change, we need to dramatically reduce the use of fossil fuels, but at the same time, we can’t damage the economy,” Laird said.
Roadblocks
In February, a biochar conference in Sacramento brought in over 655 attendees from 28 countries and 44 states, according to Miles. He said he expects the conference to grow to around 800 attendees next year.
However, biochar has mainly been taken up by small businesses, and its market remains limited.
“People don’t know about biochar—don’t know or understand what the benefits are,” Miles said.
Early studies did not account for different soil and land conditions needing different amounts of biochar, so in some tests, the char leached nutrients from crops. Now, more than 30,000 peer-reviewed papers explain how biochar works, and guidelines like the Pacific Northwest Biochar Atlas instruct growers on how to maximize its use.
The process of making biochar has other byproducts, like oil that can easily be made into asphalt, sugar and liquid fuel that can be used for shipping and aviation.
“This is the niche that we see this technology fitting into—a system that can replace difficult-to-electrify transportation and at the same time be producing a char which goes into the soil,” Laird said.
But uptake of sustainable energy is slow because fossil fuel companies are not penalized for the environmental damage their oil and gas products cause.
“If we have to compete head to head against petroleum, it’s going to be a real tough sell,” Laird added.
Some laws complicate using biochar. For example, the Department of Agriculture pays farmers to adopt conservation practices, but it excludes biochar produced from crop residue out of concerns that farmers would remove too much biomass and damage their land.
Laird said such policies are like taking a “sledgehammer to a sewing machine.” He said creating legal, economic and industry incentives to adopt the new technology can help facilitate its uptake.
Another challenge for biochar is its political instability, Laird said. The risk that former president Donald Trump wins the presidency and repeals Biden’s conservation incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act discourages large investors from pouring money into the industry to help it take off.
Despite the hurdles to a booming biochar industry, many researchers, policymakers and advocates are optimistic that the char will gain prevalence and deliver environmental and economic benefits across the country.
A new study of the global biochar industry by the International Biochar Initiative and U.S. Biochar Initiative predicts that biochar revenues will surge from $600 million U.S. dollars in 2023 to $3.3 billion by 2025.
Lueckenhoff said she is “on the precipice” of rolling out her manure-based biochar. She next plans to look into making char from compost and biosolids, like sewage sludge, she said.
“It’s going to take a major industry effort to actually remove a gigaton of CO2 from the atmosphere,” Laird said. “This is a pathway towards that. It can be done.”
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Parents concerned over poor health impact on children caused by climate change
WASHINGTON – When Dr. Lisa Patel was working on a project for the Environmental Protection Agency in 2005, she visited a children’s hospital for asthma in Mumbai, India. After seeing the main parts of the center, she was surprised when the coordinators took her to a nearby gymnasium that had been converted into a children’s asthma ward. It was filled with even more children who were receiving care.
Seeing an entire gymnasium full of child asthmatics struggling to breathe was moving for Dr. Patel, the executive director of the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health. But the global climate crisis became much more personal when the California wildfires reached her own children almost a decade later.
“That’s when it became very concrete to me that no child should be breathing in this absolutely foul pollution that’s ruining their health,” she said.
According to a report by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, children face disproportionate ill effects as a result of climate change, largely because they are actively developing both mentally and physically.
Children are affected by both “indoor air” and their surrounding climate, Executive Director of the Children’s Environmental Health Network Nsedu Obot Witherspoon said at a Moms Clean Air Force (MCAF) event about children’s health in the face of the climate crisis on Feb. 8.
According to Witherspoon, “indoor air” is impacted by a number of products including cleaners, toys, pesticides and other human-made items children encounter. “Climate” encompasses air quality, water quality, pollution, natural disasters and any additional environmental factors.
While everyone is impacted by these types of exposure, children are more likely to be negatively impacted.
“Their airways are smaller. They have developing immune systems,” Dr. Patel said. “So things like NOx or PM2.5 irritate the lung lining and put children at higher risk for respiratory illnesses.”
NOx, also known as nitrogen oxides, are “a group of highly reactive gasses, including nitrogen dioxide, nitrous acid, and nitric acid,” according to the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ). Similarly, the ADEQ classifies PM2.5 as “the smallest, most harmful particulate pollution.” PM2.5 is a combination of nitrogen oxides and other harmful substances.
In the U.S., 49% of parents say climate change has affected their decision about having more children, according to a recent study conducted by Morning Consult on behalf of the technology company, HP.
Moreover, the study concluded that 91% of parents globally are worried about the climate crisis and have changed their purchasing habits as a result.
“I studied climate change in college and at the time, it felt like a calling, and it felt like something that I wanted to do,” Dr. Patel said. “But I think when I had my kids, it no longer felt like a choice. It felt like something that I had to do.”
Even so, parents have little control over what substances their children come into contact with. With more than 12 million children under the age of five in the United States in some form of nonparental care, Witherspoon said the industry lacks sufficient regulations, focusing on these “critical windows of exposure.”
Prevention through policy
Existing health and safety policy surrounding child care is largely centered around the prevention of the spread of infectious diseases and violence, though there are also climate-related regulations to highlight.
The National Resource Center for Health and Safety in Child Care and Early Education is the most prevalent organization setting health and safety standards for child care facilities. Their resources give providers national and state standards to follow.
One national standard largely influenced by the Clean Air Act stated that providers must check the air quality index before determining if it is safe for children to play outside. There are also established protocols surrounding natural disasters to keep facilities prepared to protect children in the event of an emergency.
States can establish their own rules for child care providers too. For example, a 2018 California law required licensed child care centers to test their water for lead by 2023.
After results found shocking levels of the poisonous substance in the water supplies, Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) said California children’s lead exposure was alarming.
“One in four California child care centers has dangerously high levels of lead in their drinking water,” Porter said. “Children are our future, and we owe it to every American to protect all kids’ safety and well-being.”
In remarks made in Pittsburgh on Feb. 20, Vice President Kamala Harris promised to eliminate all lead pipes in the United States, recognizing the impact that lead has on children’s health.
The Biden-Harris Lead Pipe and Paint Action Plan “includes over 15 new actions from more than 10 federal agencies that ensure the federal government is marshalling every resource to make rapid progress towards replacing all lead pipes in the next decade.”
“When children drink toxic water through lead pipes, it has an impact on their learning ability, on their health,” Harris said. “And for too long, this has been the case, that communities have been crying out for support to get rid of these lead pipes.”
There are also environmental justice concerns around the quality of drinking water, which Porter alluded to in her remarks.
“Many of the worst facilities for lead levels are in low-income areas or communities of color,” she said.
According to Witherspoon, the child care industry is a space where environmental injustice is heightened because the profession is largely dominated by women, including women of color and women of childbearing age. She said there is a dual benefit of reducing the environmental hazards and limiting the negative health effects for both children and their care providers.
Exposure to plastic
Another concern for children’s environmental health is exposure to plastics. Judith Enck is the founder and president of Beyond Plastics and a former EPA regional administrator. Her work focuses on the dangers of plastic pollution. At the MCAF event in early February, she cited how plastic emissions are replacing those originally produced by the coal industry.
“Plastics is Plan B for the fossil fuels industry,” she said. “All of us have microplastics in our bodies.”
Microplastics are a particular danger because they are being found in a variety of organs, from livers to placentas. According to a study by a peer reviewed journal titled Birth Defects Research, exposure to microplastics as a newborn “is linked to the development of multiple illnesses in adulthood.”
Yet exposure can also occur before a child is born, “which may have the potential to cause harmful effects later in life,” according to a recent study by Environment International.
While action has been taken against the rise of plastics, Enck said she is still working toward more change.
In December, the EPA decided that vinyl chloride, which has been a known carcinogen for about 50 years, will be among five chemicals that will begin the risk evaluation prioritization process under the Toxic Substances Control Act, Enck said. “But that’s the beginning of a ten-year journey to ban vinyl chloride,” she added.
The mental health toll of the climate crisis
Research shows that children’s mental wellness is also affected by the climate crisis.
“There’s actually some emerging data that early exposure to air pollution places children at higher risk for anxiety and depression,” Dr. Patel said.
Dr. Lise Van Susteren, a medical doctor and general and forensic psychiatrist, indicated the youth population is paying a mental toll for the climate crisis.
“The extreme weather events they face not only bring – acutely – fear, anger, sorrow, etc. But over time, what happens is they become dispirited, even demoralized and feel potentially a feeling of abandonment and betrayal by their government,” Dr. Van Susteren said.
While the public might differ over which initiatives to support, two-thirds of Americans agree that the government should be doing more to solve the climate crisis, according to a 2020 study conducted by the Pew Research Center. This support extends across partisan lines.
Dr. Van Susteren said there should be more psychiatrists who specialize in climate mental health. This support could help improve the morale of a younger generation that feels a widening gap between themselves and their government.
At the MCAF event, she said it is important to consider a child’s particular age, behavior and the context in which they live before talking to them about climate change. Supporting a child’s mental well-being is not a “one size fits all approach.”
While some kids need more transparency, others need protection, Dr. Van Susteren said. It is up to those supporting the children to assess what they need based on existing factors.
Dr. Van Susteren said adults should also be aware of their own mental well-being. She wants people who are struggling mentally with the climate crisis to “recognize that it’s really our collective effort – individually counted, it’s just like votes on election day – but this is what ends up changing the course of our history.”
Dr. Patel said she feels a particular responsibility to protect her own children.
“I brought them into this world. And so it’s incumbent on me to make sure that this is a world worthy of them,” she said.
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Growing wildfire problem requires new response strategies, lawmakers told
WASHINGTON – With approximately 70,000 wildfires per year since 1983, federal agencies’ told senators on Thursday that emergency responses must be reformed to better aid impacted communities.
The threat of wildfires is immense. From injuries and deaths to property damage and toxic debris, the prospect of damage was not taken lightly by lawmakers and witnesses at Thursday’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee hearing.
“The current system focuses on suppression and mitigation in rural and federal lands and what we have seen is that wildfires are now affecting very populated areas over the last ten years,” Christopher P. Currie, the director of Homeland Security and Justice at the U.S. Government Accountability Office, said.
Wildfire relief is unique in that it is more costly compared to other natural disasters, Currie said. The soil becomes toxic, debris must be removed and while rebuilding after floods takes months, fire recovery can take years, he said.
This is more complicated when discussing debris removal in places like Maui, Hawaii, where its 2023 wildfire was referred to as one of the deadliest of the century.
Maui is not within the continental U.S. and has no landfills certified to house hazardous waste. Therefore, when the EPA helps with cleanup, it must ship the waste to licensed sites on the West Coast.
“The effects of these fires aren’t only physical danger and property damage. They also bring a host of health risks to our communities, even in locations hundreds of miles from the fire,” Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) said.
The Canadian wildfires impacted several communities, he said. The fires knew no boundaries and turned skies across the East Coast and Europe an alarming hue.
“Wildfires can negate any improvement of air quality in a single incident,” Jamie Barnes, the director of Forestry, Fire and State Lands Department of Natural Resources State of Utah, said.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is the federal agency responsible for mitigating the risks of wildfires and other natural crises. Peters said the goal of the hearing was to learn from witnesses what FEMA must do to more effectively address the problem.
One common thread throughout the remarks was the need to streamline agency efforts and encourage collaboration for more efficient solutions. Currie said that because different agencies sometimes have conflicting priorities, it is difficult to take cohesive action.
One example of this is how the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service’s prescribed burns directly contribute to the air pollution that the Environmental Protection Agency seeks to limit.
While the burns are known to prevent wildfires by removing debris, they also produce smoke that is unhealthy for lung and heart function. Barnes said Utah has taken particularly beneficial steps to balance these two factors.
“If the clearing index is above 500, then we’re not allowed to do prescribed burning,” she said. But if there are long-term public safety benefits or they can see how prescribed burning will curb wildfire risk, then they are still able to take that action, given the clearing index is within range.
Once conflicting interests between agencies like the Forest Service and the EPA are taken into account and resolutions are reached, then they can work toward logistical solutions, like proactive planning.
Lori Moore-Merrell, an administrator of the U.S. Fire Administration of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, said it is essential to educate the public about how to produce more fire-resistant communities. And when the fires inevitably arrive, there will also need to be precautions in place.
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) expressed concern that many of his constituents are angry and asking why the government is not doing a better job implementing preventative measures.
“FEMA and its federal partners and stakeholding partners are going to have to work together to figure out – before fires happen – what we’re going to do with survivors when they’re taking years to rebuild their homes,” Currie said.
The discussion focused mainly on community response and wildfire risk mitigation. According to Sen. Carper (D-Del.), though, the government must also address what is generating the fires in the first place.
“We have to address root causes and we all know what the root cause is: climate change,” Carper said.
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Senators hear ways to have companies curb plastic pollution, other waste
WASHINGTON – Senators on Wednesday heard from companies and nonprofit groups on effective ways to have producers take responsibility for packaging waste and other sustainability goals as they weigh legislation to curb pollution from plastics and disposable items.
The concept of putting the onus on manufacturers, known as extended producer responsibility (EPR), is explained by the Sustainable Packaging Coalition as requiring producers “to provide funding and/or services that assist in managing covered products after the use phase.”
The ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), said in her opening statement that she wanted to ensure that policies being considered “are grounded in reality.”
Herbert Fisk Johnson III, the chairman and CEO of S.C. Johnson & Son, which makes numerous consumer cleaning and household products like Windex and Ziploc, said he is a longtime conservationist who still sees the value of plastic as a versatile and cost-effective product. He also backs EPR initiatives.
“The challenge is reconciling those two perspectives,” Johnson said. He aims to “preserve many of the benefits that plastic has brought to humanity, while preventing the vast amounts of plastic that end up in landfills, or even worse, end up in the environment.”
Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.) said he worried that the extra costs would potentially fall on low-income households, citing how there are various instances where regulation has raised costs for consumers.
Dan Felton, the executive director of AMERIPEN, a group that represents the North American packaging industry, pushed back and said the United States would see the best impact if producers absorbed some of the extra costs and kept prices the same.
“Packaging has value throughout its life cycle, and none of it belongs in roadways, waterways, or landfills,” Felton said.
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) added that EPR is “just one aspect of the circular economy for plastic” and that lawmakers should also look at initiatives like recycling infrastructure investments, improved data collection and any other strategies.
EPR exists in some capacity in only a handful of states. According to the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, while nine states have introduced legislation involving EPR for packaging in 2024, just four of those bills have passed: in Maine, California, Oregon and Colorado.
Producers said they are facing barriers as a result of inconsistent state regulations. For example, Johnson’s company finds it difficult to comply when his packaging is shipped across state lines.
“The labeling law that’s part of EPR in California will prevent the chasing arrows symbol in most cases, whereas 30 other states have laws that mandate the chasing arrows,” Johnson said. “It would be impossible for us to comply with the law when you have that kind of labeling conflict.”
Federal standards would help address those inconsistencies, some witnesses said. Erin Simon, who used to work for the plastics industry but is now the vice president of plastic waste and business at the World Wildlife Fund, expressed frustration with the lack of federal action regarding single-use plastics.
“We can’t even get our small recycling bills through Congress, so how in the world are we going to be able to do something on a federal level at the scale that we’re talking about here?” Simon asked.
Johnson urged the senators to pass these regulations as soon as possible, saying there are benefits to early implementation that give the government more room to adjust policy over time.
“The sooner we get federal regulation and the more time given to meet goals, the more innovation can happen, the more you get economies of scale and you can mitigate the costs and inconvenience to the people that buy our products,” he said.
Simon also backed Johnson’s sentiment to move quickly.
This is a “huge untapped opportunity,” she said. “If we were to start today to transform our plastic linear economy into a circular one, we could save more than $4 trillion in direct environmental and social costs by 2040.”
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Looming government shutdown threatens farmers and consumers, Agriculture secretary warns
WASHINGTON – Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack warned lawmakers that preparing for potential government shutdown is “an extraordinary waste of time and resources.”
“This team is working their tail off,” Vilsack said on Wednesday during a USDA oversight hearing by the Senate agriculture committee. “So please don’t tell me the work’s not getting done, because I can show you that it is.”
A partial government shutdown still looms next week despite a one-week funding extension. The plan that passed the House on Thursday would extend funding for the departments of Veterans Affairs, Interior, Housing and Urban Development, Energy and Transportation, Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency – but only until March 8.
It is the fourth time in recent years that the Agriculture Department has had to plan for a government shutdown, Vilsack said.
If the USDA is shut down after next week, beneficiaries of multiple programs would face harm. This includes farmers seeking loans or disaster assistance, researchers on yearslong projects as well as recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly called food stamps, and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children.
As part of their oversight role, senators raised concerns to the USDA secretary that their constituents had brought up.
Multiple lawmakers said their states have experienced unprecedented natural disasters – like floods, droughts and wildfires – in the past year that have harmed their agriculture sectors.
“It’s a tough time” for Alabama farmers,” said Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.).
“The farmers in Alabama, you know, it seems like every other phone call I get is about something different that they’re having to face, whether it’s climate change or whether it’s the high cost of fertilizer – all the things that are coming at them at once,” Tuberville added.
While top lawmakers have agreed to push the funding deadline another week, partisan gridlock threatens the reauthorization of the farm bill, which expires every five years and sets policies for agriculture, nutrition, conservation and forestry.
The current farm bill will run out Sept. 30 after being extended one year from its initial expiration date. Until then, the USDA will operate based on the current farm bill, Vilsack told reporters after the hearing.
Senators on both sides of the aisle agreed that the bill should include a robust farm safety net.
Many Republicans, like ranking member John Boozman (R-Ark.), were also worried about declining net profits for farms nationwide.
“What I’ve heard from our nation’s farmers and ranchers is that they’re very concerned,” Boozman said. “If we truly care about rural communities on our farm and ranch families, farming at all scales must be economically viable, and we must provide a safety net that works.”
Earlier this month, the USDA forecasted that net farm income would drop by 27.1%.
Vilsack said profit loss is due to weak global economies, rather than the U.S. economy, which has record low levels of unemployment and poverty.
“Do we want to weaken the American economy so people aren’t buying stuff?” he asked.
According to Vilsack, the USDA is focusing on creating opportunities for farmers to get multiple sources of revenue so they do not have to work “two full-time jobs” to sustain their farms.
He said investing in new markets, climate-smart agriculture, renewable energy and local food systems can “provide opportunities for farmers to do what they love to do.”
In 2023, the USDA awarded more than $1 billion in grants to 81 projects for agricultural conservation.
Despite gridlock over the details of the farm bill, both Democratic and Republican lawmakers expressed their hope to get a bill passed in order to help their communities.
“Division is not the way to make progress in this country,” Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) said. “It’s not the way to make progress in agriculture.”
Electric vehicle companies are setting up shop and bringing jobs to South Carolina. Residents are skeptical.
BLYTHEWOOD, S.C. — Gregory Bledsoe, 23, gazed out over the dimly lit field bordering the town cemetery in Blythewood, S.C., just outside of the state capital of Columbia. The distant sound of Amtrak’s Silver Star line seemed to get louder as he shook his head at the pile of construction debris behind him.
“I’ve been here my whole life, and I remember when it was a lot smaller,” he said. “I don’t like seeing it grow up.”
Bledsoe’s hometown will be the site of Scout Motors’ first all-electric manufacturing plant, scheduled to begin vehicle production by the end of 2026. Even though it will bring thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in investment, many residents were not excited about the progress and felt left out of the process.
Scout’s expansion is one of several ongoing projects in the state, supported by Gov. Henry McMaster’s executive order in 2022 prioritizing EV company recruitment and President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, giving companies incentives to set up shop domestically and to manufacture zero-emission vehicles.
But Bledsoe is among the residents who said he’s pessimistic about the recent push toward electric vehicle investment in his home state and on a nationwide scale.
Only 38% of Americans say they’re very or somewhat likely to consider an electric vehicle when buying their next car, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted last year.
The plant, however, is garnering support from some residents.
“I’ve got 12 grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, four children, a lot of people I’m concerned about with regard to climate change,” Blythewood resident James DeBruhl said, who was interviewed waiting to vote during Saturday’s Republican primary. “When I go in there and vote, I vote with them in mind.”
While Scout is one of the first major manufacturing companies to break ground near the capital city, the state has successfully attracted many others from the automotive sector. Since the 1990s, BMW, Mercedes Benz and Volvo have flocked to the state to establish U.S. manufacturing facilities.
That’s made the area much more competitive on an international scale, South Carolina’s Secretary of Commerce Harry Lightsey said in an interview with Medill News Service.
Lightsey said it was important for the governor to retain and recruit automotive jobs to ensure that the state doesn’t become a “technological obsolescence.” He sees companies like Scout Motors as long-term investments that will lead the industry for decades.
“The automotive space is our largest manufacturing sector, employing 75,000 South Carolinians,” Lightsey said. “We have a well-established reputation as a state that’s able to provide a workforce that’s well-trained with the right skill sets to be successful.”
South Carolina is attracting other companies in the electric vehicle sector. Redwood Materials, a battery production and recycling company, selected South Carolina as its second U.S. manufacturing site for its $3.5 billion plant, attracted in large part by the state’s university training programs, according to Morgan Crapps, director of public affairs and media relations.
“South Carolina has been a longtime leader in the automotive industry, but as we start to see it changing, I think Redwood is a company that can close the loop and be both at the beginning and the end of an automotive lifecycle,” Crapps said.
She also cited the state’s business-friendly practices – from low taxes and utility costs to strong support from local and state government – as reasons why Redwood Materials chose the state to expand beyond its primary site in Nevada.
The Palmetto State exempts electric vehicle companies from paying state property taxes and sales taxes on manufacturing machinery and industrial power, codifying financial benefits for manufacturers moving to or expanding in South Carolina.
Redwood Materials was greeted with support from both Democrats and Republicans when drawing up plans for the recycling plant, according to Crapps.
“Scout’s CEO said the thing that impressed him about our state was our ability to work together across state, local and even federal entities to bring results that we were able to negotiate in roughly 60 days, much faster than what he experienced in other states,” said Lightsey.
Such factors also prompted Germany to see America as a robust automotive partner in the 1990s and open up its first stateside BMW plant, said Conor Harrison, a professor at the the University of South Carolina who studies the relationship between energy and society.
Though the eight million square-foot assembly plant employs more than 11,000 South Carolinians, Harrison said it transformed the landscape of Spartanburg County.
“You go to these places, and they’ve become McMansion communities with a booming downtown. BMW has completely changed the trajectory of that area,” he said.
That type of rapid expansion, Bledsoe noted, is unwelcome in the town of Blythewood.
Jeff Buck, a product specialist at Jim Hudson Chevrolet in Richland County, echoed his skepticism, contending that electric vehicles are an unreliable choice for families seeking to take long road trips this summer.
With the Biden administration set to roll back strict guidelines on tailpipe emissions that would encourage drivers to switch to electric vehicles, car manufacturers aren’t in a rush to make the switch, and consumer sentiment remains apathetic, according to Harrison.
“If you live in the city, it’s a great deal. But think about it – if you drive across the country with your family and you have to stop and charge it every couple of hours. Road trips simply aren’t feasible,” Buck said.
While NIMBYism might be at play — focused on the disruption caused by Scout’s construction site in Blythewood — residents say they’re most doubtful about whether Biden can equip the nation with the infrastructure necessary to support EVs from coast to coast.
Adoption in the U.S. has been slower than other countries, but the Biden administration has set a goal of having 50% of all new vehicles sold in the U.S. be electric by 2030.
And since Biden took office in 2021, his administration has installed 170,000 publicly available EV chargers nationwide. But many residents of the Palmetto State aren’t sold on the progress.
“Blythewood is losing its little town feel,” said poll worker Kris White. “And what’s worse is, they don’t have the infrastructure. If the roads can’t handle it, we’re all screwed.”
Senators express bipartisan concern over microplastics
WASHINGTON – Bipartisan concern about microplastics in the Senate brought about a rich discussion on Tuesday regarding future research and policy.
In a hearing focused on the presence of plastic particles in drinking water and wastewater, senators grappled with how they might take effective action even as expert witnesses told them research on the topic was still incomplete.
“While we don’t know everything, what we do know is concerning,” Director of Sustainability at the Penn State Erie campus Sherri Mason said, “and water, the necessary elixir of life, is a primary means for the movement of micro and nanoplastics into people.”
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are various ways microplastics can enter drinking water. The two most prominent ways are through surface run-off and sewage, according to a WHO information sheet.
Once inside the body, experts warn microplastics could have negative effects on the body.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Clean Water Act (CWA) “establishes the basic structure for regulating discharges of pollutants into the waters of the United States and regulating quality standards for surface waters.”
But while the CWA created some standards when enacted in 1972, there is currently not a lot of policy surrounding microplastics due to their relative novelty.
Research around microplastics in the United States is still being collected, said Susanne Brander, a witness at Tuesday’s hearing who is an associate professor at Oregon State University. Most of the research to date had been conducted in Europe and Asia, but the U.S. can still use these findings, she said.
Nanoplastics, which are much smaller than microplastics, are even more difficult to identify. While microplastics are smaller than 0.5 millimeters in diameter, nanoplastics are just 0.000001 millimeters or less. Nanoplastics are invisible to the human eye.
Brent Alspach, vice president & director of applied research at Arcadis, said that because scientists don’t completely understand nanoplastics, policymakers cannot take meaningful action to remedy the issue yet.
But the research is lagging behind the effects, as plastics are being found in various locations, including human livers, lungs and breast milk, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) said.
“While drinking water in the U.S. does contain fewer microplastics in comparison to wastewater, the U.S. does have among the highest prevalence of microfibers in its drinking water and the highest number of particles detected per liter currently,” Brander said.
Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) pointed out constituents are feeling concerned.
“Despite the large number of unknowns, there continues to be a considerable public interest in this topic,” Lummis said.
Brander, a researcher of microplastics, said one of the largest challenges with her work is that it is expensive to effectively test and track these plastics.
Indeed, microplastics are also disproportionately consumed by marginalized communities, making it a large environmental justice issue, Brander said.
Mason suggested working toward macro solutions. Cleanup is secondary to addressing the source of the problem, she said.
“When you are looking at a problem, you look as far upstream for a solution as you can. That’s where the real solutions are,” she said.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) was especially pleased with the discussion.
“This has been a very helpful and productive hearing,” he said. “I always appreciate it when a bipartisan panel can produce so much consensus and agreement on a particular issue.”
Supreme Court hears arguments on whether to limit EPA’s authority in high-stakes air pollution case
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday on whether to freeze an EPA policy aimed at reducing air pollution that crosses from one state to another in a case that experts say could significantly limit the agency’s ability to regulate air pollution nationwide.
In Ohio v. EPA, the court heard four cases involving challenges of the EPA’s so-called Good Neighbor Plan. Three states – Ohio, Indiana and West Virginia – along with numerous actors in the oil and gas industry are challenging the EPA’s rule that sets national emission standards for certain air pollutants. Among those include ozone, a pollutant that can trigger or exacerbate a wide-range of health issues – like asthma and bronchitis – when present in high levels.
In 2023, the EPA rejected 21 state plans for failing to meet these standards and subsequently introduced the “Good Neighbor Plan,” requiring “upwind” states to ensure that their emissions do not interfere with the ability of “downwind” states to meet federal air quality standards.
The states challenging the Good Neighbor Plan contend it would be costly and pose “irreparable harm” to the states involved. The plaintiffs also argued that the EPA failed to give the states adequate time to make revisions to their plans before the EPA imposed their own regulations.
The nine justices seemed to be divided along ideological lines based on their questioning. Justice Elena Kagan criticized the “generality” of the plaintiffs’ motions, saying that their briefs do not address a “very complicated cost argument.”
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson also expressed skepticism about the urgency of this particular case, arguing that it was “fairly extraordinary” for the Supreme Court to hear arguments before they have first been considered by a lower circuit court.
“I’m worried about the standards that this court needs to take into account when it decides whether or not to entertain these kinds of motions,” Jackson said. “The (plaintiffs’) argument is just boiling down to ‘we think we have a meritorious claim, and we don’t want to have to follow the law while we’re challenging it.’”
Malcolm L. Stewart, on behalf of the EPA, noted the importance of promoting equity when considering cross-air state pollution, specifically in downwind states disproportionately affected by greater emissions.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh said he was sympathetic to the detriments of air pollution but defended the states challenging the EPA’s plan, pointing out that “there are also the equities of the upwind states and the industry…and they’re both major.”
In an interview with the Medill News Service, Richard J. Lazarus, a professor of law at Harvard University, said he believes there may be at least four justices who would vote in favor of the plaintiffs, noting that it is highly unusual for the court to hear a case on the shadow docket – or cases seeking expedited action from the Supreme Court before lower courts rule on them.
“Historically, the court would have denied it in a heartbeat,” Lazarus said, adding that the Supreme Court has accepted such motions in recent years “in part because they’re concerned that the EPA in particular is overreaching.”
In 2022, the court restricted the EPA’s use of the Clean Air Act to combat emissions that contribute to climate change. Last year, the court weakened the EPA’s regulatory oversight over wetlands under the Clean Water Act.
In 2014, the court ruled in a 6-2 decision that the EPA was well within its authority to impose its own plans to curb air pollution on states under the prior Good Neighbor rule. If the court rules against the EPA, it would signal a reverse in precedent and underscore the political conservatism of the court, according to Lazarus.
“Those are two of the biggest losses the EPA has ever had in the United States Supreme Court within one year,” Lazarus said. “This ruling will tell us whether the court is going to be hyper-aggressive.”
Devon Ombres, senior director for courts and legal policy at the Center for American Progress, a progressive-leaning think tank, told the Medill News Service that pausing the EPA’s plan would bring about dire environmental consequences.
The center predicts that such a pause could allow upwind states to emit approximately 70,000 additional tons of nitrous oxide by the peak of 2026 ozone season, resulting in an estimated 1,300 premature deaths.
“If the EPA can’t regulate air pollution, then what is the point of the EPA?” Ombres asked. “If the EPA can’t act to regulate air pollution of the second-largest carbon polluter in the world, then we are really in for some existential crises in the future.”
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House Republicans advance bill to reverse Biden’s pause on liquefied natural gas approvals
WASHINGTON — The House Rules Committee on Tuesday advanced a bill to take away the Department of Energy’s authority over liquefied natural gas permits, effectively reversing the Biden administration’s pause on permit approvals that began last month.
During the hearing, the Republican-controlled committee voted along party lines to report to rule the bill, sending it to the full House. The legislation would give the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission the sole authority to approve or deny an LNG permit application.
Currently, applications also require the approval of the Department of Energy, which assesses the impact of the exports. FERC is responsible for looking at the environmental and economic impacts of the facilities.
Democrats pointed out that this was the fourth time a near-exact version of the bill came before the committee, and none made it through the Senate. They called it a sign of House Republicans’ inability to govern.
“I just think the bill is being brought up as a distraction,” Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) complained. “House Republicans are once again returning to this bill that’s already passed the House twice, even though it stands no chance of becoming law. And it’s not going to be law because it’s a bad bill.”
This is the first time the bill has been taken up since President Joe Biden announced on Jan. 26 an indefinite pause on pending decisions on LNG exports to countries where the U.S. does not have free trade agreements.
During a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing last week, Republicans focused their concerns more on the effects Biden’s move will have on cutting profits and jobs in the energy industry. But on Tuesday, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle highlighted the same priorities: keeping gas prices low at home, bolstering national security and protecting the environment. However, there wasn’t agreement on how LNG could help achieve those goals.
Already-permitted projects are expected to triple the current level of LNG production in the United States by the early 2030s, But Republicans contended that won’t be enough to meet global demand.
According to the European Council, the E.U. gets the most natural gas from Norway at 30.3%, while the United States provides 19.4% and Russia provides 14.8%. An official from the European Commission told Reuters the pause would not affect U.S. LNG supplies in the next two to three years, and expressed confidence in the projects that have already been approved.
Ranking Member Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) accused House Republicans of “playing games” with the world’s security by refusing to consider the Senate bill containing Ukraine funding.
“We’re letting Ukraine dangle out there,” McGovern said. “Putin is salivating because he thinks he’ll have the green light to (continue to) invade Ukraine, and we’re doing this here, and we’re not even going to bring a bill on Ukraine to the floor anytime in the near future.”
China, the United States’ main economic rival, was the world’s largest LNG importer in 2023. The U.S. provides a significant portion of those imports, making up 43% of Chinese LNG sales and purchase agreements signed 2021-2022. Pallone criticized the United States promoting China’s economic and military growth.
But Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) said having China buy more natural gas produced in the United States benefits the country by funding American companies.
Producing enough LNG to meet China’s full demand for energy would also significantly lower emissions from the highest polluting country, Republicans argued, repeatedly describing LNG as clean energy.
“If you want to reduce China’s emissions, provide them a way to make that happen,” Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) said.
Previous academic and government research indicate that LNG can reduce global warming by replacing coal. However, a few studies have concluded that the warming effect from LNG is higher than from coal in the short-term, using a higher rate of methane leakage, around 3%. The researchers believe this rate is more realistic than the 0.7% used in the DOE’s 2019 analysis. Methane is much more powerful than carbon dioxide, but carbon dioxide lingers longer in the atmosphere.
The pause will give the Energy Department the time to analyze the unknown effects on the economy and environment, Pallone said.
“All we’re saying is that we want to be able to look at this public interest, and what’s in the interest of America,” he said. “And all [Republicans] are saying is, we don’t need to do that anymore. To me that doesn’t make any sense.”
U.S. will continue strong exports of natural gas, Biden official tells senators, in spite of pause on new projects
WASHINGTON – Senate Republicans on Thursday attacked the Biden administration’s pause on reviewing liquefied natural gas export applications, saying it will harm the energy security of the U.S. and its allies, even as officials say the move will not prevent the U.S. from more than doubling its exports by 2030.
During a hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, David Turk, deputy secretary of the Department of Energy, said this pause will not halt the eight terminals currently exporting LNG nor the five under construction.
The move, however, would keep the Department of Energy from assessing over a dozen pending project applications to export LNG, a gas used to heat homes and generate electricity until the review is completed.
“DOE has the responsibility to assess additional proposed exports using the most complete, the most updated and the most robust cost analysis possible,” Turk told lawmakers. “I would find it irresponsible if we weren’t taking a step back and undertaking this rigorous analysis.”
President Joe Biden’s announcement in late January of the pause cites environmental concerns, potential energy cost increases to Americans and health risks to communities that “disproportionately shoulder the burden of pollution from new export facilities.” The last time the DOE updated its analysis was 2018, when the country’s export capacity was less than a third of what it is now.
But several Republicans and some Democrats, like committee Chair Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), criticized the decision, citing national security and global demand.
Calling Biden’s decision “political theater,” ranking member John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said “the world needs and wants more American energy, not less.”
Republicans said the move could shift energy markets to competitors like Russia and Iran and reduce potential economic growth in the U.S.
“We need to be able to send a message to our friends and allies, you can actually trust the United States to be true to their word,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska).
Two groups interrupted the hearing to protest the use of LNG, which contributes to global warming, before being escorted out.
The U.S. had the world’s largest export capacity of LNG in 2023. Russia came in fourth, with around a third of the capacity of the U.S., and Iran did not make the top 10.
The pause does not affect exports to countries that have free trade agreements with the U.S., which constitute around 20 percent of the country’s total exports. It also exempts national security emergencies.
“The European Commission has said publicly that the pause will not have any short- or medium-term impact on EU security of supply,” Turk noted.
He added that U.S. LNG exports will continue to increase while Europe’s demand goes down.
Turk also said global LNG demand must fall 75% by 2050 in order to reach net zero emissions.
An NYU study found that the estimated climate costs of continuing to export LNG outweigh the economic benefits for American households.
“Under all scenarios evaluated, we found the gross climate damage greatly exceeded economic benefits,” said Minhong Xu, an economist who co-authored the study.
Charlie Riedl, executive director of the Center for LNG, a group that represents oil and gas companies, said future projects will benefit local economies by creating jobs and boosting revenue.
In an interview with Medill News Service, Manchin warned that workers could lose their jobs if the DOE does not extend contracts for existing facilities.
All 23 Republican attorneys general signed a letter Tuesday urging Biden and DOE to resume review of export applications, claiming the pause is unlawful, economically damaging and “detrimental to our national security.”
In a back and forth debate, Manchin said Biden “put the cart before the horse” by announcing the pause before discussing it with interested parties.
But Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) replied: “I think just the opposite,” adding that it was the Energy Department’s legal responsibility “to see that export projects are in the public interest, not in the interest of the oil and gas industry. Isn’t what you’re doing here – simply looking before we leap?”
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Senators demand accessible, affordable flood insurance as Congress looks to reauthorize a federal program
WASHINGTON – Lawmakers on Thursday stressed the urgency of renewing the National Flood Insurance Program, with reforms to rein in ever-increasing premiums that are becoming harder for homeowners to afford.
The Senate Banking Committee is working to reauthorize the National Flood Insurance Program before its March 8 expiration date, which has already been extended multiple times as Congress has struggled to pass the budget and other legislation. The latest version of the bill proposes to limit price increases, provide swift payments for homeowners and increase oversight for insurance vendors.
“Congress cannot allow the NFIP to lapse,” said Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.). “Whether you’re in Ohio or California or the New Jersey/New York area, the number of flood insurance policies in place is essentially nonexistent. Floods don’t simply happen when you live near the water. Floods today happen throughout the country.”
Destructive hurricanes and torrential rainfall and other weather disasters are adding to the urgency to provide affordable insurance across all coastal and inland states. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) pointed to drastic flooding events from coast to coast just this month, including in Rhode Island, California and Louisiana.
The insurance program, funded through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, serves residents with rates based on their property’s elevation within a zone on a Flood Insurance Rate Map.
Homeowners with a federal mortgage living in designated flood zones must buy flood insurance, while those living outside of the mapped areas may opt into a federal or private plan.
The proposed legislation intends to counter the increase in premiums from FEMA’s Risk Rating 2.0, implemented in April 2023. The new program incorporates more factors in calculating premiums, including how close a home is to a body of water and the estimated cost of rebuilding after damage. Of the 3.4 million single-family homes with policies under the federal program, only about 625,000 homeowners would see rates decline.
Since the introduction of the risk-rating change, senators have expressed concern of policyholders dropping their coverage because of higher rates, even as flood risk for all homes is increasing as a result of climate change.
Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) noted that the program has lost 100,000 policyholders so far, and FEMA estimates it could lose one million policyholders by the end of the decade.
“Families who are forced to drop their flood insurance coverage due to rising costs and later suffer damage in future disasters, that’s the ultimate disaster for them,” Menendez said.
FEMA caps rate increases at 18% per year, as informed by flood mapping data and catastrophe models. The proposed reauthorization would implement stricter rate caps at 9%, protecting policyholders from hasty price spikes.
Senators on both sides of the aisle criticized the increase in premiums, noting that they are becoming less affordable for working, middle-class American families.
“This is just an excuse to raise premiums,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), adding that he has seen price increases of between 300% and 500% in various counties of Louisiana. “The whole purpose of the National Flood Insurance Program is to provide a product that people can afford. FEMA lied, and they’re not going to do any better.”
In response to a lawmaker’s question, Michael Hecht, the president of the economic development agency Greater New Orleans Inc., said only about 4% of U.S. homeowners have flood insurance, “though that number should be much, much greater.”
Dr. Daniel Kaniewski, managing director at insurance company Marsh McLennan, also called for the legislation to get ahead of flood damage by including incentives for building in areas with less flood risk in the first place.
“Hazard avoidance is at the center of our universe,” he said.
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Medill Today | Wednesday, October 9, 2025