Giving Pause to Disaster
Why pausing the massive CP2 LNG terminal should not be hailed as a victory
“The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected, like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.”
— Anonymous (often misattributed to Chief Seattle)
On Tuesday, the New York Times published an article announcing the $10 billion Calcasieu Pass 2 (CP2) LNG storage facility to be built on the Louisiana Gulf coast is paused, while the Department of Energy reviews its implications. CP2 is just one of seventeen such terminals proposed or currently under construction by the fossil fuel industry and would dwarf current infrastructure, most of which is located on the already heavily deteriorated Gulf of Mexico shoreline. CP2 alone would ship about 20 million metric tons of LNG to markets around the world, producing twenty times the greenhouse gases of the Alaska Willow project yearly, whose motivations, and ecological, global, and social impacts I derided here. Willow will create a mere 260 million tons of greenhouse gases over its lifespan, as compared to billions if these projects move forward.
Leading climate organizations and activists such as Greenpeace and Bill McKibben are hailing this as a great victory. In celebration, McKibben wrote an article headlined, “Um, I think we just won.” However, with deep respect for Mr. McKibben’s good work, I offer caution. While stopping CP2 and massive additional facilities in the Gulf is critical to the halt of global warming, the DOE has been charged with analyzing CP2’s impact on climate change, as well as the economy and national security. Will they take the long-term view, or the short-term view? Is this a political maneuver before the election without intent? The key word here is “pause.”
Pause, leaves the door open. If I was arguing before the DOE, I would point out there is no national security or viable economy in a world of agricultural failure and billions of people displaced by climate change. Pay attention to this:
The Energy Department has never rejected a proposed natural gas project because of its expected environmental impact.
Proponents of these projects point out LNG is cleaner than coal when burned for electricity. This is true. Natural gas produces about half the carbon dioxide (CO2) that coal does. However, natural gas is primarily composed of methane, a greenhouse gas 80 times more powerful than CO2 and leaks routinely. This study in the journal Science puts the leak rate at 2.3 percent, 60 percent higher than our EPA, whose power has been deeply undermined by the Supreme Court.
The impact of greenhouse gases (GHGs) is measured by a scale called the Global Warming Potential (GWP) with carbon dioxide providing the baseline of how much energy (heat) one ton of gas will absorb over a given period of time.
Although shorter lived than carbon dioxide, lingering in the atmosphere for about a decade compared to hundreds of years, methane’s enormous heat absorbing potency makes it a critical problem, belying that 2.3 percent leakage rate, and an immediate devastating enemy in our fight for the right to an inhabitable planet.
Creating and storing LNG is a CO2 intensive process as well. After extraction, the gas must be processed to remove impurities such as water, carbon dioxide, and sulfur. It also must be condensed from a gas to a liquid to allow for practical storage. That’s what these terminals are for. Liquifying methane reduces its volume by 600 times.
From our oh so benevolent friends at Chevron:
LNG is natural gas that has been cooled to –260° F (–162° C), changing it from a gas into a liquid that is 1/600th of its original volume. This dramatic reduction allows it to be shipped safely and efficiently aboard specially designed LNG vessels.
LNG is returned to a gaseous state at LNG import and regasification terminals around the world. Once it has been warmed to become natural gas, it is dispersed through pipelines for use by homes and businesses. It can be used in a variety of ways: Residential uses for natural gas include cooking, heating homes and generating electricity, while commercial uses for natural gas include heating, generating electricity, manufacturing products like fertilizers, paints and medicines, and occasionally fueling commercial vehicles.
To call LNG the cleanest of all fossil fuels is a gross oversimplification. It takes massive amounts of carbon to harvest, purify, liquify, store, transport and convert back to a gas, with known leaks and unidentified leaks in every step of the process. Because of its potency, even small leaks are as bad or worse than coal’s less potent CO2 emissions in the short term. With six of nine climate change tipping points at hand, from the melting of the Greenland ice sheet to the loss of carbon sequestration in boreal forests and the Amazon, we simply don’t have the carbon budget to lock in the release of billions of additional tons of methane. CP2 by itself would add 197 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. If all seventeen projects were approved, they would emit an estimated 3.2 billion tons of greenhouse gasses each year, close to the annual emissions of the entire European Union.
The disappearing Louisiana Gulf coast
Then there’s the little matter of the sinking, eroding Louisiana Gulf coast, where oil and gas development disproportionately affect the poor — black, white and indigenous all, for wealth and power discriminate against anyone in the way. Numerous Tribes live in the region, some federally recognized, most not. All are communities that rely on fishing, natural resources and the protective qualities of the rapidly disappearing wetlands for their livings and cultures. When the land perishes, these people perish as well. The loss of protective shoreline even swept caskets in New Orleans out to sea during Katrina.
It could be argued that the greatest victims are Native Americans. Their claims to the land go back long before whites invaded. To this day, they represent a sustainable way of life lost on those same whites, a spiritual vision of connection compromised only by the so-called advances of the colonial definition of civilization. That definition justified the genocide, subjugation and “education” of these “inferior” people. They have been forced to comply. However, it is also true that continued wanton corporate destruction of natural resources and releasing of GHGs will destroy all of us, whether landlocked or shore dwellers.
Since the late 1800s, people have been building levees along the Mississippi River to reduce flooding and ease navigation, diverting silt that formerly replenished the Louisiana coast’s storm buffering ecosystem of wetlands and marshes. Rising waters from global warming have further submerged the land, and its increasingly vulnerable coastline has been further damaged by hurricanes such as Katrina and Rita in 2005, and the 2010 disaster of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Lives, of course, have been irrevocably damaged as well.
Every 48 minutes an area the size of a football field is lost on the Louisiana coast, sixteen square miles a year from drilling and dredging for oil and gas, levees, and climate change. A 50-year, $50 billion plan is in place to restore the eroding coastline, its potential success questionable at best, a wildly expensive maneuver of desperation to replace what nature previously provided for free.
According to the plan, without action, an additional 1,100 square miles of land could be lost by 2070. More than two million Louisianians will be at risk of flooding from storm surge, entailing upwards of $15 billion in damage each year. Land loss could be as high as 3,000 square miles, over twice the size of Rhode Island, depending on the global sea level rise.
Meanwhile, the victims of this ecological disaster have been trying to protect and rebuild their disappearing reefs with oyster shells, one bag at a time.
This situation is of course morally and ethically reprehensible, and representative of the plight of poor and indigenous people on every continent, exploited by colonizing invaders.
The Pointe-au-Chien Tribe is one of the communities trying to find a path forward. Theresa Dardar, 62, carries vivid memories of her grandfather and a time when tribal members could sustain themselves not only with seafood, but livestock they raised, fruits and vegetables they grew, and hunting and trapping. The land provided medicinal plants as well.
Now, Terrebonne Bay, which includes Pointe-au-Chien, has been inundated with water. According to geographer Rebekah Jones, Pointe-au-Chien was just 10 percent water in 1916. One hundred years later, in 2016, that had flipped, the area becoming 90 percent water, and the U.S. Geological Survey indicates the larger Terrebonne Basin has lost nearly 30 percent of its land from 1932 to 2010.
Theresa laments what has been lost, the land, the trees, the animals, and healthy, culturally defining food. She misses memories of her grandfather who raised chickens and pigs, his land reduced to a sliver with no trees. “There’s a little strip of land where he and my uncle lived,” she said. “The piece of land is so small now that I don’t think anyone would be able to live there.” This poignant article from the Food and Reporting Environment Network goes into detail about the plight of the Pointe-au-Chien Tribe and others.
Joe Biden promised to be the environmental president. “No more drilling on federal lands,” he proclaimed in New Hampshire, “Period, period, period.” Then came Willow. He has delivered on some policy, with obvious difficulty from self-serving, climate change denying MAGA Republicans, and the heinous Joe Manchin, but has failed to create a galvanizing vision, to communicate the gravity of the climate emergency and unite the American people. Probably that isn’t possible anymore, given the ludicrous conspiracy theories the misled believe. EVs, solar panels, and windmills aren’t going to cut it, though. We must reduce consumption and start a conversation about population, which has been put on steroids by fossil fuels. The population has doubled since just 1970. This is obviously unsustainable, especially as climate change affects weather patterns, diminishes crop harvests and evicts people from their own countries. He has further undermined his standing by making the United States an accomplice to genocide in Gaza. I am disgusted and appalled.
Given his shaky standing in current polls, I have to wonder if this pause on building out LNG infrastructure is purely to win back support from the environmental community. If that is the case and these projects move forward, many people will die unnecessarily. In fact, it would be global homicide. This is a, “You can pay me now, or you can pay me later situation.” We had better start paying now.
Meanwhile, evil clown idiot Trump festers in the wings, making a mockery of our justice system. Although I am growing to loathe Biden, it appears I will be forced to vote for him to maintain a system of corporate fascism as opposed to the fascism Trump offers.
Yes, consumption is the bigger problem compared to population. Consumption has a moral component as well, since my consumption ultimately comes at someone else's expense, even if I can't easily directly see it. Population is a touchy subject, and the maximum carrying capacity of the planet is not agreed upon, but clearly the exponential explosion of people we're seeing now is not sustainable. We're approaching the top of the J curve with our current habits. Whatever that number may be can't be achieved without reduced consumption and reasonably equitable wealth distribution.
Another subject that interests me is longevity. Longer lives mean more consumption, too. Humanity needs a rational plan, and the principles of degrowth appeal to me. Unfortunately, that is not part of the conversation and a hard sell.
You're correct, of course, the one percent are out of control. Putting the brakes on preposterous wealth would also help save our teetering, ever imperfect democracy.
You're welcome!