A win win opening for a president who badly needs one?

One route to reelection runs through the Gulf of Mexico

I’ve never seen a national environmental campaign arise so quickly.

In coastal Louisiana and Texas people have been working hard for years to oppose the ongoing build-out of liquefied natural gas export terminals. But they didn’t get much traction nationally—something that’s changing very fast. Earlier today I joined Senators and Representatives from across the country in a press conference aimed squarely at convincing the administration to halt new licenses for LNG export; they were all friends of the president, and they were convinced that the cause is hugely significant on political grounds as well as environmental ones.

That’s because Biden is doing badly in the polls, somehow trailing his predecessor in polls of all the swing states. One place he’s really suffering is with young voters, and young voters care more than any others about the climate.

There are, of course, two halves to the climate fight. We need to rapidly wind down dirty energy and rapidly wind up clean alternatives. On the clean energy front, Biden can legitimately claim to have done far more than anyone before him—the Inflation Reduction Act is a landmark.

As for standing up to dirty energy, Biden gets poor marks so far. For two years you could perhaps excuse it—he needed Joe Manchin’s vote to get the IRA through. But earlier this year he approved the big new Willow oil complex for Alaska, despite a valiant campaign by young people, waged mostly on Tik Tok. (One imagines Joe doesn’t spend a huge amount of time on Tik Tok…). It was a profound mistake, and my sense from talking to the administration is that if they had a do-over they’d scrap it.

The closest they’ll get to a second chance is this rapidly emerging fight against LNG exports. And in fact, it’s a much bigger deal even than Willow. Just the next project on block, the CP2 terminal slated for Cameron Parish Louisiana, would produce 20 times the greenhouse gas emissions of Willow. If they build out the next 19 projects in line, the total greenhouse gas emissions from exported US LNG would be larger than the greenhouse gas footprint of…Europe. New data from Cornell’s Bob Howarth, repeatedly cited in yesterday’s press conference by all those politicians, shows that LNG is much worse than coal.

So, if Biden uses his authority to deny export licenses, then he will also be able to legitimately say he has also done more than any other predecessor to shut down the fossil fuel geyser. That counts as a big fracking deal. It would be a win

But wait there’s more. The reason Democratic presidents always hesitate to take on the fossil fuel industry is fear that they’ll be vilified for raising energy prices. In this case, though, since the LNG is set for export, blocking new export facilities will lower the domestic price of natural gas. He will be legitimately be able to say that he’s cut costs for those Americans still dependent on gas furnaces and cookstoves. It will be an actual inflation reduction act.

Don’t believe me? (I know you believe me, I’m just employing a lazy rhetorical device, because it’s been a long day). When a fire knocked out one export terminal last year, prices for Americans quickly dropped. Or here are a couple of recent statements by gas providers, explaining to their customers why prices are going up (thanks to Clark Williams-Derry of IEEFA for sending them my way). Rocky Mountain Power, for instance, explaining to the Wyoming public service commission why they need a 30 percent rate hike: as exports have grown, “the increased competition over domestic supply has driven regional natural gas fuel prices upward.”

Or here’s Spire, a Missouri utility: “recent international events impacting the global supply of natural gas mean it costs more for Spire to purchase natural gas for our customers.”

Williams-Derry even made a chart to illustrate the way American’s prices for natural gas have begun to oscillate wildly as exports soared

Translated, all this means that a Biden decision to restrict new approvals for natural gas exports would cut prices for Americans. Not “environmentalists,” which for some reason are treated as a special interest (we’re the only ones who depend on the environment, apparently). But for honest-to-God good old-fashioned American consumers.

Given that inflation and the youth vote are two of Biden’s biggest problems right now, maybe he’ll seize the moment. Let’s hope so. The earth can’t live that flood of methane and carbon into the atmosphere, and America can’t take another four years of Trump in the White House. Time for a little winning.

In other energy and climate news:

+Medical journals require authors to report their funding from pharmaceutical companies; two doctors, Alexander Rabin and Caren Solomon, argue in the LA Times that climate policy should take such conflicts of interest seriously

The first critical step is disclosure. Before lecturing in a medical education course or professional meeting, physicians have to complete a form listing all industry associations and attesting that that their lecture will be unbiased and will not promote commercial interests. When presenting, we also display a slide listing companies that have provided financial support. Scientific journals have implemented a disclosure document that addresses patents, royalties, speaking and consulting fees and other potential conflicts. (At the New England Journal of Medicine, where one of us works, authors of review articles and editorials may not have significant financial interests in companies that make products related to the topic.) 

Many medical schools require publicly accessible faculty disclosures and have cracked down on industry-sponsored lunches and gifts. And professional organizations like the American Thoracic Society have enacted tobacco-free funding pledges.

Climate advocates have petitioned for similar rules on fossil fuel money but so far, the reaction in academia has been muted. At Harvard, activists raised concernsthis past year over law professor Jody Freeman — a co-chair of the university’s Presidential Committee on Sustainability and recipient of a grant from the university’s new climate institute — serving on the board of ConocoPhillips, which is behind the Willow oil drilling project. Despite receiving more than $350,000 in yearly compensation from the company, Freeman — who ultimately resigned from its board — did not violate Harvard policies, underscoring the need for stronger regulations in academics.

+The indefatigable Tom Athanasiou reviews the evidence that climate change is largely the result of rich people

Because income and emissions are highly correlated, this approach allows us to better answer the question of why humanity’s cumulative emissions have doubled since the early years of the U.N. climate treaty. The Stockholm Environment Institute’s Carbon Inequality Era paper shows that, in the period since 1990, as emissions almost doubled, the rising consumption of the world’s top 10 percent was responsible for almost half of that increase—almost as much as the entire remaining 90 percent of the world’s population. The emissions of the richest 5 percent (37 percent of all post-1990 emissions) were particularly notable, and the emissions of the top 1 percent (who contributed 21 percent of all post-1990 emissions) were far greater still.

+Rainforest Action Network, which has become an invaluable source of data on the financial institutions behind the climate crisis, reviews the impact of Bank of America. Read it and weep.

Slightly better news from As You Sow, chronicling the effort of big companies to start cutting emissions

Oh, and Law Students for Climate Accountability, which have produced remarkable reports on the climate malfeasance of big U.S. law firms has now done the same trick for Canadian firms.

+Many of the groups that brought us the Green New Deal—which eventually was shrunk down to the Inflation Reduction Act—are back, with a national tour designed to build support for a more expansive version.

The tour, which kicks off with an event in Michigan this month, will aim to showcase widespread support for even bolder federal climate action, and will feature Green New Deal champions including Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts and the representatives Ilhan Omar, Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush and Summer Lee alongside local advocates. It will be led by the Green New Deal Network, a coalition of progressive environmental groups that include the Sunrise Movement, Greenpeace and Climate Justice Alliance, social justice organizations such as People’s Action and the Movement for Black Lives, and the small left-liberal Working Families political party.

Supporters are calling for stronger executive action as well as the passage of a suite of proposals in Congress.

“With our Green New Deals for public schools, housing, cities and more, we can make historic investments that transform our communities by repairing damage done by the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis and giving every person the resources they need to thrive,” said Representative Bowman.

+Charles Komanoff argues that a carbon tax will help erode the Nimby passions that have apparently blocked big wind projects off the Atlantic shore

+Oh, and you just lived through the hottest October on record for our particular planet. Zeke Hausfather says it is “increasingly likely” that at least some data global sets will show us topping 1.5 degrees over preindustrial temperatures for 2023, which would be a truly dismal landmark.