Nice little economy you've got there, be a shame...

One Trump scheme that isn't getting the attention it deserves

In the last few days, Taiwan, India and Japan made clear they will be buying exported American LNG in the months and years ahead. Why? Entirely in an effort to hold off tariffs from the Trump administration. As the Japanese prime minister put it,

“We will cooperate to strengthen energy security between the two countries including increasing exports of United States liquefied natural gas to Japan in a mutually beneficial manner.”

Here’s how Bloomberg described the Indian decision-making:

Indian importers are under pressure from the government to reach deals that could smooth relations with Trump, the people said, but they will be looking for the best possible terms before signing any agreements.

Meanwhile, as Sing Yee Ong reports from Taipei

Taiwan is preparing to buy more liquefied natural gas from the US to reduce its trade surplus and potentially avoid higher tariffs.

Oh, and more to come

South Korea, Vietnam and the European Union are among energy buyers trying to appease President Donald Trump — and reduce the threat of tariffs — by looking to increase purchases from the biggest exporter of the super-chilled fuel and largest producer of crude.

I want to highlight these shakedowns, which have mostly been lost amidst the thousand other terrible things the Trump administration has loosed upon the world, because I know that before long Big Oil will be holding them up as evidence that the world needs and wants more fossil fuel. In fact, the world wants to move in entirely the opposite direction: 85% of new electric generation in 2023 came from renewables, and the numbers for 2024 will almost certainly be higher. That, of course, terrifies the fossil fuel industry—which is why they spent record amounts on November’s election. As fracking baron Harold Hamm explained, “We’ve got to do this because it’s the most important election in our lifetime.”

And now they’re getting the payoff: Trump threatens tariffs, and offers to make them go away if they buy some LNG. It’s akin to a protection racket. Pay up, or your windows get broken. It’s not criminal—it’s all entirely legal. It’s just wrong/

This particular protection racket makes no sense for America at large. Forget, for a moment, that LNG is a huge driver of the climate change driving fire and flood (by the time you’ve shipped it overseas it’s far worse even than coal); exporting it in huge quantities also obviously drives up the price for Americans still reliant on fracked gas for heating and cooking. The Energy Information Administration just predicted that natural gas prices will rise 21 percent in the year ahead. Politico did the math

Paul Cicio, president of the Industrial Energy Consumers of America trade association, said U.S. LNG exports are pushing natural gas and electricity prices higher.

Every “dollar increase in natural gas costs consumers $34 billion plus about $20 billion in higher electricity cost,” Cicio said in a statement Tuesday. It's “only going to get worse from here as LNG exports increase.”t of the Industrial Energy Consumers of America trade association, said U.S. LNG exports are pushing natural gas and electricity prices higher.

As the Sierra Club points out, Trump’s strategy “makes no sense.” And they’re right—as long as we’re talking about the future of the planet or the cost to American consumers. But that’s not who Trump is thinking about. He’s got one constituency and one only: the Big Oil execs who bankrolled his campaign. For them, this is sweet payback, a 100-1 return on their investment.

And it’s a stark reminder that we have to fight back on the only turf we have: the fact that the sun and wind can deliver the same product as LNG, only more cheaply and much more cleanly. We can’t threaten tariffs to get our way; we can only make the case in such persuasive terms that we start to change the zeitgeist. That’s the point of SunDay project I described last week and that you are going to hear a lot more about. Many thanks to those who went to sunday.earth to help us draw some suns as we prepare for the official launch of this big effort. So many of you took part already. Here’s a beautiful example from the effervescent Ayana Johnson (whose book What If We Get It Right is a document for this tough moment)

And here’s one from Billy Parish, whose Solar Mosaic has financed something like ten percent of the rooftop solar in America

It may seem like a mug’s game to take on Trump’s thuggish power with economics, physics, music, art, and justice. But perhaps they still hold some force in this world—we shall see.

In other energy and climate news:

+Substack colleague (and newsletter OG) Emily Atkin has set up a tip-line for federal government employees to report the ongoing attacks on science and common sense.

Scientific integrity violations can come in many forms. They can come via direct order, like: Defunding programs, altering grant-making processes, censoring scientists, dismantling advisory committees, manipulating research that informs policy or regulatory decisions, overlooking peer-review processes, or removing data from public government websites.

But scientific suppression can also take more passive forms, like creating a hostile work environment for federal scientists. This can lead to self-censorship, reductions in workforce, or staff burnout.

We want to hear about it all—even if it’s something you believe is small. If you have doubt about whether your experience is important or not, we encourage erring on the side of disclosure. With enough sources, we hope to be able to identify patterns across agencies. You never know which snowflake will cause an avalanche.

I imagine they’re hearing from some folks at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), where the DOGE team is reportedly causing its particular brand of trouble. As The Hill reports

In a joint statement, Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) and Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) said Musk’s cost-cutting group of accessing NOAA’s computer systems. NOAA is charged with forecasting weather, monitoring atmospheric conditions and mapping the seas, among other things.

“Elon Musk and his DOGE hackers are ransacking their way through the federal government, unlawfully gaining unfettered access to Americans’ private information and gutting programs people depend on,” said Huffman and Lofgren, the top Democrats on the House Natural Resources and Science, Space and Technology committees, respectively.

Chances are good they’ll also hear some stories from USAID—as Wonkette points out, many of the international aid programs that co-president Musk stamped out were designed to help victims of the climate crisis, and to keep it from getting worse

The positive effects of USAID’s climate programs went far beyond its own budget for climate spending, which was about $600 million in 2023. (That’s around the cost of six F-15 fighter planes and spare parts.) The agency’s work, like so much climate spending, has also leveraged billions of dollars in additional investment from the private sector, especially renewable energy companies and even insurance companies that provide drought and flood coverage.

A bit of good-ish news, too: A lot of USAID’s renewable-energy development aid is likely to keep providing benefits after Trump pulled the plug, because it’s up and running already.

+January 2025 was the hottest January on record, somewhat mystifying climate scientists who had expected global temperatures to fall somewhat as the vast Pacific entered a La Nina phase.

Julien Nicolas, a climate scientist at Copernicus, told Agence France-Presse: “This is what makes it a bit of a surprise: you’re not seeing this cooling effect, or temporary brake at least, on the global temperature that we were expecting to see.”

Here’s an important piece from Jim Hansen and colleagues arguing that reduced aerosol pollution is a part of the picture. He’s extremely worried that we may see a shutdown of the great Atlantic currents sooner rather than later, and argues that in addition to the somewhat cumbersome IPCC process we need some nimbler reporting:

We suggest that an alternative perspective – a complement to the IPCC approach – is needed to assess these issues and actions that are needed to avoid handing young people a dire situation that is out of their control. This alternative approach will make more use of ongoing observations to drive modeling and more use of paleoclimate to test modeling and test our understanding.

There’s also what seems to me an important paper from Jessica Tierney et al arguing that the Pliocene—the last time we had carbon dioxide concentrations near our current levels—the planet actually warmed quite a bit more than we had previously thought. The clear implication is that we may be underestimating how much today’s carbon will warm the planet.

+Kathryn Clare and Cartie Werthman, in the invaluable DeSmog Blog, offer an in-depth report on the ongoing greenwashing by the world’s biggest public relations and advertising companies, all of which have pledged their support for a net zero world

For more than two years, DeSmog has been investigating how advertising and public relations agencies profit from making oil and gas companies appear more sustainable than they really are. Our reporters and researchers have interviewed dozens of sources working across the industry and reviewed hundreds of industry documents, including corporate reports, press releases, social media posts, and media interviews.

Our findings formed part of a complaint filed today against UK-based WPP, the world’s largest communications group by revenue, alleging that the company’s work for clients such as Shell, BP and Saudi Aramco breached international corporate responsibility guidelines. Adfree Cities and the New Weather Institute, who lodged the complaint with the OECD, an intergovernmental body, argue that WPP’s work drove up demand for polluting products and undermined global efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

While the complaint is emblematic of growing concerns over the strategies used to give polluters a green sheen, we found that advertising companies are using similar tactics to make themselves seem climate-friendly, too.

The trend is visible among each of the “Big Six” communications giants — Dentsu, Havas, Omnicom, Interpublic Group (currently being acquired by Omnicom), Publicis Groupe, and WPP — who had a combined revenue of $72 billion in 2023 and whose hundreds of subsidiaries dominate these industries globally.

+Glad to see protests breaking out at Tesla dealers in Vermont and Manhattan, and to see sales of Musk’s car plummeting in Europe. More of these demonstrations are planned this weekend. Whatever good Musk did for the climate by buying up Tesla at an early stage and helping it grow has been outstripped by the damage he and Trump are doing now—and even if it wasn’t, who could in good conscience support all the other vile stuff he’s been engaged in?

Protest too at the New York State Public Service Commission after Gov Hochul approved plans for the Iroquois pipeline expansion, greatly increasing the amount of fracked gas heading through the Empire State. As Sandra Steingraber succintly pointed out, “this will make the climate crisis worse.”

+Writing in the New Statesman, veteran British campaigners Rupert Read and Caroline Lucas call for a “new climate populism.”

Our suggestion is this: start where people are. Talk to them less about an invisible gas that needs to be eliminated by some future date, and more about high energy bills caused by volatile fossil fuel prices we can’t control (compared with wind and solar energy which are now far cheaper). Talk to them about homes vulnerable to extremes of temperature (30 per cent of UK buildings, mostly rentals, have no loft insulation whatsoever), and the encroaching, destructive impact of everything from floods to fires. The global north isn’t immune to climate catastrophe; but it certainly isn’t ready. What happens in Valencia or Los Angeles won’t stay in Valencia or Los Angeles.

And to end with some good news that’s an example of what they’re talking about, consider this Rolling Stone roundup of community leaders and innovators leading the renewable transition in one locale after another.

Imagine a future where communities, schools, municipalities and studios can generate and sell their own clean energy, and creatives can partake in this new value creation. That’s the vision of Christina Chu, cofounder of Solarpunks, a group of innovators setting out to eliminate fossil fuels across music, film, art and fashion events. They teamed up with DER Taskforce to power Brooklyn’s first-ever fully solar-powered concert featuring performances by Nation of Language and Model/Actriz. Through this project, they wanted to show the viability of running a full concert production on the sun’s power while supporting a community microgrid benefiting low- and moderate-income residents.

Now, envision a world where Native and rural neighborhoods can access clean energy sources and make their own decisions about resource allocation and implementation. This is the goal of Indigenized Energy, a Native-led nonprofit helping tribes pursue energy sovereignty based on their unique conditions.