Watch Out Dept of Energy, Here Come the TikTokers!
Also, older people with excellent penmanship
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The campaign to convince the Department of Energy that it’s time to stop feeding the president antiquated information, and to shut down the insane mushrooming expansion of Liquefied Natural Gas export facilities, is gathering all kinds of steam. This week has seen great work in Europe, where some of the gas is currently sold, and a letter from a growing chorus of Democratic Senators and Representatives telling Jennifer Granholm to put the kibosh on CP2 and pause any more approvals until an entirely new set of criteria are in place.
But the biggest push of all may be coming from a band of young TikTok and Instagram influencers, who have decided this is the next great fight—and since they lost the battle over the Willow oil complex in Alaska earlier this year, they’re committed to making sure it doesn’t happen again. “We set a ball on a tee with Willow and watched the White House choose to strike out,” says Alex Haraus, one of whose TikToks you can see above. “This is their chance to connect when they swing.”
I don’t pretend to really understand how TikTok and Instagram work. (I used to have a decent sense of how to make good use of Twitter, until Elon Musk decided to make it an anti-Semitic playground). But judging from the videos I’ve been looking at all week, it seems like some combination of good humor and earnestness work, not to mention an ability to talk very quickly. Being highly photogenic seems important too.
Check out this from Michael Mezz
Or this from Eco Fran
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Or this from Lauren Bash, which begins in the shower, proceeds through the closet and the makeup mirror, and along the way tells you far more about LNG than apparently the entire Department of Energy has managed to figure out
One of the very best comes from Isaias Hernandez, otherwise known as queerbrownvegan, in part because it captures the fiery words of Roishetta Ozane, who’s been helping lead the fight on the ground in Louisiana.
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Should the Department of Energy be worried that an articulate army of young people is coming after them on line? Definitely—these guys drove six million signature petitions on the Willow complex, and when they were spurned it led to a dramatic decline in the president’s popularity.
But they should also be heartened, because, as Haraus points out, it actually tees up the president for a big and important win. Just one of these plants, the CP2 complex, would be associated with 20 times the greenhouse gas emissions of Willow, as the videos keep pointing out. So if Granholm and her agency actually do their job, it’s possible to imagine Biden emerging as, if not a hero then at least a somewhat restored figure. I can see the press conference where these handsome young people join him and Ozane and fishermen from the Gulf and a couple of climate scientists up on the podium to celebrate some return to sanity.
Oh, and who’s the other group of climate voters the president needs to worry about? That would be older people, like those of us at Third Act—we codgers have been organizing mass protests all year. And while we may not be TikTok savvy, we have another weapon: pen and stationery. In the last week Third Actors have unleashed thousands of letters on DOE headquarters—which may not sound quite as sexy as petitions from the Internet, but they have their own impact, since officials know that if you’re willing to do more than click you’re probably an effective and motivated adversary.
So conside
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What I’m trying to say is, the Department of Energy has a real problem—an increasingly aware and activated posse of youngsters and oldsters. And a solution: announce CP2 is going nowhere, and that no other project will be approved, or even considered, until there’s been an exhaustive rewrite of the criteria taking into account the latest science and economics. It’s not hard. As Jamie Henn, director of Fossil Free Media which has been coordinating some of the fun, puts it: "With this many people learning about CP2 and LNG exports on their social media feeds, it's clear that this will become another defining issue for the administration's record on climate. If Biden wants people to turn out in 2024, he's gotta realize that his decision on these facilities will play a major role in determining whether folks are excited to go vote or so demoralized they may stay at home."
Want to join in? Jennifer Granholm’s DOE is at 1000 Independence Ave SW, Washington DC 20585. And you can sign the online petition right here.
Because you know what—the people who read this newsletter are a pretty powerful community too. The Heat Pumps for Peace campaign we started in the wake of the Ukraine invasion, the one that got a $250 million Defense Production Act from the White House? According to the indefatigable Leah Stokes, as of this week there are 15 manufacturing projects underway. In fact, here’s the Heatmap Daily coverage of the news, which gives us explicit credit for getting the job done—you should feel strong, and then you should use that strength!
In other energy and climate news:
+Jennifer Granholm may not be an unambiguous climate hero this week, but the woman occupying her former seat as governor of Michigan surely is. Gretchen Whitmer is set to sign a remarkable package of environmental laws that would commit her formerly Rust Belt state to 100% clean energy by 2040, rivaling California for national leadership. As Greg Sargent put it in the Post:
“Michigan is leading the way in creating high-road labor standards that protect good-paying jobs while providing a pathway to a clean energy future,” Ryan Sebolt, director of government affairs for the state’s AFL-CIO, told me. As energy work evolves, Sebolt said, the bills will ensure that these remain quality jobs “long into the future.”
That’s strikingly positive talk given that organized labor has long been skeptical that such a balance can be achieved. And it comes with good news on another front: United Auto Workers members are close to ratifying their new contracts with General Motors, Ford and Stellantis. These contracts will cover a large number of workers at electric-vehicle battery plants, another sign that the transition could translate into quality green-energy manufacturing jobs in the future.
All of this is very heartening stuff. If working people come to see that they have a stake in the green transition, it could help build durable political support for it over time.
+There’s so little rainfall in central America that the Panama Canal has been restricting boat traffic—some ships have to offload cargoes, send them by train across the isthmus, and then reload them. You can’t do that with ships full of LNG, so they’re just sitting there in the ocean, venting more methane
+America’s LNG buildout may be the biggest single example, but new data from the German group Urgewald shows that there are hundreds of other fossil fuel expansion plans in place around the world
The updated database shows that 1,023 are plotting expansions of fossil fuel infrastructure, threatening to lock in years of planet-warming emissions as extreme weather fueled by the climate crisis wreaks havoc worldwide. The World Meteorological Organization said Wednesday that global greenhouse gas concentrations reached a new high once again last year.
"The magnitude of the industry's expansion plans is truly frightening," said Nils Bartsch, Urgewald's head of oil and gas research. "To keep 1.5°C alive, a speedy, managed decline in both oil and gas production is vital. Instead, oil and gas companies are building a bridge to climate chaos."
+With a month to go before summer begins in Brazil, the ‘feels-like’ temperature in Rio hit 137.5 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday, smashing records. I have spent some time in the favelas of that city; I can only imagine what it feels like today in those tiny homes, where even a fan is a luxury.
+If you’re wondering why I’m not headed to Abu Dhabi for the UN climate conference, it’s because I feared my head might literally explode watching conference chair and oil company CEO Sultan Al-Jaber at work. As Politico explained, he has two goals: a “greener image” and “accelerated growth” for his hydrocarbon empire. But I think I’ll be able to keep you posted on crucial developments from a distance.
I got caught up in the momentum of the young revolution of the sixties. A friend invited me to a 'meeting' on Atherton Street down a stone stairway to a Rathskeller at Penn State University. It was twelve at night and only candles on the small tables passed for light. That was the night that I dedicated myself to the principles of SDS. I've been watching with high anticipation for a youth movement on the fossil fuel industry that has the same energy that I felt during a somewhat remarkable time of in-your-face revolt. I hope this is it!
And what a great idea to send in a hand-written letter—putting that on my list for Thanksgiving week! I mean how can I not, I just extolled the virtues of personal correspondence in my own Substack (https://cacaomuse.substack.com/p/letter1-my-cacao-origin-story)