The Washington Post

op-allen-democracypromo

Stormy Daniels

UGCR

For The Washington Post

RUSSIA-US-DIPLOMACY-BASKET-COURT

Contributor

(Michelle Kondrich/The Washington Post)

**ONE TIME USE ONLY FOR OP-LAMOTT

Sonia Sotomayor,Clarence Thomas,John Roberts,Samuel Alito,Elena Kagan,Amy Coney Barrett,Neil Gorsuch,Brett Kavanaugh,Ketanji Brown Jackson,Michael Dreeben

Children holding hands

ONE TIME USE FOR OP-CARNEY KIDS 

FEDERALISTGALA

Four Dalmatian Puppy

other

People visit the site of the Nova festival, in Reim

Fake Electors Indictment Arizona

Israel Palestinians Campus Protests

US-PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-EDUCATION-CONFLICT

**ONE TIME USE ONLY FOR OP-SMITH-HIGHER-ED

Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

Show NLP summaries collection recirc on article pages

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

Pete Buttigieg’s view from the middle seat

The case for eating at Italian gas stations

Cruise ship drags dead whale into New York, prompting investigation

Middle East conflict live updates: Israel renews fight in north Gaza, advances on Rafah in south

Why Spain will recognize a Palestinian state

Far-right German party threat to democracy so can be spied on, says court

No, Apple, people do not want tech to crush everything in its path 

The urgent air defense lessons of April 16 

Are smartphones destroying childhood? It’s complicated.

Can you spot bad financial advice on TikTok? Take our quiz

5 myths about Social Security as the program faces a funding crisis

Social Security has to be fixed. But you still need your own savings.

Carolyn Hax: What’s the real cost of going halfsies on a modest engagement ring?

Ask Amy: Dad hurt by daughter publicly reconnecting with her biological family

Miss Manners: Should I accept offered seat swaps when I’m flying for free?

U.S.-China talks on AI risks set to begin in Geneva

Fooled by AI? These firms sell deepfake detection that’s ‘REAL 100%.’ 

Apple apologizes for iPad ad after blowback 

I used to dismiss my mom’s advice. Then I found a note she wrote before she died.  

Photos of his mom at lunch are a balm people didn’t know they needed

Dog hit by car loses leg, is adopted by firefighter who helped her

Mistakes pile up, leaving the Nationals with a 3-2 loss at Fenway Park

The Wizards will pick second in the NBA draft. Here’s whom they could take.

Eighth-inning decision burns the Nats in a 4-2 loss to the Red Sox

Find your Westminster show dog name: You may be a CH Lolly’s Marble Tuxedo MX

Northern lights glow over Switzerland

Manafort will no longer take on Republican convention role

An unexpected sight to behold: Ted Cruz working bipartisan deals

Narrative of Trump snoozing in court takes hold — much to his annoyance

Trump trial live updates: Michael Cohen testifies about Stormy Daniels, Trump in hush money case

Reporting on Earth’s changing climate and the search for solutions

See more coverage in your recommendations

Climate & environment

The Climate Coach newsletter

Climate alerts

Brandon Thibodeaux

<i>Ben Jealous is executive director of the Sierra Club and former head of the NAACP. Bill McKibben, author of 20 books about the environment, is the founder of Third Act, which organizes people over 60 for action on climate and democracy.</i>

The Biden administration, by all accounts, is approaching perhaps the most important fossil-fuel-related decision of its first term. Let’s hope it makes the right call.

Sometime in the next few weeks, the White House is expected to announce whether it will pause the permitting for new export terminals for liquefied natural gas (LNG). That doesn’t sound like such a big deal — until you understand the scale involved. The United States is already the biggest gas exporter in the world, and it has already approved a bunch of new terminals only now breaking ground; those will <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-01-11/natural-gas-boom-to-hit-warming-world-trying-to-quit-fossil-fuels" target="_blank">add 200 million tons of export capacity</a> over the next five years. What’s at issue is whether it will grant more permits still: If the industry gets what it wants, that would mean an additional 300 million tons annually.

Tons of LNG is not a statistic that means anything to most of us, so <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-01-11/natural-gas-boom-to-hit-warming-world-trying-to-quit-fossil-fuels" target="_blank">Bloomberg News helpfully broke it down</a> this month: That’s enough new natural gas capacity to “power half a billion homes.” There are only 2.3 billion houses on this planet. So this is, by far, the biggest fossil fuel expansion plan ever, ensuring that for decades, huge swaths of Earth will be relying on fracked gas instead of sun and wind, the cheaper and cleaner alternatives.

Here’s another way of saying it: If this massive buildout continues apace (and, so far, the industry has gotten everything it has asked for), in a decade or so, as <a href="https://www.symonspa.com/post/report-status-of-u-s-lng-export-permits-and-associated-greenhouse-gas-emissions" target="_blank">energy analyst Jeremy Symons recently reported</a>, U.S. LNG exports will produce more greenhouse gas emissions than everything on the continent of Europe — that is, more than every car, factory and house from Athens to Helsinki. As <a href="https://www.sierraclub.org/sites/default/files/2023-09/2689%20LNG-Expansion_FactSheet-3Pager_04_high.pdf" target="_blank">a recent Sierra Club analysis found</a>, the full proposed LNG buildout could contribute to the climate crisis as much as 681 coal plants or 548 million gasoline-powered cars each year. That’s not exactly a climate solution.

So it’s no wonder that climate scientists announced they are joining next month with residents of Louisiana and Texas, where these huge facilities are being built, in a week of <a href="http://stoplng.org/" target=_blank>civil disobedience</a> outside the Energy Department. They’re asking for a pause in the licensing process so that the department can come up with new criteria to reflect the environmental damage from all those global greenhouse gas emissions and from the air and water impacts in Louisiana. If the Biden administration agrees, given the magnitude of this expansion plan, it will represent the most dramatic check on dirty energy that any president has ever made.

Which, of course, is why the fossil fuel industry and its allies in Washington are fighting it hard. They have a couple of basic arguments.

One is that LNG somehow represents a cleaner future, supposedly because it could replace coal. But <a href="https://www.research.howarthlab.org/publications/Howarth_LNG_assessment_preprint_archived_2023-1103.pdf" target=_blank>new data this past autumn made it clear</a> that, by the time you’ve shipped LNG abroad in leaky vessels, the methane released into the atmosphere makes it distinctly worse for the climate than coal. And, in any event, coal is no longer the competitor: In Asia, LNG competes mainly with sun and wind, the costs of which <a href="https://electrek.co/2023/09/25/solar-battery-storage-prices-dropped-almost-90-percent-in-10-years/" target=_blank>have fallen 90 percent</a> since the Energy Department wrote its criteria for approving these facilities.

The second argument is that the LNG industry is somehow good for the United States — and indeed it produces profits for the companies, such as ExxonMobil, that control the fracking fields. But exporting gas by definition drives up the price for Americans who still depend on it for cooking and heating. As the government’s <a href="https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2023-12/Ex.%2036.%20LNG%20Exports%20Raise%20Natural%20Gas%20Prices%20for%20Americans%20-%20Center%20for%20American%20Progress.pdf" target="_blank">Energy Information Administration pointed out in May</a>, “higher LNG exports results in upward pressure on U.S. natural gas prices and … lower U.S. LNG exports results in downward pressure.” When one export facility had to shut down after catching fire in June 2022, the <a href="https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=52859" target="_blank">wholesale price for gas domestically dropped</a> by one-third. Pausing new construction would be a genuine inflation reduction act, which probably helps explain the polling showing that <a href="https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2023/11/14/voters-support-limiting-natural-gas-exports" target="_blank">Americans hate gas exports</a>. No one wants their state fracked just to provide cheap gas to China.

The final argument is that LNG exports are necessary to support our allies, especially in the wake of Russia’s full-scale <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/ukraine-russia/" target="_blank">invasion of Ukraine</a>. Indeed, American gas helped fill the breach when Russian gas became unavailable last winter and again this one — proving that we already have more than enough capacity. In fact, Europe is <a href="https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insights/latest-news/lng/011924-global-lng-markets-may-start-to-soften-sooner-than-expected-analysts-say" target="_blank">awash in gas at the moment</a>, as low prices there attest. And the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis makes clear that <a href="https://e360.yale.edu/digest/europe-lng-buildout-gas-demand" target="_blank">European demand for natural gas will steadily drop</a> in the years ahead, because the continent, in the wake of Vladimir Putin’s invasion, dramatically stepped up its conversion to renewables.

In fact, anyone worrying about our standing with our allies should remember that just last month in Dubai, the United States (with climate envoy John F. Kerry playing a lead role) <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/12/12/cop28-climate-summit-negotiatons-dubai/" target=_blank>signed on to an agreement</a> announcing that the time had come for “transitioning away from fossil fuels.” There is no possible definition of that phrase that is compatible with a massive buildout of LNG export capacity. If <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/candidates/joe-biden-2024/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">President Biden</a> doesn’t do what he can to halt this expansion, then those were clearly just words on paper.

We also said in Dubai that we were serious about helping spread renewable energy not just within our own borders but everywhere, because it isn’t called global warming for nothing. This is the perfect chance to prove we meant it.

If Biden does stop the permitting process while his administration begins refiguring the criteria for granting more LNG licenses, then he will have responded in powerful fashion to the single biggest development of his term in office: the soaring temperatures that made 2023 the hottest year <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hottest-year-2023-critical-warming-mark-european-agency-confirms/" target="_blank">in the past 125,000</a> and that appear likely to make 2024 hotter still.

Everyone knows Biden’s likely opponent in November is a climate denier — already this year, former president <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/donald-trump/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Donald Trump</a> has been repeating his old line that global warming is a “hoax.” What we don’t know yet is whether the Biden administration is willing to consistently stand up to Big Oil. This is its chance.

Ben Jealous

Bill McKibben

washpost

Biden faces a crucial fossil fuel decision

the-washington-post

Gas Exports Reckoning

Editorials

Columns

Guest opinions

Cartoons

Submit a guest opinion

Today's Opinions newsletter

Opinions

Sign up for the Prompt 2024 newsletter for opinions on the biggest questions in politics

Washington Post Opinions

The Washington Post Opinions section features opinion articles, op-eds, editorials by the Editorial Board, global opinions and letters to the editor on the issues of the day. Offerings include columns by Washington Post opinion writers, political cartoons by editorial cartoonists Ann Telnaes and Michael de Adder and podcasts by Jonathan Capehart.