March, 25 2022, 01:04pm EDT
Biden Sides with Big Oil Barons and Wall Street in EU Gas Deal
Exporting U.S. LNG Bad for Consumers and Climate
WASHINGTON
President Biden today announced a short-sighted deal to supply the European Union with U.S. liquified methane gas exports, potentially locking in decades of climate pollution and failing to alleviate the crisis in Ukraine.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, in a closed door meeting at the White House with other oil and gas barons, lobbied for expanded methane gas production, export capacity, and import capacity in Europe as part of a new fossil fuel 'Marshall Plan.' Under Dimon, the bank has been Russia's number one fossil fuel financier, providing over $3.5 billion in loans and underwriting to the Russian fossil fuel sector.
Kate DeAngelis, international finance program manager at Friends of the Earth, said this:
President Biden is going to regret siding with Big Oil and Wall Street over communities and the climate. Betting on liquified methane gas is akin to driving on a bridge to nowhere. The window is rapidly closing to end our addiction to climate-changing fossil fuel resources, yet President Biden is propping up the industry that caused this mess. We need a Marshall Plan for renewable energy, not more of the same.
LNG exports from the U.S. compete with domestic use of gas, significantly increasing prices paid for by businesses and families, of which the hardest hit are low income and BIPOC communities. Although the U.S. recently became the largest exporter of LNG, there are 16 more export terminals that have been approved but not yet constructed. President Biden's announcement recklessly opens the door to finance these facilities potentially from public sources like the U.S. Export-Import Bank and other export credit agencies.
Background:
- Lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions from LNG development, liquefaction, and export would make the proposal among the most carbon intensive development deals in the world in recent history. In addition to methane releases, massive energy is required to liquefy methane gas for export, rivaling only coal in its emissions intensity over its lifecycle.
- LNG export terminals typically take up to at least 3 to 4 years to complete and sometimes longer, meaning there would be no short term solution to the current shortages European consumers are facing. Additionally, European regasification import terminals are already near or at capacity. Renewable energy systems, particularly distributed ones, are far more dispatchable in the short run and new renewable energy sources are already reducing gas demand in Europe and, as a result, providing consumers greater price predictability. In fact, a new study found that renewables can supplant the majority of Europe's current Russian gas imports by 2025.
- Gas exports are a significant contributor to increased gas heating bills facing U.S. households, with bills forecasted to be 30% higher this winter (and 54% higher for households using propane and 43% more for heating oil).
Friends of the Earth fights for a more healthy and just world. Together we speak truth to power and expose those who endanger the health of people and the planet for corporate profit. We organize to build long-term political power and campaign to change the rules of our economic and political systems that create injustice and destroy nature.
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Climate Crisis to Cost Global Economy $38 Trillion a Year by 2050
"This clearly shows that protecting our climate is much cheaper than not doing so, and that is without even considering noneconomic impacts such as loss of life or biodiversity," a new study's lead author said.
Apr 18, 2024
The climate crisis will shrink the average global income 19% in the next 26 years compared to what it would have been without global heating caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels, a study published in Nature Wednesday has found.
The researchers, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), said that economic shrinkage was largely locked in by mid-century by existing climate change, but that actions taken to reduce emissions now could determine whether income losses hold steady at around 20% or triple through the second half of the century.
"These near-term damages are a result of our past emissions," study lead author and PIK scientist Leonie Wenz said in a statement. "We will need more adaptation efforts if we want to avoid at least some of them. And we have to cut down our emissions drastically and immediately—if not, economic losses will become even bigger in the second half of the century, amounting to up to 60% on global average by 2100."
"I am used to my work not having a nice societal outcome, but I was surprised by how big the damages were."
Put in dollar terms, the climate crisis will take a yearly $38 trillion chunk out of the global economy in damages by 2050, the study authors found.
"That seems like… a lot," writer and climate advocate Bill McKibben wrote in response to the findings. "The entire world economy at the moment is about $100 trillion a year; the federal budget is about $6 trillion a year."
This means that the costs of inaction have already exceeded the costs of limiting global heating to 2°C by six times, the study authors said. However, limiting warming to 2°C can still significantly reduce economic losses through 2100.
"This clearly shows that protecting our climate is much cheaper than not doing so, and that is without even considering noneconomic impacts such as loss of life or biodiversity," Wenz said.
The damages predicted by the study were more than twice those of similar analyses because the researchers looked beyond national temperature data to also incorporate the impacts of extreme weather and rainfall on more than 1,600 subnational regions over a 40-year period, The Guardian explained.
"Strong income reductions are projected for the majority of regions, including North America and Europe, with South Asia and Africa being most strongly affected," PIK scientist and first author Maximilian Kotz said in a statement. "These are caused by the impact of climate change on various aspects that are relevant for economic growth such as agricultural yields, labor productivity, or infrastructure."
However, Wenz told the paper that the paper's projected reduction was likely a "lower bound" because the study still doesn't include climate impacts such as heatwaves, tropical storms, sea-level rise, and harms to human health.
Unlike previous studies, the research predicted economic losses for most wealthier countries in the Global North, with the U.S. and German economies shrinking by 11% by mid-century, France's by 13%, and the U.K.'s by 7%. However, the countries set to suffer the most are countries closer to the equator that have lower incomes already and have historically done much less to contribute to the climate crisis. Iraq, for example, could see incomes drop by 30%, Botswana 25%, and Brazil 21%.
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Wenz told The Guardian that the results were "devastating."
"I am used to my work not having a nice societal outcome, but I was surprised by how big the damages were. The inequality dimension was really shocking," Wenz said.
Levermann said the paper presented society with a clear choice:
It is on us to decide: Structural change towards a renewable energy system is needed for our security and will save us money. Staying on the path we are currently on, will lead to catastrophic consequences. The temperature of the planet can only be stabilized if we stop burning oil, gas, and coal.
McKibben, meanwhile, argued that the findings should persuade major companies to embrace climate action for self-interested reasons. He noted that most corporate emissions come from how company money is invested by banks, particularly in the continued exploitation of fossil fuel resources.
"If Amazon and Apple and Microsoft wanted to avoid a world where, by century's end, people had 60% less money to spend on buying whatever phones and software and weird junk (doubtless weirder by then) they plan on selling, then they should be putting pressure on their banks to stop making the problem worse. They should also be unleashing their lobbying teams to demand climate action from Congress," McKibben wrote.
"These people are supposed to care about money, and for once it would help us if they actually did," he continued. "Stop putting out ads about how green your products are—start making this system you dominate actually work."
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"Progressives are proud to have been part of the most significant Democratic legislative accomplishments of this century. We have made real progress for everyday Americans—but there's much more work to be done," Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said in a statement.
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Progressive lawmakers have already introduced bills for many items on the agenda, including a Green New Deal for Public Schools, expanding the Supreme Court, comprehensive voting rights protection, and legalizing marijuana.
Critics noted the conspicuous absence of Medicare for All—once a top progressive agenda item—and foreign policy issues including ending Israel's genocide, apartheid, occupation, settler colonization, and ethnic cleansing in Palestine.
Jayapal toldNBC News that the CPC is focusing its blueprint exclusively on domestic goals—especially ones it feels can be achieved.
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"These mass, illegal firings will not stop us," said organizers. "Make no mistake, we will continue organizing until the company drops Project Nimbus and stops powering this genocide."
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The peace coalition No Tech for Apartheid accused Google of a "flagrant act of retaliation" late Wednesday night as the Silicon Valley giant announced it had fired 28 workers over protests against its cloud services contract with the Israeli government.
The firings came after Google organizers held two 10-hour sit-ins at the company's offices in Sunnyvale, California and New York City, demanding the termination of Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract under which Google and Amazon provide cloud infrastructure and data services for Israel—without any oversight regarding whether the Israel Defense Forces uses the services in its occupation of Palestinian territories and bombardment of Gaza.
Workers have denounced Project Nimbus since it was announced in 2021, but Israel's killing of at least 33,970 Palestinians in Gaza since October and its intentional starvation of civilians led employees to escalate their protests.
No Tech for Apartheid said in a statement that Google officials called the police to both offices to arrest nine protesters—dubbed the Nimbus Nine—on Tuesday morning, before utilizing "a dragnet of in-office surveillance" to fire nearly two dozen other employees on Wednesday.
"They punished all of the workers they could associate with this action in wholesale firings," said the coalition, which includes Jewish Voice for Peace and MPower Change, a Muslim-led anti-war group.
Google accused the workers of "bullying," "harassment," defacing property, and physically impeding other employees—allegations No Tech for Apartheid rejected as it noted organizers "have yet to hear from a single executive about" their concerns over Google's collaboration with Israel.
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