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bill mckibben
Fans Want Their Teams to Stop Sportswashing Big Oil
Sportswashing uses fans’ fondness for their pro teams to fog the lethal consequences of fossil fuel sponsorships with companies like BP America, Phillips 66, and Shell.
Feb 22, 2026
Climate activists are calling out pro sports teams across the US Why? The answer is the teams' sportswashing partnerships with Big Oil.
According to activists, sportswashing uses fans’ fondness for their pro teams to fog the lethal consequences of fossil fuel sponsorships with Big Oil, e.g., BP America, Phillips 66 and Shell.
Call it a planet-destroying impact of the athletic-industrial complex.
The national action for sustainable humanity on Planet Earth is an outgrowth of the Sierra Club chapter of the Los Angeles’ Dodger Fans Against Fossil Fuels campaign demanding the team’s owners to drop their sponsorship deal with oil giant Phillips 66. Boo on Dodger Blue for that deal. Meanwhile, the climate dissent that began in LA didn’t stay there.
“Our region has suffered devastating wildfires in recent years, and we shouldn’t pretend that fossil fuel companies are our buddies when they are causing the climate change that worsens these disasters.”
Simultaneous anti-sportswashing actions unfolded across 10 US cities on February 17. Check it out:
- Los Angeles, Dodger Stadium, Dodgers (Phillips 66/76 gas)
- San Francisco, Oracle Park, Giants (Phillips 66/76 gas)
- Sacramento, Golden 1 Center, Sacramento Kings (AM/PM, owned by BP)
- Portland, Providence Park, Portland Timbers (Bank of America)
- St. Louis, Busch Stadium, St. Louis Cardinals (Phillips 66)
- Atlanta, Mercedes-Benz Stadium, FIFA World Cup (Aramco)
- Cleveland, Progressive Field, Cleveland Guardians (Marathon)
- Philadelphia, Lincoln Financial Field, Philadelphia Eagles (NRG)
- New York City, Citi Field, Mets (Citi bank)
- Boston, TD Garden, Boston Celtics (Gulf)
Groups participating and supporting Tuesday's action included: Communities for a Better Environment, Scientific Rebellion, Stop the Money Pipeline, EcoAthletes, Dayenu, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sisters of Charity New York, and Third Act.
In Sacramento, activists gathered with protest signs at the Golden 1 Center, where the Kings, an NBA team, play in the Western Division. "We are asking the Kings' owner and executives to immediately end the team’s sponsorship deals with Shell, one of the world's largest oil companies, and AM/PM," said Sally Richman, a Third Act Sacramento member, in a statement.
She explains, “Our region has suffered devastating wildfires in recent years, and we shouldn’t pretend that fossil fuel companies are our buddies when they are causing the climate change that worsens these disasters.”
One of these deadly wildfires occurred in 2018, in Paradise, California, north of Sacramento. Before that cataclysmic wildfire, Paradise was a town that had a population of 27,000 people. Eighty-five people lost their lives, over 50,000 were displaced, more than 18,000 structures were destroyed, with a loss of nearly $17 billion.
The wildfire that began in Paradise didn’t remain there. Spoiler alert: The climate catastrophe does not obey human-created boundaries and limits. Consider this bit of climate history.
Sacramento residents felt the effects from poor air quality during the Camp Fire in Paradise. City officials distributed particulate respirator masks to help residents breathe normally, approved by the Environmental Protection Agency. These masks carried an N-95 classification designed to protect the lungs from small particles found in wildfire smoke. At that time, the Air Quality Index was 367 in some areas, more than double the 150 reading considered unhealthy. I can personally attest to that.
Third Act Sacramento also sent a letter via email to Kings’ management. The missive fleshed out in part its opposition to the term of deception in question:
Sportswashing occurs when a company that has harmed the public creates a financial partnership with beloved sports teams, and markets their brand to the fans to create positive associations that are undeserved. The Sacramento Kings are allowing BP America and Shell to pretend they are "good guys" by their sponsorships of the team.
Kings’ management had not responded at press time.
Personally, I’m a big fan of the NBA. My family and I have had this fan-ship in common for years during the regular season, All Star game, and of course the playoffs to watch NBA stars do their thing. In my view, we are watching among the most talented athletes in the world.
Bill McKibben is an author, environmentalist, journalist, and co-founder of Third Act and 350.org. "The greatest threat to sports in the years ahead is the rapid rise in temperature,” according to his statement, “which increasingly makes it too hot and stormy to play. So, you might say it's an error for those who enjoy—and profit from—sports to be collaborating with the industry doing the most to overheat the planet."
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COP30: 'A Real Opening for Quicker Progress'
Why it's not all bad news for Bill McKibben regarding the climate crisis. Five questions to one of the leading environmentalists in the US.
Nov 09, 2025
From November 10 to 21, the 30th Climate Change Conference, known as the Conference of the Parties, or COP, will take place in Belém, Brazil. Despite decades of climate diplomacy and many promises, annual greenhouse gas emissions have not only failed to be halted, but have continued to rise as the climate crisis worsens. The goal of keeping global warming below 1.5°C is already unattainable.
David Goeßmann: Why have the conferences failed, and what do you expect from the upcoming summit?
Bill McKibben: Look, climate change is a tough problem. It's caused by the same thing—fossil fuel—that undergirds the economy, and the fossil fuel industry is strong enough politically in many countries to make change hard (see America). But, as of the last few years, the price of solar and wind energy has fallen far enough that we have a real opening for quicker progress. I think that will start to be reflected in various national strategies.
David Goeßmann: US President Donald Trump has reversed the steps toward an energy transition initiated under the Biden administration, attacked all environmental protection, withdrawn from the Paris Agreement, and issued more than 300 new oil and gas drilling permits. That's the bad news. Is there any good news?
It's easier to get politicians to say yes to clean energy than no to dirty energy.
Bill McKibben: At the state level progress continues—Texas is the biggest clean energy player now. But it's not enough to offset the federal headwinds, so we're all fighting back as hard as we can.
David Goeßmann: How do you assess the climate movements worldwide? What are the strategies that should be focused on now?
Bill McKibben: I think the greatest possibility probably lies in the popularity and affordability of clean energy. It's easier to get politicians to say yes to clean energy than no to dirty energy (though both require hard work).
David Goeßmann: You talk about a “silent revolution” in terms of the global energy transition. What is driving it?
Bill McKibben: The cost of sun and wind power, and of batteries. These are supplying a third more power to the world this autumn than last. It took us 70 years to get the first terawatt of solar power, two years to get the second, and the third is now coming even faster.
David Goeßmann: You have been fighting for climate protection for decades. What gives you the hope and strength to continue?
Bill McKibben: Hey, lots of people are suffering badly, mostly in places that did nothing to cause climate change. If they can keep fighting, I guess I can too!
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Despite Trump-Musk Feud, CO2 Milestone Is the 'Important News of the Day'
Scientists said that atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations peaked above 430 parts per million for the first time in perhaps 30 million years.
Jun 06, 2025
The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere peaked above 430 parts per million in 2025—the highest it has been in millions of years—according to data released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego on Thursday.
The news was overshadowed by the explosive feud between U.S. President Donald Trump and his erstwhile backer Elon Musk, but climate activist Bill McKibben argued that it was ultimately more consequential.
"In the long run, this is actually going to be the important news of the day—CO2 in the atmosphere passes another grim milestone," McKibben wrote on social media.
In the long run, this is actually going to be the important news of the day--co2 in the atmosphere passes another grim milestone
[image or embed]
— Bill McKibben (@billmckibben.bsky.social) June 5, 2025 at 4:33 PM
Carbon dioxide has been accumulating in the atmosphere due primarily to the human burning of fossil fuels, as well as by the clearing of forests and other natural carbon sinks. There, it acts as a greenhouse gas, trapping heat from the Earth, and is the primary gas responsible for the rise of global temperatures by approximately 1.1°C from the 1850 -1900 average. This warming has already had a host of dramatic impacts, from extreme weather events to sea-level rise to polar ice melt, and scientists warn these impacts will only accelerate under current energy policies, which put the world on track for around 3°C of warming by 2100.
The last time that atmospheric CO2 concentrations topped 430 ppm was most likely more than 30 million years ago, Ralph Keeling, who directs the Scripps CO2 Program, told NBC News.
"It's changing so fast," he said. "If humans had evolved in such a high-CO2 world, there would probably be places where we wouldn't be living now. We probably could have adapted to such a world, but we built our society and a civilization around yesterday's climate."
"While largely symbolic, passing 430 ppm should be a wake-up call."
Scripps and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration both measure carbon dioxide levels from NOAA's Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, where Charles Keeling began taking measurements in 1958. As CO2 levels rise over time, they also follow a seasonal cycle—peaking in May before falling in the Northern Hemisphere summer and rising again in the fall.
This May, Scripps Oceanography calculated an average of 430.2 ppm for 2025, which is 3.5 ppm over the average for May 2024. NOAA's Global Monitoring Laboratory, meanwhile, calculated a monthly average of 430.5 ppm, a 3.6 ppm jump from the year before and the second-steepest yearly climb since 1958.
"Another year, another record," Keeling said in a statement. "It's sad."
The news comes two months after Mauna Loa daily measurements surpassed 430 ppm for the first time in March, which Plymouth Marine Laboratory professor Helen Findlay called "extremely disappointing and worrying."
"While largely symbolic, passing 430 ppm should be a wake-up call, especially given the accelerated response we are seeing of glaciers and ice sheets to current warming," Dr. James Kirkham, chief scientist of the Ambition on Melting Ice coalition of governments, said at the time.
"This upward trajectory is a direct result of continued fossil fuel use, likely exacerbated by emissions from extreme wildfires last year, methane leaks from fossil fuel extraction and possibly greater permafrost emissions, alongside decreased ability of very warm oceans to absorb CO2," Kirkham said.
The monthly record also comes a little more than a week after a United Nations report warned that there was a small chance global temperatures could surpass 2°C in at least 1 of the next 5 years, only a decade after world leaders pledged in the Paris agreement to keep global temperatures "well-below" that level.
"Carbon emissions are still rising, and the atmosphere is going to keep heating further until greenhouse gas concentrations stabilize," Matt Kean, who chairs Australia's Climate Change Authority, wrote in response to the Scripps and NOAA figures. "What sort of climate do we want to leave our children and those who come after them?"
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Global Climate Movement Mourns Passing of Pope Francis
"Pope Francis spoke plainly and with clarity about the climate crisis," said one environmental advocate.
Apr 21, 2025
The Monday passing of Pope Francis, the world's first Latin American pontiff, has prompted an outpouring of tributes for the spiritual leader—including from members of the environmental movement who remembered him as a champion of climate justice.
"If he could bring new hope and energy to an institution as hidebound as the Vatican, there was reason for all of us to go on working on our own hidebound institutions," wrote the environmental activist and author Bill McKibben on Monday, adding that Francis' passing had hit him hard.
Francis, 88, passed away from a stroke, followed by a coma and irreversible cardiocirculatory collapse, the Vatican announced.
He died a day after briefly meeting with U.S. Vice President JD Vance on Sunday morning. His annual Easter speech, which was read by a surrogate, included a condemnation of unnamed political leaders who use "fear" to oppress marginalized people including immigrants and refugees.
McKibben highlighted that Franceis brought "moral resolve to the question of climate change," including by making environmental issues the subject of his 2015 encyclical "Laudato Si'," which Mckibben called "arguably the most important piece of writing so far this millennium.
In Laudato Si', a papal letter, Francis called the climate crisis a global problem with grave consequences, particularly for the poor. It was the first papal letter exclusively focused on the environment, according to The New York Times. When The Paris Agreement, a global climate treaty, was adopted later that year, several leaders made specific reference to the pope's words about climate change during their addresses to the United Nations climate conference, per the Times.
The national nonprofit Catholic Climate Covenant paid tribute to Francis in a statement Monday, emphasizing the impact of Laudato Si', and writing that his "leadership and attention to 'the poorest of the poor' and our Common Home inspired and renewed not only our work but that of billions of people around the world."
Laudato Si' also spawned a global climate group, the Laudato Si' Movement, which has representation in 115 countries across five continents, according to its website. The group was previously called the Global Catholic Climate Movement.
"All around the world, you saw all of these people reading the encyclical, writing letters to the editor, posting on social media, forming discussion groups in their parishes," Rebecca Elliott, senior director for strategy and special projects at Laudato Si' Movement, told NPR.
According to Mauricio López Oropeza, a rector and lay vice president of the Amazon Ecclesial Network who spoke to the Times, one of the most important impacts of Laudato Si' has been the church's work in the Amazon basin.
Unhappy with the lack of progress in combating the climate crisis, Francis wrote a follow-up to Laudato Si' in 2023, "Laudate Deum."
"The necessary transition toward clean energy sources such as wind and solar energy, and the abandonment of fossil fuels, is not progressing at the necessary speed," he wrote in Laudate Deum.
He also directly called out the United States for being disproportionately responsible for planet-warming emissions.
"Pope Francis spoke plainly and with clarity about the climate crisis, correctly naming that the burning of fossil fuels only further exacerbates our peril and that the United States has a moral obligation to lead by example as the world's leading historical emitter," Sierra Club executive director Ben Jealous said Monday.
In addition to his stance on the environment, Francis also loosened official church attitudes toward divorce and approved non-wedding blessings of same-sex couples, among other actions generally viewed as progressive.
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Green Groups Organizing 'All Out on Earth Day' Protests Against Trump Authoritarianism
"Trump is dismantling critical environmental safeguards, putting lives at risk, and leaving working people to suffer the devastating consequences," said one campaigner.
Apr 14, 2025
A coalition of green groups on Monday promoted plans for nationwide "All Out on Earth Day" rallies "to confront rising authoritarianism and defend our environment, democracy, and future" against the Trump administration's gutting of government agencies and programs tasked with environmental protection and combating the climate emergency.
Organizers of the protests—which are set to take place from April 18-30—are coalescing opposition to President Donald Trump's attacks on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other agencies, which include efforts to rescind or severely curtail regulations aimed at protecting the public from pollution, oil spills, and other environmental and climate harms.
"This Earth Day, we fight for everything: for our communities, our democracy, and the future our children deserve."
The Green New Deal Network, one of the event's organizers, decried Trump's "massive rollbacks" to the EPA and noted that funds "for critical programs have been frozen and federal workers have been unjustly fired" as Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, takes a wrecking ball to government agencies.
"This Earth Day, we fight for everything: for our communities, our democracy, and the future our children deserve," Green New Deal Network national director Kaniela Ing said in a statement.
"Trump, Musk, and their billionaire allies are waging an all-out assault on the agencies that keep our air clean, our water safe, and our families healthy," Ing continued. "They're gutting the programs and projects we fought hard to win—programs that bring down energy costs and create good-paying jobs in towns across America, especially in red states."
"So, we need to make sure the pressure continues and our protests aren't just a flash in the pan," Ing added. "When we stand together—workers, environmentalists, everyday folks—we can not only stop them, but we can build the world we deserve."
All Out on Earth Day participants include Sunrise Movement, Climate Power, Third Act, Popular Democracy, Climate Defenders, the Democratic National Committee Council on Environment and Climate, Unitarian Universalists, NAACP, Dayenu, Evergreen, United to End Polluter Handouts Coalition, Climate Hawks Vote, and the Center of Biological Diversity (CBD).
Last month, CBD sued five Cabinet-level agencies in a bid to ensure that DOGE teams tasked with finding ways to cut costs—including via workforce reductions—fully comply with federal transparency law. This, after DOGE advised the termination of thousands of probationary staffers at the EPA, Department of the Interior, and other agencies.
Although a federal judge last month ordered the Trump administration to reinstate thousands of government workers fired from half a dozen agencies based on the "lie" that their performance warranted termination, the right-wing U.S. Supreme Court subsequently sided with the White House, finding that plaintiffs in the case lacked the legal standing to sue.
Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org and founder of the elder-led Third Act, harkened back to the historic first Earth Day in 1970.
"Fifty-five years ago, a massive turnout on the first Earth Day forced a corrupt Republican administration to pass the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, and create the EPA," he said on Monday, referring to the presidency of Richard Nixon. "Let's do it again!"
Aru Shiney-Ajay, executive director of the youth-led Sunrise Movement, highlighted the need for action now, noting that Trump "is giving oil and gas billionaires the green light to wreck our planet and put millions of lives at risk, all so they can pad their bottom line."
"Just three months into the Trump presidency, the damage has already been catastrophic," she added. "Trump is dismantling critical environmental safeguards, putting lives at risk, and leaving working people to suffer the devastating consequences. "This Earth Day, we stand united in defiance of their greed and fight for a future that prioritizes people and the planet over profits."
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Team Trump Tries to Export Its Fossil Fuel Madness
Mar 09, 2025
We’re reaching the point with the second Trump administration where, as Wall Street investors would say, the crazy is “priced in.” There’s absolutely no reason to expect anything other than aggressively dishonest and profoundly stupid governance. Would you say, at this point, that you’re surprised to learn that the new #2 at EPA, who will be running the day-to-day operations,
made nearly $3.2 million in 2024 representing a range of corporate interests against pollution cases and enforcement actions. His clients included Chevron, Sunoco Pipeline, and Energy Transfer, a major oil and gas company that is currently litigating a high stakes trial against Greenpeace, according to a recent financial disclosure report filed with the Office of Government Ethics.
And he wasn’t even the most egregious EPA nominee—another high-ranking future official told the Senate that as far as he was concerned the job was not to prevent climate change, it was to adapt to it once it happened. Thanks!
These kind of things are terrible, and also at this point entirely predictable. Indeed, it was all foretold with breathtaking candor in Project 2025, and then the nation voted for President Trump anyway. (Perhaps someone actually believed his demurrals about his plans during the campaign). We need to resist at every turn—please join us at Third Act as prepare for the next big round of actions on April 5—but at this point there is great damage we simply can’t avoid.
It makes me even sadder to see that damage exported, to places that didn't vote for this charlatan.
I think it makes me even sadder to see that damage exported, to places that didn’t vote for this charlatan. News continued to flow in from around the globe last week of countries succumbing to White House extortion to buy more liquefied natural gas, on pain of getting tariffed otherwise. And then there’s Ukraine—and if you want to watch a truly stinging takedown of Trump’s treachery, check out this from a center-right French parliamentarian. Better yet, read Antonia Juhasz’s long account for Rolling Stone of the truly extortionate “mineral rights” deal that Trump is demanding from Zelensky. She quotes Svitana Romanko, who will be familiar to readers of this newsletter—a longtime climate campaigner who has emerged as Ukraine’s most passionate environmentalist.
I have no doubt that a hidden agenda is getting access and decision-making rights to gas and oil pipelines, especially gas that’s so critical given that the European market is so important for Russia and has always been.” This is “really threatening to everything we’ve done so far” to weaken Russia’s war-fighting ability and influence, including “getting the full ban on Russian oil and gas to the European Union,” she adds.
Though it gets drowned out in the news over Russia, Canada, and Mexico but just as disgusting and revealing was the initiative unveiled this week by America’s new energy secretary, fracking baron Chris Wright, who told his counterparts from across Africa that the future was…fossil fuels, above all coal. The Africans were gathered at a Marriott across from the White House for some sense of what would happen to them now that the Trump administration has summarily shut down Power Africa, the program begun by President Obama that has connected tens of millions of homes on the continent to electricity.
According to Times reporter Max Bearak, Energy Secretary Wright sold the shutdown as a gift. “This government has no desire to tell you what you should do with your energy system,” he said. “It’s a paternalistic post-colonial attitude that I just can’t stand.” He then went on to say:
“We’ve had years of Western countries shamelessly saying don’t develop coal, coal is bad,” Mr. Wright said. “That’s just nonsense, 100 percent nonsense. Coal transformed our world and made it better.”
And while Mr. Wright said climate change was a “real, physical phenomenon,” he said it wouldn’t make a list of his top 10 problems facing the world.
The amount of actual nonsense crammed into those two paragraphs is…amazing. Yes, coal transformed the world during the industrial revolution. But now it’s transforming the world again, by altering the climate—which is not only the world’s biggest problem by far, but is making all the others much worse. African countries worry about public health, about hunger, about building infrastructure: here’s what the World Meteorological Organization calculated in 2023:
On average, African countries are losing 2–5 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and many are diverting up to 9 percent of their budgets responding to climate extremes.
More to the point, the idea that coal is the answer for Africa is belied by history. Which is to say, we’ve known about coal—and natural gas—for a very long time, and there are somehow still 600 million Africans unconnected to the electric grid. If coal was going to do the job, perhaps it would have done so by now.
The problem, in Africa, is the lack of a grid—the huge and hugely expensive collection of poles and wires that distributes power from centralized coal-fired power stations. I remember sitting in Tanzania, years ago, with a Silicon valley entrepreneur named Xavier Helgesen: “The belief was, you’d eventually build the U.S. grid here,” he said. “But the U.S. is the richest country on earth, and it wasn’t fully electrified until the nineteen-forties, and that was in an era of cheap copper for wires, cheap timber for poles, cheap coal, and cheap capital. None of that is so cheap anymore, at least not over here.”
Happily, there’s now a way around that problem: it’s called distributed solar power. And, as I’ve been writing, it’s exploding in Africa. I saw some of the first solar mini-grids on the continent five or six years ago—now there are thousands. There was a World Bank effort launched last fall to find $90 billion—one quarter of an Elon at today’s market prices—to provide power for 300 million of those 600 million Africans. (That one man could electrify the whole continent and still have $180 billion left over gives you some sense of the grotesque inequality now haunting our earth). But if that happened, it would be another step leading the world away from fossil fuels and the “energy dominance” that the Trump team dreams of.
“When we say ‘all of the above,’ you might ask, is that code for carbon? And yes, it is code for carbon,” said Troy Fitrell, a senior State Department official and former ambassador to Guinea. “There are no restrictions anymore on what kind of energy we can promote.”
In case you’re wondering how all this is going to happen, it’s worth remembering that one of Trump’s first acts in office was to suspend enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits U.S. companies from bribing foreign governments. As the evangelical magazine Christianity Today (in an earlier day, evangelicals had actually argued for the law, on the grounds of, you know, honesty) pointed out yesterday,
Taken by itself, the FCPA freeze could merely be a messy attempt to limit the authority of the DOJ and the SEC. But halting FCPA in tandem with limiting enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and disbanding the Foreign Influence Task Force poses a shift in American policy likely to affect not just American oversight of American bribery abroad but also the US government’s ability to monitor foreign agents in America.
If the U.S. is able to bully or bribe African governments into building more coal-fired power plants, let me make a prediction. Just as we’ve seen in Pakistan this past year, the expensive and unreliable power those plants deliver on underbuilt grids will be one more factor pushing people towards cheap solar. In fact, as I’ve described in this newsletter already, that process is underway across much of Africa already, as people and companies buy up cheap Chinese solar panels and liberate themselves from the status quo.
It would be cheaper, and provide more power more quickly to more people, to do this systematically with solar minigrids, as Power Africa has been envisioning, instead of one roof at a time. But the turn to the sun will happen eventually anyway; in the end, the greed unleashed by Trump, Wright, and their friends will be insufficient to alter either physics or economics. Much damage will be done in the meantime, though—to Africans, to the climate, and to whatever remains of the idea of American leadership. The Chinese are doubtless chortling; indeed by this point the laughter must be nonstop. If you want to read one account of China’s rise to the renewable pinnacle, this Washington Post piece might be it. Among other things, it makes clear that as the U.S. pushes coal, Beijing is actually offering something people want and need:
In 2024, Chinese exports of EVs, batteries, and solar and wind products to the Global South surged to account for a record 47 percent of the total.
“It’s probably a good thing for the climate because these clean technologies are diffusing all over the world,” says Kelly Sims Gallagher, a professor at the Fletcher School at Tufts University who was a senior adviser on Chinese climate issues in the Obama administration. “But it is also probably resulting in the United States losing even more market share globally.”
At this point we sure deserve that loss. Here’s the big and wonderful news from China this week: gasoline sales fell…9 percent last year, as EVs took hold in the country. If I were Big Oil I’d be desperately trying to leverage the White House too, I guess.
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Cornell Study Shows LNG Worse for Climate Than Coal
"LNG is not a bridge fuel to clean energy," said one expert. "It's a highway to climate hell."
Oct 03, 2024
On the heels of Hurricane Helene devastating the U.S. Southeast and sparking fresh calls for action on the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency, a long-awaited study revealed Thursday that the planet-heating pollution from liquefied natural gas is worse than that of coal.
"Liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports from the United States have risen dramatically since the LNG-export ban was lifted in 2016, and the United States is now the world's largest exporter," wrote Cornell University scientist Robert Howarth, who analyzed the greenhouse gas footprint of LNG produced in and exported from the U.S.
Howarth found that "the greenhouse gas footprint for LNG as a fuel source is 33% greater than that for coal" in terms of its 20-year global warming potential, and "even considered on the time frame of 100 years after emission... which severely understates the climatic damage of methane, the LNG footprint equals or exceeds that of coal."
Advocates of bold climate action welcomed the formal publication of what Third Act founder Bill McKibbencalled a "crucial paper."
"LNG exports present HUGE risks to our planet and climate—and we need to reject any attempts to expand them!"
The study, published online by the journal Energy Science & Engineering, follows U.S. President Joe Biden pausing approvals for all LNG exports to non-fair trade agreement countries and comes a month out from the presidential election, in which Democratic Vice President Kalama Harris is facing Big Oil-backed Republican former President Donald Trump.
"This is a HUGE deal for the Biden administration's ongoing review of LNG exports," said Jamie Henn, executive director of Fossil Free Media and a founder of 350.org, sharing Howarth's findings on social media. Climate campaigners are calling on the Biden-Harris administration to make the January pause permanent.
"This should be the final nail in the coffin for the false narrative that LNG was somehow a climate solution," Henn added in a statement. "This now peer-reviewed paper demonstrates that LNG is worse for the climate than coal, let alone clean energy alternatives. Approving more LNG exports is clearly incompatible with the public interest."
As Henn and others acknowledged, Howarth's research has been targeted by journalists and the fossil fuel industry.
"This paper has been widely discussed, revised, and is now peer-reviewed and published," said Jason Rylander, legal director for the Center for Biological Diversity's Climate Law Institute. "LNG is not a bridge fuel to clean energy. It's a highway to climate hell."
Alex Walker, climate finance program manager at the Canadian group Environmental Defense, also responded to the research by stressing that, contrary to claims by the fossil fuel industry and its political allies, "LNG is not a bridge fuel."
Congressman Sean Casten (D-Ill.) said on social media that "there is no environmental case for increased U.S. LNG exports."
Howarth is on the board of directors of the Food & Water Watch, which similarly pointed to the paper as further proof that "LNG exports present HUGE risks to our planet and climate—and we need to reject any attempts to expand them!"
Cassidy DiPaola, communications director at Fossil Free Media, declared Thursday that "the science is clear."
"There's no place for LNG in a clean energy future," DiPaola said. "It's time to double down on truly clean alternatives like wind, solar, and energy efficiency."
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From Chimney Rock to Kathmandu, Floodwaters Bring Death and Devastation
"It is hard to open social media without seeing cellphone videos from the cars-washing-down-steep-streets genre; everywhere the flows are muddy-brown, and swirling with power," Bill McKibben said.
Sep 30, 2024
Floodwaters brought mass death and destruction to the United States and Nepal over the weekend due to storms likely intensified by climate breakdown, following a month of extreme weather across the world.
Hurricane Helene, a category 4 storm, killed at least 111 across six states in the southeastern U.S., most notably in western North Carolina. Like that area, Nepal was hit by floodwaters and landslides, especially in and around Kathmandu, the capital, on Saturday; the death toll there is currently 193.
Mexico also faced a deadly hurricane last week, while West and Central Africa and Central Europe both faced extreme flooding earlier in the month.
Bill McKibben, a prominent writer and climate organizer, said the effects of climate change are becoming impossible not to see.
"It is hard to open social media without seeing cellphone videos from the cars-washing-down-steep-streets genre; everywhere the flows are muddy-brown, and swirling with power," he wrote in an essay republished by Common Dreams on Monday.
"I've never seen devastation like this." Cars and trucks were tossed around like toys in Asheville, North Carolina, after catastrophic flooding from Helene. pic.twitter.com/4wA33g7VLB
— AccuWeather (@accuweather) September 30, 2024
Hurricane Helene hit Florida's Big Bend area late Thursday with 140-mph winds and then traveled through parts of Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Virginia in the following days. The most severe damage came from rains in the mountains of eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina.
Parts of Asheville, North Carolina, saw stunning levels of flooding, with some buildings inundated to the top of the first story. The city's drinking water infrastructure was badly damaged. Ironically, Asheville had been described in a national news publication as a "climate haven" and "ideal destination" for climate stability.
Flooding also effectively destroyed Chimney Rock, a village of about 220 people roughly 20 miles east of Asheville, and the nearby town of Lake Lure, which has a population of about 1,300.
Went to help in the Lake Lure/Chimney Rock area today, and it’s hard to describe - never seen anything like this. Post apocalyptic. It’s so overwhelming you don’t even know how to fathom what recovery looks like, let alone where to start. Going to be a long path to recovery that… pic.twitter.com/HnyxwyQB76
— Tariq Scott Bokhari (@FinTechInnov8r) September 29, 2024
In addition to the 111 dead, there are hundreds of people unaccounted for following Hurricane Helene, whose strength was likely buoyed by exceptionally warm temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico.
"Make no mistake: The unimaginable devastation we're seeing across the Southeast is the climate crisis in action. As long as we continue with the status quo of unchecked fossil fuel use, these disasters will only become more frequent, more severe, and more deadly," Ben Jealous, the Sierra Club's executive director, said in a statement about the hurricane.
President Joe Biden said Monday that he would visit the region, possibly later this week, The New York Times reported. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), along with the National Guard, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the Federal Communications Commission, have together deployed more than 6,300 aid and rescue personnel to the region.
The damage in Nepal has also been extraordinary. Monsoon season usually ends by mid-September, but not this year. Landslides in recent days cut off the major roads around Kathmandu, where heavy floods in the south of the city killed dozens.
On Saturday, a landslide near a road about 10 miles outside of Kathmandu killed roughly three dozen people who were sleeping on buses amid the stopped traffic caused by previous landslides, The Associated Press reported. The rains subsided on Sunday and rescue operations remain underway.
In addition to the 193 dead, there are 31 people missing and dozens injured, officials said.
Nepal floods: At least 100 dead and dozens missing after days of heavy rainfallhttps://t.co/GwqBzuL23P pic.twitter.com/i2MB9HdQos
— BBC Weather (@bbcweather) September 29, 2024
The disasters in the U.S. and Nepal were preceded only slightly by Hurricane John, a category 3 storm that landed in the state of Guerrero in Mexico last week, near the resort city of Acapulco. The storm killed at least 16, with some media outlets reporting a death toll as high as 29.
Scientists dubbed John a "zombie storm" because it dissipated but then regained strength over the waters of the Pacific Ocean before landing again, as a tropical storm, further north in Mexico. Most of the damage came from torrential rains. The state of Oaxaca alone had more than 80 reported landslides, some of which buried homes and their occupants, the BBC reported.
Residents look at a broken bridge following Hurricane John near Acapulco, Mexico, on September 29, 2024. (Photo: Francisco Robles/AFP via Getty Images)
The disasters of the past week follow a month of extreme weather in much of the world.
"The month of September has seen record-breaking floods across parts of Europe, Africa, and Asia," The Guardian reported. "Hurricanes and heavy rains have left towns and cities submerged and triggered the mass displacement of people. Climate scientists have said that many of these incidents are linked to human-induced climate change."
Chad, Nigeria, Mali, Cameroon, and Niger have seen catastrophic flooding this rainy season, destroying hundreds of thousands of homes. Most of the city of Maiduguri, Nigeria was flooded on September 10 when a dam burst, causing mass displacement.
On September 18, Samantha Power, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, called the flooding in Africa "historic" and pleaded for more humanitarian assistance.
The flooding in Central Europe in mid-September, which was made more likely and more intense by climate change, also reached record-setting levels, lingering over a huge swath of territory, across several countries, for days.
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Death and Destruction From Helene Show Climate Crisis Isn't in a Bargaining Mood
We’re in a terrible corner now. That’s what all those pictures of floating cars really means. We don’t have room left to make tradeoffs and deals.
Sep 30, 2024
If you want to understand the horror still unfolding in Appalachia, and actually if you want to understand the 21st century, you need to remember one thing: warm air holds more water vapor than cold.
As Hurricane Helene swept in across a superheated Gulf of Mexico, its winds rapidly intensified—that part is really easy to understand, since hurricanes draw their power from the heat in the water. And as Jeff Masters points out:
Helene’s landfall gives the U.S. a record eight Cat 4 or Cat 5 Atlantic hurricane landfalls in the past eight years (2017-2024), seven of them being continental U.S. landfalls. That’s as many Cat 4 and 5 landfalls as occurred in the prior 57 years.
But Helene also picked up ungodly amounts of water—about 7% more water vapor in saturated air for every 1°C of ocean warming. In this case, that meant the mountaintops along the Blue Ridge above Asheville were—according to Doppler radar measurement—hit with nearly 4 feet of rain. That meant that Asheville—listed recently by the national media as a “climate haven” and bulging with those looking for a climate-safe home—is now largely cut off from the world. The interstates in and out of the town were severed for a while over the weekend; the beautiful downtown is drowned in mud. It’s obviously much worse in the outlying towns up in the surrounding hills. People forget how high these mountains are—Mt. Mitchell, near Asheville, is the highest point east of the Mississippi (and, worth noting, the forests on its summit slopes have been badly damaged by acid rain).
I know how this works, because my home state of Vermont is mostly steep mountains and narrow valleys. Once the rain drops, it’s funneled very quickly down the saturated hillsides; placid streams become raging torrents that fill up those bottomlands, covering farm fields with soil; when the water starts to drain, everything is coated with mud. These towns are going to be cut off for a while—our mountain hamlet in Vermont was effectively isolated for a couple of weeks last summer. And these are places where cellphones don’t work in the best of times. Things get pre-modern very fast.
Were it happening just in one place, a compassionate world could figure out how to offer effective relief. But it’s happening in so many places. The same day that Helene slammed into the Gulf, Hurricane John crashed into the Mexican state of Guerrero, dropping nearly 40 inches of rain and causing deadly and devastating floods in many places including Acapulco, which is still a shambles from Hurricane Otis last year. In Nepal this afternoon at least 148 people are deadare dead and many still missing in the Kathmandu Valley. Just this month, as one comprehensive twitter thread documented, we’ve seen massive flooding in Turkey, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Marseilles, Milan, India, Wales, Guatemala, Morocco, Algeria, Vietnam, Croatia, Nigeria, Thailand, Greece, Romania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria, with the Danube hitting new heights across Central Europe. It is hard to open social media without seeing cellphone videos from the cars-washing-down-steep-streets genre; everywhere the flows are muddy-brown, and swirling with power.
But all that water has to come from somewhere—the extra vapor in the air implies that in some places water is disappearing skyward, and those stories are at least as dangerous, if not as dramatic in a daily way. (How do we know that drought is on the increase? That’s easy—a new “drought emoji” of a dead tree is about to be approved).
Brazilian president Lula traveled to the Amazon last week to highlight the intense drought gripping the region; it’s fueled fires that have covered as much as 60 percent of the county with smoke. It used to be that Amazon fires were mostly the work of prospectors and would-be farmers, using the dry season to get rid of the forest; now, though, many of the fires are burning in pristine areas far from active attempts at deforestation. It just gets dry enough that the rainforest can catch fire. As Manuela Andreoni reported in the Times, Lula’s new environment minister, the highly credible Marina Silva, has cracked down on the bad guys, but it hasn’t been enough to stop the burning
“Maybe 2024 is the best year of the ones that are coming, as incredible as it may seem,” said Erika Berenguer, a senior research associate at the University of Oxford. “The climate models show a big share of the biome is going to become drier.”
In essence, the Amazon rainforest is an exquisite mechanism for passing moisture from the ocean to the interior, but as more of the forest disappears that mechanism is quickly breaking down—and with implications for regions as far away as California.
All of this is a way of saying something I’ve said too many times before: we’re out of margin. We’re now watching the climate crisis play out in real time, week by week, day by day. (117 Fahrenheit in Phoenix yesterday, the hottest September temperature ever recorded there, smashing the old daily mark by…eight degrees).
This means that our political leaders are finally going to have to make hard choices (or not, which is its own way of choosing). Brazil, for instance, is hoping to drill for oil at the mouth of the Amazon—which at least, given Brazil’s relative poverty, is somewhat understandable, if still insane. America’s politicians, under much less economic pressure, are facing similar choices, some of them as soon as the lame duck session after the November elections. Expect, for instance, a renewed push to open up new permits for LNG export terminals along the Gulf Coast. Pausing those permits was the most important step the Biden administration took to rein in Big Oil, and Houston’s been outraged ever since; it’s why they’re pouring money into the Trump campaign. And it’s why they have their errand boys in the Congress—outgoing Senator Joe Manchin, Wyoming’s John Barrasso—proposing a trade: permitting reform that would make it easier to build renewable energy in America, in exchange for ramping up LNG exports that would undercut renewable energy in Asia.
The numbers on whether this trade “makes sense” are complicated and contentious. Here’s a report from Third Way arguing yes, here’s a set of charts from the veteran energy analyst Jeremy Symons arguing that it will dramatically raise gas prices for those American consumers still tied to propane. New peer-reviewed numbers from the gold-standard methane scientist Bob Howarth at Cornell make it clear that these LNG exports are worse than coal; that prompted 125 climate scientists to write to the administration asking them to “follow the science.”
In the end, this decision will likely come down to politics. It’s not just Big Oil that’s willing to make such a trade—New Mexico’s Martin Heinrich, in line to be Democratic leader on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee when Manchin yachts back to West Virginia, has come out for the trade, assuredly because New Mexico gets a large share of its government revenues from taxing the natural gas under its part of the Permian basin. Northeastern Democrats will vote against, fearing not just climate destruction but the rise in gas prices as we send the commodity abroad. Meanwhile, the good people of the Gulf suffer from the grievous local environmental impacts of these giant plants, and the amount of methane in the atmosphere keeps rocketing up.
If Trump wins, there’s no need for a deal—the LNG projects will be approved, and permitting reform for renewables will be dead. If Harris wins and the Dems hold the Senate, at least there’s a chance that environmentalists can make it easier to build solar and wind without yielding on the massive carbon bomb and EJ disaster that is LNG export. That’s why I’m in Montana today, trying in my small way to help Jon Tester in his uphill fight to retain a Senate seat. And it’s why I’m in the swing states most of the time between now and November 5. Thousands of Third Act volunteers are deploying themselves far and wide to win this contest—you can join us on the Silver Wave tour in Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Nevada. (Please join us, even if you haven’t reached sixty yet—we don’t check IDs and we love working with young people).
The bottom line is, we’re in a terrible corner now. That’s what all those pictures of floating cars really means. We don’t have room left to make tradeoffs and deals; physics isn’t in a bargaining mood. Every battle is dishearteningly existential now.
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Harris Urged to 'Absolutely Go After Trump for Being in the Pocket of Big Oil'
"Trump cozying up with the industry is wildly unpopular," asserted climate campaigner Jamie Henn.
Sep 10, 2024
Noting former U.S. President Donald Trump's coziness with the fossil fuel industry and the fact that an overwhelming majority of voters want politicians to tackle its greed, one prominent climate campaigner urged Vice President Kamala Harris—the Democratic nominee—to highlight her Republican opponent's Big Oil ties during Tuesday night's debate.
"Harris should absolutely go after Trump for being in the pocket of Big Oil," Fossil Free Media director Jamie Henn said on social media, adding that "89% of Americans want politicians to crack down on Big Oil price gouging."
In a
separate post, Henn urged ABC News, which is hosting the first—and likely only—2024 presidential debate, to ask the candidates about the climate emergency.
"Ninety-nine percent of Americans have experienced some form of extreme weather this year," he wrote. "If ABC News doesn't ask about the climate crisis this evening, it's journalistic malpractice."
On Tuesday, a trio of Democratic U.S. lawmakers called on fossil fuel executives to comply with a request for "information regarding quid pro quo solicitations" from former U.S. President Donald Trump, who earlier this year promised to gut climate regulations if they donated $1 billion to his Republican presidential campaign.
Climate campaigners have been warning of the dangers of a second term for Trump, who during his previous administration rolled back regulations protecting the climate, environment, and biodiversity, resulting in increased pollution and
premature deaths and fueling catastrophic planetary heating.
"If a Trump administration was merely going to be a four-year interregnum, it would be annoying. But in fact it comes at precisely the moment when we need, desperately,
acceleration," 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben wrote in a Guardian opinion article last week.
"The world's climate scientists have done their best to set out a timetable: Cut emissions in half by 2030 or see the possibilities of anything like the Paris pathway, holding temperature increases to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels, disappear," he continued. "That cut is on the bleeding edge of the technically possible, but only if everyone is acting in good faith. And the next presidential term will end in January of 2029, which is 11 months before 2030."
"If we elect Donald Trump, we may feel the effects not for years, and not for a generation," McKibben added. "We may read our mistake in the geological record a million years hence. This one really counts."
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