SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
cp2
Deluded Don’s Climate Con
Donald Trump is using his bully pulpit to foist fossil fuels on the U.S. and on the world, but his efforts may backfire.
Jul 31, 2025
When I was a cub reporter at the New Yorker in the early 1980s, New York City was actually a somewhat seedy and dangerous (if fascinating) place (sort of fitting the image currently assigned it by MAGA ideologues who have ignored its almost complete makeover into a remarkably safe enclave). In those days, anyone wandering the Times Square neighborhood where I worked could count on seeing a three-card monte game on every block, with fast-talking card sharps hustling the tourists. It wasn’t very sophisticated, but it must have worked because they were out there every day.
The grift playing out this week in the federal government around climate is no more complicated, but it too relies on speed and distraction. On the first day of his term, U.S. President Donald Trump set up the con by asking the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to evaluate its 2009 finding that greenhouse gas emissions were dangerous. Yesterday, EPA czar and former failed gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin dutifully made his long-awaited announcement: Nothing to fear from carbon dioxide, methane, and the other warming gases.
“Today is the greatest day of deregulation our nation has seen,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said when he first announced the idea. “We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the U.S., and more.”
Trump didn’t really need to do this in order to stop working on the climate crisis—he’s done that already. The point here is to try and make that decision permanent, so that some future administration can’t work on climate either, without going through the long and bureaucratic process of once again finding that the most dangerous thing on the Earth is in fact dangerous.
The problem with this simple one-two punch from Trump and Zeldin is that someone will challenge it in court as soon as it becomes official. “If EPA finalizes this illegal and cynical approach, we will see them in court,” said Christy Goldufss of the Natural Resources Defense Council. And they’ll have an argument, since—well, floods, fires, smoke, storms. I mean, if carbon dioxide was dangerous in 2009, that’s a hell of a lot more obvious 16 years later. The Supreme Court upheld the idea that CO2 was dangerous in 2007—here’s how Justice John Paul Stevens began that opinion:
A well-documented rise in global temperatures has coincided with a significant increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Respected scientists believe the two trends are related. For when carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere, it acts like the ceiling of a greenhouse, trapping solar energy and retarding the escape of reflected heat. It is therefore a species—the most important species—of a “greenhouse gas.”
But that was a different, and non-corrupted, Supreme Court. John Roberts wrote the dissent, and he’s doubtless eager to do with climate change what he’s already done with abortion. But that would be easier if they had some “well-respected experts” to say that there’s not any trouble—stage three of this grift. It’s true that there aren’t any well-respected experts that believe that, but the White House has hired several aged contrarians who have maintained for decades that global warming is not a problem, even as the temperature (and the damage) soared. And yesterday they released a new report that reads more or less like a Wall Street Journal op-ed. In it they cherry pick data, turn to old and long-debunked studies, and in general set up a group of strawmen so absurd that one almost has to grin in admiration. Actual climate scientists were lining up to say their papers had been misquoted, but all you needed was a modicum of knowledge to see how stupid the whole enterprise was. Just as an example, our contrarians hit the old talking point that CO2 is plant food—indeed, “below 180 ppm [parts per million], the growth rates of many C3 species are reduced 40-60% relative to 350 ppm (Gerhart and Ward 2010) and growth has stopped altogether under experimental conditions of 60-140 ppm CO2.” Great point except that there is no one calling for, and no way, to get CO2 levels anywhere near that low. I led a large-scale effort to remind people that anything above 350 ppm is too high, and that was so successful that we’re now at 420 ppm and climbing. Too little carbon dioxide is a problem for the planet in the way that too little arrogance is a problem for the president
And yet, when it finally reaches the court, they will doubtless cite this entirely cynical and bad-faith document to buttress the case that the EPA should be allowed to stop paying attention to carbon dioxide. As I said, it’s a pretty easy to follow swindle, but they count on the fact that most people won’t. Butter won’t melt in their mouths—as Energy Secretary (and former fracking executive) Chris Wright said in his foreword to the new report:
I chose the [authors] for their rigor, honesty, and willingness to elevate the debate. I exerted no control over their conclusions. What you’ll read are their words, drawn from the best available data and scientific assessments. I’ve reviewed the report carefully, and I believe it faithfully represents the state of climate science today.
Every word of that is nonsense, but it doesn’t matter—because it’s an official document on the right letterhead it will do the trick. This is precisely what science looks like when it’s perverted away from the search for truth. It’s disgusting.
Still, there’s another grift also underway this week, and this one that may work the other way and do the world some good. The president announced his new trade deal with the European Union, which calls for 15% tariffs—but it’s sweetened by the European promise to buy $750 billion worth of American natural gas in the next three years. Trump has essentially been using the tariff process as a shakedown, a way to repay his Big Oil cronies for their hundreds of millions in support: it’s pretty much exactly like a mob protection racket, where you buy from the guy you’re told to or you get a rock through the window. The White House quickly put out a list of thank yous, including one from the American Petroleum Institute: “We welcome POTUS’ announcement of a U.S.-E.U. trade framework that will help solidify America’s role as Europe’s leading source of affordable, reliable and secure energy.”
And yet, as Reuters first noted and then many others also calculated, the numbers are clearly nonsense. First, the E.U. actually doesn’t buy any energy itself, and it can’t tell its member states what to purchase; in fact, even those member states usually rely on private companies to buy stuff. Second, it’s physically impossible to imagine the U.S. selling Europe $250 billion worth of natural gas a year. As Tim McDonnell wrote at Semafor:
Total U.S. energy exports to the world were worth $318 billion last year, of which about $74.4 billion went to the E.U., according to Rystad Energy. So to meet the target, the E.U. would need to more than triple its purchases of U.S. fossil fuels—and the U.S. would need to stop selling them to almost anyone else.
“These numbers make no sense,” said Anne-Sophie Corbeau, a researcher specializing in European gas markets at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.
The biggest reason it won’t happen, though, is that Europe is quickly switching to renewable energy. As Bill Farren-Price, head of gas research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, explained to the Financial Times:
“European gas demand is soft, and energy prices are falling. In any case, it is private companies not states that contract for energy imports,” he said. “Like it or not, in Europe the windmills are winning.”
Trump will doubtless coerce some countries into buying more liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the short run, and that will do damage. Global Venture announced Tuesday that they’d found the financing for the massive Calcasieu Pass 2 (CP2) export terminal, which has been opposed by both climate scientists and environmental justice activists. As Louisiana’s Roishetta Ozane said Tuesday:
The CP2 LNG facility is an assault on everything I hold dear. It’s a direct threat to the health and safety of my community and an assault on the livelihoods of our fishermen and shrimpers.
I’ve seen my kids struggle with asthma, eczema, headaches, and other illnesses that result from the pollution petrochemical and LNG plants dump into my community. I won’t stop opposing this project in every way I can, because my children—and everyone’s children—deserve to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and live in a healthy environment. I refuse to let Venture Global turn my community into a sacrifice zone for the sake of its profits.
But my guess is that such facilities won’t be pumping for as many decades as their investors imagine. Europe pivoted hard to renewables because Russian President Vladimir Putin proved an unstable supplier of natural gas; Trump’s America is hardly more reliable, since the president has made it clear he’ll tear up any agreement on a whim. Any rational nation will be making the obvious calculation: “I may not have gas of my own, but I’ve got wind and sun and they’re cheap. I’d rather rely on the wind than the windbag.”
Trump’s a conman, but he’s also a mark.
Keep ReadingShow Less
How Louisiana Advocates Are Continuing to Fight the Trump-Backed LNG Boom
"We always have had to take matters into our own hands, and we have protected ourselves against enormous companies," one local campaigner said.
Apr 30, 2025
Louisiana advocates and their allies are not giving up in their fight to stop the liquefied natural gas buildout that threatens the health and well-being of Gulf Coast communities—not to mention the stability of the global climate—even as the Trump administration doubles down on its commitment to expanding LNG infrastructure.
In a briefing on Tuesday, community members, local advocates, and international campaigners shared how they would continue to push back against Venture Global, an LNG company that has amassed a record of ecosystem destruction and air pollution violations at its currently operating Calcasieu Pass export terminal in Cameron Parish, Louisiana. Despite this, the Trump administration's Department of Energy granted conditional approval for the company’s nearby Calcasieu Pass 2 (CP2), undoing the pause that the outgoing Biden administration had placed on it and other LNG approvals as it considered the public interest ramifications of LNG exports.
Yet Gulf Coast campaigners, who are used to dealing with a lax regulatory environment at the state level, were not defeated.
"Anybody who reports here in Louisiana regularly understands that we've never been protected by our regulatory environment. Never," Anne Rolfes, who directs the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, told reporters. "And so we always have had to take matters into our own hands, and we have protected ourselves against enormous companies."
Misadventure Global
One key strategy that the Louisiana Bucket Brigade and others have used to get around the regulatory rubber stamping of bad actors is to raise public awareness of how the companies turning coastal Louisiana into a sacrifice zone really operate.
Case in point is Venture Global. Rolfe and John Allaire—a 40-year veteran of the oil and gas industry who lives next door to the Calcasieu Pass terminal—laid out its short but extensive record of environmental violations and unethical business practices.
Even before the original Calcasieu Pass began exporting, in January 2022, it had to clear a space for tankers to access the facility.
"It's understood that this is a volatile fuel to lock into, that you don't want to rely on a fuel that Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump control."
"They pumped hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of black viscous sludge from their marine berth out into the front of the Gulf of Mexico," Allaire said. "And that was the first indication of what was to come with Venture Global."
Since it began operating, the company has added air, noise, and light pollution to the water pollution that has devastated local fisheries.
Allaire has taken hundreds of videos and photos of flaring incidents.
"The light pollution is unbelievable," he said. "At night, I can literally read a book when the flares are going, and I'm over a mile away from their flare stacks."
Allaire's observations are backed up by the official record. In June 2023, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality sent Venture Global a compliance order detailing over 2,000 air permit violations from its first 10 months of operation, Allaire said. The company has yet to resolve the complaint, and the state sent them a warning letter in March covering their 2024 and 2025 rule-breaking.
The company also has a history of failing to report its flares and other excess emissions to the Department of Environmental Quality as required by the Clean Air Act.
If they reported and then investigated their violations, "that would enable them to really understand what's happening at their facility so that they could prevent future problems," Rolfe said. "They absolutely aren't doing that."
In March, the Louisiana Bucket Brigade and the Habitat Recovery Project notified Venture Global of intent to sue the company over Clean Air Act violations at its Calcasieu Pass facility.
But the environmental groups aren't the only ones suing Venture Global. The company stretched its commissioning phase—during which it is considered still in the process of establishing itself and can sell its products to the highest bidder rather than honoring its contracts—for three years and three months, beginning normal operations just this April.
"This is absolutely off from the industry norm," Rolfe said.
Now, other major fossil fuel companies, including Shell and BP, are pursuing arbitration claims against Venture Global for breach of contract. Investors have joined a class-action lawsuit against it, saying it violated federal securities law by misrepresenting its prospects.
Yet Venture Global has huge ambitions for the region. In addition to Calcasieu Pass and CP2, it wants to build three other export terminals in coastal Louisiana and more than triple its capacity from 30 million tons per annum (MTPA) of liquid gas—already over a quarter of the 88 MTPA exported by the U.S. exports in 2024—to 104 MTPA.
"As a review, they're flouting the Clean Air Act. They've manipulated the commissioning phase. They're being sued by everybody they've done business with. Is this a company that our country and our state should put such faith in?" Rolfe asked.
She answered her own question: "Of course, our answer is no."
Stall Tactics
Another strategy the Louisiana Bucket Brigade and their allies seek to employ is to delay Venture Global's ambitions long enough for the economic reality of the LNG boom to catch up with it.
In addition to the approval of CP2, Australian company Woodside announced on Monday that it had approved a Louisiana LNG project worth $17.5 billion. Yet the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis concluded in April that the massive growth in LNG capacity would exceed dwindling demand within two years.
"It's understood that this is a volatile fuel to lock into, that you don't want to rely on a fuel that Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump control. So people are trying to get off of gas," Rolfe said.
"The economics are going to catch up with them. I just want it to be before they destroy the coast of Louisiana."
This means that LNG companies like Woodside and Venture Global are behaving "like a kid in a candy store," Rolfe continued. "That kid, unchecked, will eat so much, they'll throw up. I think the same is true with this industry. Unchecked, it will do itself harm."
The key is therefore to stall the buildout long enough that many projects become infeasible. This tactic has worked for frontline communities during the first Trump administration, Rolfe said. Through a combination of public pressure, records requests, and legal action, community advocates were able to delay the construction of a plastic plant proposed by the Chinese company Wanhua Chemical U.S. Operation, LLC, which would have released the World War 1-era nerve gas phosgene into the already pollution-burdened St. James Parish.
The economic outlook for the plant had always been "dubious" Rolfe said, and eventually the company gave up on trying to build it.
"They could have gotten approval and gotten on their way within a month. But our suit and then our constant presence and making them table things and so forth, drew it out and let the economics catch up with them," Rolfe said.
Rolfe added that the gas industry has similarly gotten ahead of itself.
"They're greedy, right? They want to grab all the candy they can, and the economics are going to catch up with them. I just want it to be before they destroy the coast of Louisiana."
Very Risk Business
Another strategy to slow down the building of new LNG facilities like CP2 is to target the one thing, in addition to permits and funds, that they can't move forward without: insurance.
Insurance is one sector in which the economic impact of the climate crisis is already being felt, as Ethan Nuss, senior energy finance campaigner at Rainforest Action Network, explained.
For example, major insurer Chubb earns $1.5 billion a year in premiums from the fossil fuel industry, which was already canceled out early this year with the $1.5 billion in pre-tax losses they took from the Los Angeles wildfires. On a local level, some insurers have pulled out of Louisiana all together to avoid insuring against climate-fueled extreme weather events.
"Once they are really educated about the permit violations and the legal risks and the true risk landscape that they're facing by taking on this client, many of them are very concerned."
"This is not a time to build something like CP2 that would deepen the climate crisis," Nuss said.
Because insurers are on the books for both fossil fuel projects and the damage for climate disasters, and because many of them have climate and human rights policies, they are vulnerable to growing pressure from the climate movement to drop the oil and gas clients costing them so much money.
RAN in February published the names of the major insurers for Venture Global's Calcasieu Pass, which it obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request. These included Chubb subsidiary ACE American Insurance Company, AIG subsidiary National Union Fire Insurance Co., Allianz, Swiss Re, AXA, and Tokio Marine subsidiary Houston Casualty Company.
"That has kicked off a global effort to reach out to those insurers and begin to educate them about what is happening in Southwest Louisiana, the impacts from Calcasieu Pass, and what associated risks they're facing," Nuss said.
As a result of these efforts, Swiss Re has agreed to meet with the fishing community of Southwest Louisiana, to talk about the "devastating impacts on their livelihoods" from Calcasieu Pass' operations.
"Often with these global financial institutions, they aren't fully aware of what's really happening on the ground. That client is maybe just another line on the spreadsheet. But once they really start hearing the stories, once they are really educated about the permit violations and the legal risks and the true risk landscape that they're facing by taking on this client, many of them are very concerned," Nuss said.
Nuss hopes that, once fully informed, insurers would decide any project of Venture Global's is a "very risky business that they don't want to be involved in."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Disaster for Local Communities': Trump DOE Conditionally Approves CP2 LNG Terminal
"Greenlighting this terminal is simply selling out the American public to further boost the profits of fossil fuel companies," said one environmental attorney.
Mar 19, 2025
A region in southern Louisiana that has already been deemed a "sacrifice zone" by human rights experts—due to the high levels of pollution caused by the petrochemical and fossil fuel industry facilities that operate throughout the area—is now likely to face even more public health threats following the Trump administration's conditional approval of a new liquefied natural gas export terminal.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) on Wednesday granted conditional authorization for Venture Global's Calcasieu Pass 2 (CP2) LNG export terminal in Cameron Parish, allowing the company to export LNG to countries that don't have free trade agreements with the United States.
The project was halted in 2024 when former President Joe Biden paused the issuance of new LNG export permits for non-free trade agreement partners, and climate campaigners have called for CP2 and other LNG projects to be permanently blocked because of the greenhouse gas emissions and local pollution they would cause.
In December, the Biden administration released an analysis showing that more LNG exports would increase household energy costs.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) noted that emissions from CP2 are estimated to reach the equivalent of more than 47 million gas-powered cars or 53 coal-fired power plants—even as Venture Global claims the project would export enough fossil gas to replace 33 coal-fired plants.
"Greenlighting this terminal is simply selling out the American public to further boost the profits of fossil fuel companies," said Gillian Giannetti, senior attorney at NRDC. "LNG extraction and export floods frontline communities with dangerous pollution, raises U.S. energy costs, and further locks in our dependence on dirty fossil fuels."
NRDC sued the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission over its approval of CP2 in September 2024, arguing FERC violated the law by not considering "adverse environmental and socioeconomic impacts" when it approved the terminal despite its determination that "the ambient air quality around the project will exceed the national air quality standards for multiple air pollutants."
FERC rescinded its approval and planned to make additional assessments after the lawsuit, but DOE's announcement on Wednesday came before the commission had made its final determination.
By conditionally authorizing the project, said Giannetti, the DOE violated "the public interest" and announced "the latest in a long line of giveaways to the fossil fuel industry from the Trump administration."
"NRDC sued over FERC's approval of this project, and we will be closely examining the legality of this DOE approval, as well," said Giannetti.
The export terminal approval announced by Energy Secretary Chris Wright is the administration's fifth—and largest—LNG approval since President Donald Trump lifted Biden's freeze on new export permits. The finished facility would have the capacity to export 3.96 billion cubic feet of LNG per day and produce 20 million tons of LNG per year.
CP2 would also be adjacent to Venture Global's Calcasieu Pass LNG facility and less than two miles from the proposed Commonwealth LNG facility, in an area with more low-income residents than 88% of the country. Venture Global's existing LNG project in the area "has already exposed the surrounding community to dangerous air pollution well in excess of permit limits in over 130 incidents since it began operations in 2022," said Sierra Club.
"Fishermen have reported a dramatic impact on their livelihoods since the commencement of Calcasieu Pass operations, highlighting the severe negative impact of gas exports on the local economy and environment," added the group.
The conditional approval was announced a week after the Environmental Protection Agency revealed plans to shutter all 10 of its environmental justice offices, ending the agency's work to address systemic injustices in places like Cameron Parish and Louisiana's "Cancer Alley."
"As a mom living in Sulphur [Louisiana], I feel a profound responsibility to protect my children's future," said Roishetta Ozane, founder and CEO of the Vessel Project of Louisiana, an environmental justice and mutual aid group. "The decision to authorize the CP2 LNG facility is a direct threat to our health and safety. We cannot allow our community to become a sacrifice zone for corporate interests. The proposed facility, with its potential for devastating air pollution and harmful impacts on our local environment, jeopardizes everything we hold dear. Our children deserve clean air, safe water, and a thriving ecosystem. I completely oppose this project and all others like it for the sake of my children and everyone else."
Mahyar Sorour, director of Beyond Fossil Fuels policy for Sierra Club, said CP2 "will be a disaster for local communities devastated by pollution."
"American consumers who will face higher costs, and the global climate crisis that will be supercharged by the project's emissions," said Sorour. "The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission had to reconsider its approval of the project after it failed in 2024 to consider the cumulative impacts of air pollution. By conditionally approving exports from this massive project, Trump's Department of Energy is once again failing to protect the American people from an unnecessary LNG project set to generate billions for corporate executives and leave everyday people with higher energy costs."
"Despite his hollow promises on the campaign trail," Sorour added, "Trump continues to fail to prioritize the livelihoods and future of our country over the profits of the dirty fossil fuel industry."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular