A huge victory for activists puts climate on the 2024 Agenda
This is exactly what the climate activists wanted.
The White House is delaying a decision on approving a new natural gas megaproject, as my colleague Coral Davenport exclusively reported yesterday, to better assess its impact on the climate.
The controversial Calcasieu Pass 2 project, known as CP2, would allow the United States – already the world's largest natural gas exporter – to ship much more liquefied natural gas abroad. Climate activists have rallied for months to block the project on Louisiana's coast, arguing that it would limit dependence on fossil fuels than what the climate can tolerate.
“I'm super excited and ecstatic,” said Roishetta Ozane, an activist based in Louisiana, where the project would be located. “CP2 is a carbon time bomb.”
Natural gas consists mainly of methane, an extremely powerful greenhouse gas. Although it burns cleaner than coal, it can leak anywhere in the supply chain, making it just as harmful, according to recent research.
By delaying the approval process for CP2, the White House is directing the Energy Department to consider all greenhouse gas emissions associated with the project — not just its construction. That could include the emissions associated with drilling for and transporting the fuel; a change would also affect other future natural gas terminals.
But that can only happen if President Biden is re-elected.
Energy politics
The politics of climate change is a big factor pushing the White House to take this step. Coral broke the news on the same day Biden declared: “It is now clear that Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee. And my message to the country is that the stakes could not be higher.”
The Biden administration is under fire from climate activists angry over the approval of the Willow drilling project in Alaska and the Mountain Valley Pipeline in West Virginia. Approve CP2 would have further enraged climate-conscious voters.
“If you look at TikTok and social media, the new voters who will be voting for a president for the first time in their lives are angry,” Ozane told me. “They will not support this president unless he takes a bold step.”
Slowly moving through CP2's approval process is exactly what activists like Ozane were looking for.
While the determination was nominally for one project on the Gulf Coast, the move could have far-reaching consequences. If the Biden administration decides that CP2 is not in the public interest, it will likely reach a similar conclusion about sixteen other proposed export terminals in the works.
Ahead of the decision, White House climate advisers met with activists like Alex Haraus, a 25-year-old social media influencer from Colorado who has led a TikTok and Instagram campaign urging young voters to demand that Mr. Biden rejects the project.
“And we will absolutely reward or punish him for this decision,” Haraus told Coral, referring to Biden.
If Trump wins
If Trump is elected, it seems almost certain that his administration will pass CP2, roll back environmental protections and expand fossil fuel production. “We will start drilling immediately, baby drilling,” he told voters after winning the Iowa caucuses this month.
Biden is merely delaying consideration of CP2, rather than rejecting it outright. And it is possible that the government could approve the project after the elections. But Republicans are already gearing up to make the president's energy policy a campaign issue.
“This move would amount to a functional ban on new LNG export licenses,” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said in the Senate yesterday. “The administration's war on affordable domestic energy has been bad news for American workers and consumers alike.”
Coral reported that there is little division within the White House over the decision to delay CP2. This is partly because the United States already produces and exports so much natural gas. Capacity will almost double in the next four years, even without CP2.
For now, activists see the postponement decision as a major victory. “I called Biden about all his nonsense,” Ozane said. “But this time I think the president has a real chance to get it right.”
Ozane says she still wants to hear more about the White House's explanation of the decision to delay CP2's treatment. But she is unequivocal about the stakes of the elections.
“We know that if this government is not re-elected, everything he has done on climate will fall apart,” she said.
Climate change is central to the economy
In early January, dozens of economists in San Antonio sat in a small, windowless room to learn how climate change affects everything in their field.
Those just standing heard how climate-induced natural disasters are affecting mortgage risk, rail safety and even personal loans.
The Allied Social Science Associations are generally a distillation of what the field of economics focuses on at any given time. There is ample evidence that climate is in the spotlight.
As Heather Boushey, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, put it when she moderated a panel on the macroeconomics of climate change: “We are all climate economists now.” — Lydia DePillis