It’s Getting Hot In Here

For many of us who have been in the climate activism loop for several years, the time of our entry into serious activism was marked by a growing public awareness over the link between oil and the wars in the Iraq and Afghanistan, and of the hand Big Oil played in writing the Bush/Cheney energy policy.  In the last years of the Bush Administration, the focus of many environmentalists shifted subtly from oil to coal, which contributes even more than oil to global warming.  Now, at the dawn of the Obama Administration, coal maintains its well-deserved reputation as Climate Enemy #1; but tar sands development, oil shale mining, and other newly-emerged branches of the oil industry give even King Coal a run for his money.

The struggles of communities confronting the oil and coal industries are fitting banners for our movement; they show just how far the abuses of the fossil fuel giants will go.  However, in this new political atmosphere in which serious proposals for climate protection are at least being considered in Congress (though always watered down by industry), and in which Big Oil (though still hugely influential) is no longer directly advising the Executive Branch on global warming science, the time has come to ask ourselves: just what are we willing to settle for?  The most polluting and environmentally destructive of industry practices must go—even a few individuals in the Halls of Power are beginning to see that.  But if we are really going to achieve, in the words of the Cascade Climate Declaration, a “Sustainable, just, and prosperous future for all,” then we need to go much further.  And this means focusing our attention on a fossil fuel that, for most of us, hasn’t traditionally drawn the spotlight: natural gas.

Even environmental groups have traditionally regarded natural gas as a lesser evil when compared to oil or, especially, coal.  When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that the Capitol Power Plant in DC would move quickly off coal and substitute natural gas as the fuel of choice, it was hailed by many as a victory for the climate.  But, as the Center for Biological Diversity points out, “the Capitol Power Plant’s switch won’t get our planet far on the road to reducing our atmospheric carbon levels below the necessary 350 parts per million.”  Ordinary natural gas emits about half as much carbon dioxide as burning coal; but that takes us only halfway to where we need to be.

In contrast to much of the rest of the country, where concerns about natural gas have taken a backseat to Big Oil and King Coal, the topic is much hotter in my own Pacific Northwest.  It’s here that the third fossil fuel is attempting perhaps its most serious new inroads on the US energy economy.  And it’s materialized in natural gas’ dirtiest, most environmentally destructive form: Liquefied Natural Gas, or LNG.

An imported fossil fuel originating in the same regions of the world as large oil reserves, LNG is extracted through essentially the same procedures used for oil drilling.  Victims of LNG extraction include salmon runs and gray whale habitat around Russia’s Sakhalin Island, and the rainforest ecosystems of the Peruvian Amazon.  Natural gas extracted from these and other parts of the globe is then super-cooled to liquid form and shipped by tanker to energy-hungry countries where it is re-gasified and pumped through underground pipelines to the plant where it will finally be burned for fuel.  This long, energy-intensive process increases the carbon footprint of LNG considerably.  According to Oregon Department of Energy, LNG shipped from far enough away comes with a carbon footprint approximately equal to that of coal.

Despite this, Oregon LNG—one of the companies hoping to bring LNG importation infrastructure to the Oregon coast—claims that their “liquefied natural gas import facility will help meet [energy demands] by providing communities, utilities and industries with a reliable, clean energy supply.”  Again and again, industry proponents have cited LNG as a clean alternative to coal, and a “bridge fuel” between coal and renewables.  As the pressure increases to shut down coal plants nationwide, we are going to hear more and more of the industry propaganda which asserts that natural gas is the fix-all that will allow us to reduce pollution while continuing to prop up our fossil-based economy.  There truly are instances when replacing coal with ordinary, domestic natural gas can represent a worthy first step for climate advocates.  But assuming natural gas is any substitute for renewables just because it has a carbon footprint somewhat smaller than coal would be a fatal mistake for our movement.  We’re already learning why in the Northwest.

For one thing, despite industry promotion of gas as a “bridge fuel” that would (someday, in the theoretical future) be replaced by renewables, we know that fossil fuel industries don’t give up their seat at the table easily.  If LNG is allowed to make inroads on the Northwest, it’s quite clear that it will be a competitor to renewables—not a temporary substitute.  At gatherings of Oregon activists working to stop LNG in our state, I’ve again and again heard the plan to import LNG compared to the Reagan-era energy policy which ditched the Carter Administration’s commitment to energy independence and ushered in a new era of oil dependency.  A market suddenly flooded in imported LNG has the potential to put burgeoning renewable energy industries out of business, with effects that will reach far beyond the Pacific Northwest.  A relic of Dick Cheney-style energy politics, the plan to import LNG on a large scale can be seen as nothing less than an attempt to replace imported oil with something just as good; or, depending on your point of view, just as bad.

Finally, as the coal plants are shut down and demand for natural gas as a substitute grows, our sources of gas are going to get dirtier, not cleaner.  Last year’s rising gasoline prices gave us a preview of what the oil company will do when given a new incentive to “drill baby, drill”; with the expectation of new and higher profits, oil companies went after the tar sands and oil shale.  Don’t expect the natural gas industry to behave any differently: as demand for gas goes up with coal’s decline, you can expect to see dirtier forms of the third fossil fuel, such as LNG, coming onto the market.

In the Northwest, we’ve already seen what Big Gas can do, and climate activists have responded accordingly.  Student organizers have joined forces with local environmental groups concerned about the impact of LNG infrastructure on streams, estuaries, and forests, and with small farmers, timber growers, and vineyard owners whose land is threatened by the construction of LNG pipelines.  To name just one of dozens of such partnerships which have emerged in the last few years: last month, about twenty students, slightly more than half of them from Pacific University in Oregon’s Washington County, toured the proposed route of two LNG pipelines by bike, to see where the construction easements would cut through Washington County farmland, forests, and streams.  Along the way, we met with affected landowners and drew coverage of the LNG issue from two local newspapers (see one video-story of the event here).

More and more Northwest students—especially at campuses like Pacific University, situated on the frontlines of the LNG struggle—are rising to the challenge of keeping this dangerous fossil fuel out of our region.  While some activists are cheering the Capitol Power Plant’s switch to natural gas, we in the Northwest have found in the third fossil fuel the same environmentally abusive tendencies that characterize Big Oil and King Coal.  Making inroads on the west coast through LNG importation is just one of the ways in which the natural gas industry will attempt to hijack the green energy movement and sell itself as the logical alternative to coal in coming years.  Meanwhile, industry allies will try to substitute gas for truly renewable energy sources, in an effort to keep the old fossil economy propped up as long as possible.

Those of us in the frontline zone of natural gas’ expansion need the national and international climate movements to realize that the third fossil has the potential to wreck almost as much devastation as oil or coal.  It certainly won’t even get us close to carbon neutrality.  As Congress and the Obama Administration finally take a hard look at (maybe….someday) implementing meaningful climate policy, we’re already seeing how agrofuel giants, the nuclear industry, carbon traders, and others will try to turn any climate policy into just another economic opportunity for polluters.  The false solutions energy giants will try to use to preserve themselves are already many and varied.  You can add the third fossil fuel to that list.