We told you a week or two ago about fossil fueled fascist House Speaker Mike Johnson’s plan to repeal President Biden’s pause on Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) exports in exchange for aiding Ukraine.
MAGA Mike is still trying to head off an insurrection from inside his own fossil fascist caucus. But there is a simpler solution, if President Biden has the courage to seize it. Biden could declare a climate emergency, make his LNG export pause permanent, and ban crude oil exports at the same time. I’ll explain the how and why in more detail below, but if you’re on board already: Sign here to tell President Biden to permanently stop all LNG exports.
Ok here’s the background. We’ve talked a lot already about President Biden’s pause on new permits for LNG exports projects. As we’ve explained, the pause is a good step, but it’s limited to new LNG export facilities, limited to their permits from DOE (as opposed to FERC or other agencies) and it’s only temporary. The pause is intended to give Biden’s team time to conduct a review of LNG exports and their impact on our climate and communities. And we’ve been campaigning at FERC —the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which reviews and issues permits for LNG facilities whether they export or not — all spring to try and get them to implement a similar pause and review on LNG and all fossil fuels.
But here’s the thing: We already know that LNG exports, like all fossil fuels, threaten the health of local communities, endanger wildlife, exacerbate the climate crisis, and drive up prices for domestic consumers of electricity and gas. What’s more, Biden knows it too. LNG export terminals are already flaring gas and spewing significant levels of toxic emissions in cities like Corpus Christi and Freeport in Texas, as well as the Sabine and Cameron parishes in Louisiana. One facility, the Freeport LNG plant in Texas, exploded in 2022. That incident threw a massive fireball into the sky, and underscored the danger of these facilities to our climate and communities.
Any fair or rational examination of fossil fuel impacts, any real “climate test” like President Obama applied when denying the Keystone XL pipeline years ago, will show that we can’t approve any new fossil fuel infrastructure. That’s been the conclusion over and over again of climate scientists, energy researchers, and economists. And what’s more, while the fossil fuel fascist party needs to scramble to connect the dots between aid for our allies in Europe and Ukraine (which they want) and more fossil fuel exports (which they very much do not), President Biden doesn’t have to play along.
As we’ve been saying since day one of his presidency, Biden can declare a climate emergency at any time – and then use the emergency powers granted to his Administration to permanently stop fossil fuel exports – starting with LNG, of course, since that’s already paused, but then moving on to crude oil and other fossil fuel exports. Young people all over the country are ramping up pressure on President Biden to do just that this Earth Day Weekend – and we’ll be joined by allies in Organized labor over the weeks between Earth Day (April 22) and May Day (May 1).
Help us kick off this mobilization by telling President Biden to make the LNG export pause permanent – we’ll deliver all the signatures this weekend in conjunction with Earth day activities, and we’ll have lots more opportunities to take action online and in person (if you haven’t already heard, check out our rally with the Youth v Gov plaintiffs on Sunday, the “spring spark” bank actions next Wednesday-Thursday, and the FERC actions next Thursday April 25.)