Washington, D.C. – Climate movement leaders, environmental justice advocates, and frontline community members released a letter today calling for a three day sit-in at the Department of Energy this February 6-8 to pressure the Biden Administration to pause the approval of any new Liquified Natural Gas export facilities.
The letter comes as news breaks that the Biden administration is evaluating the criteria it uses to approve these new projects, according to a press statement from Fossil Free Media.
The authors write:
We’re writing to ask you to do something hard but important: come to Washington DC in the middle of this winter, to join a demonstration and, if you can, risk arrest in a large-scale civil disobedience action. We know it’s a lot: we wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t both important, and potentially effective.
What’s at stake is the largest fossil fuel buildout in the world. As is so often the case, local frontline groups on the Gulf Coast have been warning about the massive buildout of liquefied natural gas (LNG) infrastructure for years. They’ve seen the pollution, health impacts, and environmental injustice of these facilities first hand. Now we’re building as broad a coalition as we can.
It’s time to convince the Department of Energy to stop licensing new export terminals for Liquefied Natural Gas.
Signatories on the letter include Gulf Coast residents like Roishetta Ozane, James Hiatt, John Beard, and Travis Dardar, who have been organizing against new export facilities; national environmental leaders like Bill McKibben, Rev. Lennox Yearwood, and Varshini Prakash; youth leaders like Elise Joshi and Alexandria Villaseñor; authors and celebrities like Rebecca Solnit and Jane Fonda; and even former White House officials, like Gus Speth, who served as Chair of the US Council on Environmental Quality during the Carter Administration.
“The sit-in is modeled on previous demonstrations, like the iconic sit-ins at the White House against the Keystone XL pipeline, which thrust that fossil fuel fight into the national spotlight,” according to the statement. “Organizers expect at least 100 people a day to risk arrest by peacefully blocking the entrance to the Department of Energy – a soft launch of the event to the members of Third Act has already generated hundreds of sign-ups.”
The organizers of the February sit-in, and the broader movement fighting LNG exports, are specifically calling on the Biden Administration and Department of Energy to, “stop CP2—the next big facility up for approval—and all other facilities by committing to a serious pause to rework the criteria for public interest designation, incorporating the latest science and economics, before any such facility is permitted.”
According to the organizers, their hope is that the Biden Administration will make a decision to pause the permits before February, so that the action won’t be necessary.
They write, “We are committed to calm, to dignity, and to giving the Biden administration every possible chance to prove that they are climate leaders on the dirty energy side of the climate crisis as well as the clean.”
But if the administration doesn’t act, they said they will :be ready.”
“Over the last two months, stopping LNG export facilities, including the massive CP2 project in Southwest Louisiana, has become a top priority for the environmental justice and climate movement. Videos opposing the projects have generated more than 12.5 million views across social media platforms, driving more than 300,000 signatures on petitions urging DOE to pause approvals,” the group stated.
In December, more than 170 scientists wrote a letter urging President Biden to stop what they called the “staggering” buildout of export facilities. The administration’s support for LNG exports has also caused what The Hill called a “revolt” within the Democratic Party, with dozens of members of congress opposing the buildout, according to the group.
“The proposed buildout of more than 20 new LNG export facilities along the Gulf of Mexico represents the largest fossil fuel buildout in the United States and perhaps the world. According to energy analysts, the emissions from the projects could exceed those of over 850 coal fired power plants or the entire continent of Europe. The projects would also harm the local environment, cause severe health impacts for local communities, and drive up costs for American consumers by shipping gas overseas,” the group continued.
“Because of their scale and terrible impacts, stopping the facilities represents an opportunity for the Biden Administration to take a major step to addressing fossil fuel production, something his administration has been roundly criticized for failing to take action on,” they said.
As Bill McKibben, one of the authors of the letter, recently wrote, “If the president does the right thing in the right spirit on LNG exports, he’ll be able to say he’s done more than any president before him not just on clean energy but also on the dirty stuff. He’ll be the leader he promised to be.”
Dear Friends,
We’re writing to ask you to do something hard but important: come to Washington DC in the middle of this winter, to join a demonstration and, if you can, risk arrest in a large-scale civil disobedience action. We know it’s a lot: we wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t both important, and potentially effective.
What’s at stake is the largest fossil fuel buildout in the world. As is so often the case, local frontline groups on the Gulf Coast have been warning about the massive buildout of liquefied natural gas (LNG) infrastructure for years. They’ve seen the pollution, health impacts, and environmental injustice of these facilities first hand. Now we’re building as broad a coalition as we can.
It’s time to convince the Department of Energy to stop licensing new export terminals for Liquefied Natural Gas.
Time after time they’ve approved these proposals, so the U.S. is now the biggest exporter of gas on earth—and that volume could quadruple if the industry has its way. There’s no bigger climate bomb left on planet earth.
Because this fracked gas leaks methane, and then turns to carbon when it's burned, LNG is as bad as coal for the climate, and once it’s been shipped around the world it’s even worse. But who cares about coal? The real comparison is with sun and wind, which now provide the cheapest power on planet earth, and which we must turn to if we have any hope of heading off the worst of the climate crisis.
President Biden, thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, has a legitimate claim to doing more than any president on the clean energy side of the climate crisis—and indeed, the DOE has played a key role in helping build out renewable energy. But for Biden to claim credit for also slowing dirty energy, he needs good information from the DOE to inform his decisions, and here the department has been providing him with antiquated analysis.
We need the administration to stop CP2—the next big facility up for approval—and all other facilities by committing to a serious pause to rework the criteria for public interest designation, incorporating the latest science and economics, before any such facility is permitted.
We need the DOE to tell the president the truth: expanding LNG damages our climate, and economy, and the communities forced to live alongside these facilities. That includes the land, water, and air in Louisiana and Texas, where most of these facilities are built—it’s why some of us have fought on the front lines for years. We’ve rushed kids with asthma attacks to the hospital, seen our fishing spots and beaches polluted with chemicals, and breathe air filled with poisons everyday. We know what’s at stake.
We also know there’s no real argument for building these facilities, besides lining the pocket of oil and gas CEOs. Exporting all this fuel will drive up the cost of gas Americans use for cooking, heating, and electricity, in some places by as much as 42%. Officials have used the war in Ukraine to justify the expansion, but there is already more than enough infrastructure to replace Russian gas; the vast majority of new exports are destined for China and the global markets, with any new expansion just locks in decades and decades of environmental destruction.
So far, the DOE has refused to listen to thousands of letters and ignored petitions signed by hundreds of thousands of people. So we need to go to DC to drive home how serious this crisis is.
We will conduct a highly-civil civil disobedience action over three days in mid-February, peacefully blocking the entrance to the department.
We know this action isn’t for everyone, and we know that everyone can’t travel to DC—some of us will be joining instead in solidarity actions nearer our homes. For those of who do head to Washington, we agree to keep this action peaceful in word, mood, and action; if your level of frustration is too high to insure that, please stay home and think of other ways to help. We are committed to calm, to dignity, and to giving the Biden administration every possible chance to prove that they are climate leaders on the dirty energy side of the climate crisis as well as the clean.
If you plan on coming, we hope you will sign up here, picking one of the three days to participate. You’ll need to undergo some online training, and then another session the night before you plan to risk arrest.
2023 saw the hottest weather on this planet in at least 125,000 years; we think it is an honor to rise in defense of the planet we love, and the places where we live. Thank you for considering joining in.
In solidarity,
Alexandria Villaseñor
Anne Rolfes
Annie Leonard
Bill McKibben
Gus Speth
Gwen Jones
James Hiatt
Jane Fonda
Jo Banner
John Beard
Melanie Oldham
Rebecca Solnit
Rev. Lennnox Yearwood
Robin Schneider
Roishetta Ozane
Shamell Lavigne
Sharon Lavigne
Travis Dardar
Varshini Prakash
Winona LaDuke