Climate Leaders Announce February Sit-In to Stop LNG

"I won't allow for them to continue to poison my kids," one Gulf Coast environmental justice advocate said.


Roishetta Ozane, founder and director of the Louisiana-based mutual aid organization Vessel Project, speaks as activists deliver 200,000 signatures opposing the LNG buildout to the U.S. Department of Energy in Washington, D.C., on November 30, 2023.
(Photo: Jamie Henn/X)

OLIVIA ROSANE
Jan 09, 2024

Climate advocates and frontline community leaders published a letter Tuesday urging concerned individuals to join them in Washington, D.C., in early February for a sit-in at the Department of Energy where they will demand that it end the expansion of liquefied natural gas exports.

Stopping the LNG buildout has emerged as a major priority for the climate movement in recent months, as just one proposed project, Venture Global's Calcasieu Pass 2 (CP2) facility, would emit 20 times more climate pollution than the controversial Willow oil drilling project in Alaska. But CP2 is only one of more than 20 LNG export facilities planned for the Gulf Coast, which would have combined emissions that exceed those of the European Union or 850 coal plants, Stop LNG said in a statement.

"If [President Joe Biden] wants to be a true climate president, his administration will stop the approval of new LNG facilities. If not we'll keep pushing until they do," letter signatory and Gulf Coast environmental justice organizer Roishetta Ozane wrote on social media. "I won't allow for them to continue to poison my kids."



The action is planned for February 6-8 at the Department of Energy.

"We're writing to ask you to do something hard but important: Come to Washington D.C. in the middle of this winter, to join a demonstration and, if you can, risk arrest in a large-scale civil disobedience action," the letter—which was signed by several prominent activists including Alexandria Villaseñor, Bill McKibben, Jane Fonda, Rebecca Solnit, and Varshini Prakash—begins.

The planned direct action builds on months of pressure on the administration to stop the planned expansion of LNG exports, including a petition to the DOE signed by more than 300,000 people and a letter to Biden signed by more than 170 scientists. Polling from Data for Progress and Fossil Free Media found that 60% of likely voters would support the Biden administration limiting LNG exports.

"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."

"It's time to convince the Department of Energy to stop licensing new export terminals for liquefied natural gas," Tuesday's letter reads. "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."

There are signs the administration is paying attention to the growing clamor and may be open to a change in policy. On Monday, Politico reported that the DOE was reviewing its decision-making process for approval LNG projects to make sure that it was considering the climate, economic, and security impacts.

"This would be smart policy and good politics," Jamie Henn of Fossil Free Media posted in response to the news.

The letter states that organizers "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," the letter reads.

"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," it continues. "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."

The letter writers said that they had committed "to keep this action peaceful in word, mood, and action."

Those who cannot travel to D.C. may participate in solidarity actions from their home. Those who do plan to participate should sign up on stoplng.org. They will need to complete online training, including one session the night before risking 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," the letter concludes. "Thank you for considering joining in."

UPDATE
'This Is Terrible': Eco Emergency in Spain as Plastic Pellets Invade Coast


The countless beads of plastic, which experts fear are toxic and harmful to marine life and people, are believed to have spilled from a cargo ship.

A worker catches plastic pellets with his hand, at Otur beach, on January 9, 2024, in Valdes, Asturias, Spain. The Principality of Asturias has activated an emergency level two for the dumping of plastic pellets on the region's beaches.
(Photo By Jorge Peteiro/Europa Press via Getty Images)

JON QUEALLY

COMMON DREAMS
Jan 10, 2024

Millions, or perhaps billions, of plastic pellets continue to wash up on the shores of Spain, leading local governments to declare an environmental emergency and launch a criminal probe after a cargo ship off the coast of Portugal lost six containers overboard last month.


"These little balls of plastic are an environmental problem because fish confuse them with fish eggs and eat them and they enter the food chain … and end up on our dinner tables," Cristobal López, a spokesperson for the Spanish environmental group Ecologistas en Acción, explained to the Associated Press from a cleanup site in Galicia.

According toBBC, "The tiny plastic balls—used to manufacture common goods such as plastic bottles—are less than 5mm wide, making cleaning up extremely difficult. Volunteers have been combing through sand and sieving water to find the plastic pellets."



The spillage at sea is believed to have occurred on Dec. 8, but it took time for the plastic pellets to make their way to shore.

As The Guardianreports:
In the weeks since the spill, millions of the pellets have washed up on beaches in north-west Spain, prompting a clean-up operation by regional workers and volunteers.

On Tuesday, the regional governments of Galicia and neighbouring Asturias issued level 2 alerts, which will allow more personnel and resources to be assigned to the task as well as logistical assistance from the Spanish government's environment and transport ministries.

Alfonso Rueda, the regional president of Galicia, said there was still time to stop more pellets washing up on the shoreline. "There are hundreds of sacks right now that have not reached the coast," he said on Tuesday. "The time to collect them, or at least to try, is now that they are at sea. It seems there will be currents these days that will make it a little easier."

Prosecutors in Galicia have started a criminal investigation into the episode, while environmental campaigners and government officials have said the spill is just the latest example of the harmful impacts of the plastics industry.

"The contamination of the oceans and ecosystems with plastics is one of the biggest problems faced by humanity," said Teresa Ribera, Spain's environmental minister. "So the spilling of such an important quantity of plastics requires close oversight and to determine if the transport company and shipping company exercised the proper precautions."



Greenpeace Spain has launched a petition demanding the harms of plastics be addressed.

"Plastic has invaded our planet and we can already find it in seas, forests, and rivers around the world," states the petition, which calls on the government "to take measures to reduce the production and consumption of plastics that suffocate our environment."

Container Lost off Maersk Ship Releases Plastic Balls on Spain’s Beaches

The Chickadee in the Snowbank: A ‘Canary in the Coal Mine’ for Climate Change in the Sierra Nevada Mountains

BY BENJAMIN SONNENBERG

 JANUARY 10, 2024
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Mountain chickadees struggle with snow extremes.
Benjamin Sonnenberg.

Wet snow pelts my face and pulls against my skis as I climb above 8,000 feet in the Sierra Nevada of eastern California, tugging a sled loaded with batteries, bolts, wire and 40 pounds of sunflower seeds critical to our mountain chickadee research.

As we reach the remote research site, I duck under a tarp and open a laptop. A chorus of identification numbers are shouted back and forth as fellow behavioral ecologist Vladimir Pravosudov and I program “smart” bird feeders for an upcoming experiment.

I have spent the past six years monitoring a population of mountain chickadees here, tracking their life cycles and, importantly, their memory, working in a system Pravosudov established in 2013. The long, consistent record from this research site has allowed us to observe how chickadees survive in extreme winter snowfall and to identify ecological patterns and changes.

Snow piles up on the experiment’s bird feeders. Each chickadee has a radio frequency identification tag that opens its assigned feeder, allowing scientists to track its movements and memory. Photo: Vladimir Pravosudov.

In recent history, intense winters are often followed by drought years here in the Sierra Nevada and in much of the U.S. West. This teeter-totter pattern has been identified as one of the unexpected symptoms of climate change, and its impact on the chickadees is providing an early warning of the disruptions ahead for the dynamics within these coniferous forest ecosystems.

Our research shows that a mountain chickadee facing deep snow is, to borrow a cliche, like a canary in a coal mine – its survivability tells us about the challenges ahead.

The author, Benjamin Sonnenberg, and one of his research subjects − a young chickadee with a transponder tag on its leg. Photo: Benjamin Sonnenberg

The extraordinary memory of a chickadee

As Pravosudov calls out the next identification number, and as my legs slowly get colder and wetter, a charming and chipper “DEE DEE DEE” chimes down from a nearby tree. How is it that a bird weighing barely more than a few sheets of paper is more comfortable in this storm than I am?

The answer comes down to the chickadees’ incredible spatial cognitive abilities.

Cognition is the processes by which animals acquire, process, store and act on information from their environment. It is critical to many species but is often subtle and difficult to measure in nonhuman animals.

Chickadees are food-storing specialists that hide tens of thousands of individual food items throughout the forest under edges of tree bark, or even between pine needles, each fall. Then, they use their specialized spatial memory to retrieve those food caches in the months to come.

Conditions in the high Sierras can be harsh, and if chickadees can’t remember where their food is, they die.

We measure the spatial memory of chickadees using a classic associative learning task but in a very atypical location. To do this, we hang a circular array of eight feeders equipped with radio-frequency identification and filled with seed in several locations across our field site. Birds are tagged with “keys” – transponder tags in leg bands that contain individual identification numbers and allow them to open the doors of their assigned feeders to get a food reward.

The setup allows us to measure the spatial memory performance of individual chickadees, because they have to remember which feeder their key enables them to open. Over eight years, our findings demonstrate that chickadees with better spatial memory ability are more likely to survive in the high mountains than those with worse memories.

However, chickadees may be facing increasing challenges that will shape their future in the high mountains. In 2017, a year with record-breaking snow levels, adult chickadees showed the lowest probability of survival ever measured at our site. This exceptionally extreme winter came with recurrent storms containing cold weather and high winds, making it difficult for even the memory savvy chickadees to forage and survive.

Nevertheless, triumphant populations have persisted in high-elevation mountain environments, but their future is becoming uncertain.

What’s the problem?

“It’s weather whiplash,” says Adrian Harpold, a mountain ecohydrologist. Harpold works to understand variations in climate patterns within forest environments, and one of his field sites lies alongside our chickadee research site.

The Sierra Nevada and other mountain ranges in western North America have been experiencing more extreme snow years and drought years, amplified by climate change. Extreme snow linked to global warming might seem counterintuitive, but it’s basic physics. Warmer air can hold more moisture – about 7% more for every degree Celsius (every 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) that temperatures rise. This can result in heavier snowfall when storms strike.

In 2023’s record winter, over 17 feet (5 meters) of snow covered the landscape that our chickadees were using every day. In fact, these intense storms and cold temperatures not only made it difficult for birds to survive the winter but made it almost impossible for them to breed the next summer: 46% of chickadee nests at our higher elevation site failed to produce any offspring. This was likely due to the deep snow that prevented them from finding emerging insects to feed nestlings or even reaching nesting sites at all until July.

The cascading harms from too much snow

Even in years of tremendous snowfall, chickadees can still use their finely honed spatial memories to recover food. However, severe storms can shorten their survival odds. And if they do survive the winter, their nesting sites – tree cavities – may be buried under feet of snow in the spring.

It doesn’t matter how smart you are if you can’t reach your nest.

Extreme snow oscillations also affect insects that are critical for feeding chickadee chicks. Limited resources lead to smaller chickadee offspring that are less likely to survive high in the mountains.

Mountain chickadee chicks can struggle to survive during winters with extreme snow.
Photo: Benjamin Sonnenberg.

Snow cover is good for overwintering insects in most cases, as it provides an insulating blanket that saves them from dying during those freezing months. However, if the snow persists too long into the summer, insects can run out of energy and die before they can emerge, or emerge after chickadees really need them. Drought years also can drive insect population decline.

Extremes at both ends of the spectrum are making it harder for chickadees to thrive, and more and more we are seeing oscillations between these extremes.

These compounded effects mean that in some years chickadees simply don’t successfully nest at all. This leads to a decline in chickadee populations in years with worse whiplash – drought followed by high snow on repeat – especially at high elevations. This is especially concerning, as many mountain-dwelling avian species are forecasted to move up in elevation to escape warming temperatures, which may turn out to be hazardous.

Baby chickadees stay warm inside a wooden box. Photo: Benjamin Sonnenberg

Lessons for the future

Chickadees may be portrayed as radiating tranquil beauty on holiday cards, but realistically, these loud, round ruffians are tough survivors of harsh winter environments in northern latitudes.

Our long-term research following these chickadees provides a unique window into the relationships between winter snow, chickadee populations and the biological community around them, such as coniferous forests and insect populations.

Benjamin Sonnenberg and Vladimir Pravosudov show how the feeders work to test birds’ memories in a video about the early stages of their research.

These relationships illustrate that climate change is a more complicated story than just the temperature climb – and that its whiplash and cascading effects can destabilize ecosystems.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Benjamin Sonnenberg is a Ph.D. Candidate in Ecology, Evolution and Conservation Biology at the University of Nevada, Reno.