by Ben Jealous
Not long after her adopted twins came to live with her in Freeport, Texas, Melanie Oldham saw their health start to decline. Both children were diagnosed with severe asthma.
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As Oldham sent the twins to school — every day with their inhalers — she realized a lot of the kids in her part of Brazoria County had bad asthma. She also began to see that other serious chronic illnesses were rampant in her community.
“It’s shocking the number of people in their 50s that already have severe COPD, all the skin problems we know are caused by different types of emissions, premature heart attacks, spikes in certain types of cancers — including one form of childhood leukemia — and the number of children with asthma is staggering. “
Those emissions she is referring to are from the oil, gas and petrochemical plants peppering the landscape of her part of the Gulf Coast.
Increasingly, the source of that pollution is the growing number of liquefied methane gas (commonly referred to as LNG) facilities in the region. Freeport LNG, in Oldham’s town, is the third largest LNG export terminal by capacity in the country. The largest is Sabine Pass LNG, just a few hours along the coast from Freeport. That facility sits just over the Louisiana border from Port Arthur, Texas — which is also home to Port Arthur LNG, currently under construction.
Port Arthur, like Freeport, is a textbook environmental sacrifice zone. John Beard, a Port Arthur community leader, says the entire region is a “sacrifice coast.” Texas Monthly once labeled this part of the state the “Cancer Belt.” Beard speaks of members of his community like Etta Hebert, a two-time cancer survivor whose daughter also has cancer and whose husband Roy just passed away from a long battle with cancer on Nov. 30. And Beard’s own family has been impacted by the intense pollution in the area. His oldest son had to have a kidney transplant — despite no family history of kidney disease — and his daughter had a brain tumor removed.
This is what the extractive fossil fuel industry does to human bodies and communities. It is the real-life human toll of our continued reliance on fuels like methane gas. And it is a toll that will get significantly steeper if the U.S. expands LNG exports and the infrastructure to support a continued LNG boom.
Despite decades of branding and rebranding efforts by the industry, the fact remains: methane gas is simply yet another dirty, dangerous fossil fuel polluting our communities.
LNG takes the deadly threats methane gas poses to the extreme, not just by increasing the amount of gas fracked, but by adding dangerous and pollution-heavy steps to the process. From fracking to pipeline transmission to the compression and liquefaction of the gas and the shipping of the LNG overseas, virtually every stage of the life cycle leaks methane (which captures 80 times more heat than carbon dioxide), is powered by the burning of other dirty fossil fuels like oil, and carries the risk of catastrophic ruptures and explosions.
Yet fossil fuel interests and their allies in government continue to promote the fallacy of methane gas as a “bridge” fuel. Former presidential climate envoy John Kerry rightfully points to a “massive movement in the fossil fuel industry” to sanitize fracked gas’s image and brand it as part of our clean energy future. And the push to further build out LNG exports not only threatens the pace and success of the necessary clean energy transition already underway, it threatens to drive up energy costs for American households. The Department of Energy released an updated analysis just last month confirming that unfettered LNG exports would drive up domestic energy prices — and clearly showing that approving new or expanded gas exports is bad for the American people.
Part of the fossil fuel industry’s “massive movement” is an effort to use former politicians to sway core constituencies. One industry front group, Natural Allies for a Clean Energy Future, sends out politicians like former Ohio Congressman and presidential candidate Tim Ryan to tout the virtues of methane gas at events and on news shows without disclosing that they’re on the gas industry’s payroll.
According to the organization’s IRS 990 tax form, Natural Allies seems to have compensated Tim Ryan to the tune of $246,943 in 2023 alone. The same 990 shows Natural Allies also spent $290,723 on public relations services from a firm where former Sen. Mary Landrieu (one of their other key voices) works.
Natural Allies also pays Black leaders to deceive Black audiences about how methane gas power is needed to keep their home energy costs down. Former Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter and former Florida Rep. Kendrick Meek work in tandem to peddle that fossil fuel industry lie at events and in the Black press.
Meanwhile, as former Mayor Nutter and former Rep. Meek make the case that more methane gas will help Black, brown and low-income communities, what about the communities of color and low-income communities bearing the brunt of the deadly pollution from this toxic industry? What about a place like Port Arthur, a majority Black and Latino city where nearly 30% of its people live below the poverty line?
To that, Port Arthur’s John Beard says: “By bringing more gas into play, you say that you’re helping me? When my town has some of the worst air quality in the country? When we’re already suffering from twice the state and national average for cancer, and high rates of heart, lung, kidney disease? When there’s already rampant air, land, and water pollution in my community? And that’s ‘helping me?’ My God, then I hate to see what you’re going to do if you want to hurt me!”
Ben Jealous is the executive director of the Sierra Club and a professor of practice at the University of Pennsylvania.
