Stop all LNG projects

2/28/2024
Randi Pokladnik
Canton Repository

The recent op-ed in The Hill, titled “Biden’s LNG decision will make it harder to reach our climate goals,” by Tim Ryan and Mary Landrieu, claims that “without natural gas as a foundation,” we cannot meet our climate goals.

The science is clear. We need immediate, concrete solutions to the climate crisis. We do not need a “bridge fuel.” Carbon capture and hydrogen hubs, funded by taxpayer dollars only serve to prop up fossil fuels and avoid transitioning to real solutions.

They are not proven to work at scale, are expensive, and do not address the increasing methane emissions from fracking. Liquified natural gas facilities release carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, and volatile organic compounds like the carcinogen benzene.

Ohio’s southeastern counties have become sacrificial zones as fracked gas heads to coastal export hubs. The 9th “Compendium of Scientific, Medical, and Media Findings Demonstrating Risks and Harms of Fracking,” said “there is no evidence that fracking can be practiced in a manner that does not threaten human health directly or without imperiling climate stability upon which human health depends.”

We can meet the climate challenge by building grid resilience, adopting renewable energy, and investing in energy efficiency. The Big Wires Act promotes more interregional transmission from areas with available energy to areas that need energy. It ensures “utilities and other transmission developers would be responsible for upgrading the grid.”

Technological improvements have now made renewable green energy cheaper than fossil fuels. Energy efficiency tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act include “the installation of new doors, windows, skylights, insulation, heat pumps, installation of residential solar, small-scale wind, geothermal heat pumps, home battery storage, and fuel cell energy systems,” projects to help citizens and the planet.