[We need to get serious about transitioning off fossil fuels. Time
to say no to “the world’s final wave of fossil-fuel
megaprojects”]
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THE UKRAINE WAR IS NO EXCUSE FOR ENDLESS FOSSIL FUEL EXPANSION  
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Svitlana Romanko, Bill McKibben and Luisa Neubauer
January 14, 2024
The Guardian
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_ We need to get serious about transitioning off fossil fuels. Time
to say no to “the world’s final wave of fossil-fuel
megaprojects” _

‘The obvious alternative is for countries to work together to
spread renewable energy everywhere.’ , Jordan Vonderhaar/Bloomberg
via Getty Images

 

At the close of the hottest year in history, delegates from around the
world gathered at climate talks in Dubai in December and agreed,
finally, on one thing: that the time had finally come for
“transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just,
orderly and equitable manner”. It was the first time in three
decades of climate negotiations that diplomats had used the F-words,
and it seemed like a breakthrough of sorts.

Now we’re going to find out if they meant it.

The president of the United States – which is the biggest fossil
fuel producer on planet Earth – is poised to make a decision: should
his government keep on granting export licenses to companies that want
to build new terminals to send liquefied natural gas (LNG) around the
world. The potential scale of this buildout is almost unbelievable.
The US is already the biggest gas exporter on Earth, but if the
industry gets what it wants, the LNG it exports each year will be
enough to power _half a billion homes. _It will produce _more
greenhouse gases than everything that happens in Europe. _Bloomberg
this week called it “the world’s final wave of fossil-fuel
megaprojects”. It’s the ultimate lock-in to dirty energy.

Biden could block all that, simply by halting the licensing process
while the Department of Energy recalculates its old formulas for what
constitutes the “public interest”. If his government meant what it
signed in Dubai it has no choice (and former secretary of state John
Kerry was instrumental in inserting that language). But the fossil
fuel industry is engaged in a last-ditch effort to storm ahead with
this boondoggle. And they’re using Europe, and Ukraine
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After Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Europe did need some short-term
supplies of gas to make up for what it was no longer getting from
Russia. The US supplied much of it – it already has sufficient
export capacity. And now, Europe is swimming in natural gas. But that
doesn’t stop big oil: here’s the head of the American Petroleum
Institute complaining that any slowdown in the fossil fuel buildout
would somehow be a stab in the back. “The signal that sends to our
allies is very, very concerning: is the United States going to be a
source of LNG and a reliable partner into the future?”

In fact, America’s partners in Europe are now about the business of
replacing gas with renewable energy – Germany last year saw its
lowest fossil fuel use in many decades. The International Energy
Agency forecast this week
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Europe will need steadily less gas over the years ahead, not more. As
Ana Maria Jaller-Makarewicz, an analyst for the Institute for Energy
Economics and Financial Analysis said recently: “The decline in gas
demand is challenging the narrative that Europe needs more LNG
infrastructure to reach its energy security goals. The data is showing
that we don’t.”

The move to renewables comes in part because it makes economic and
climate sense (we live on a planet where the cheapest way to make
power is to point a sheet of glass at the sun) and in part because
everyone knows that as long as we remain dependent on fossil fuels,
the countries that control those supplies have too much power.
That’s obvious with Putin, but why would Europe want to depend on,
say, an America ruled by the Republican frontrunner Donald Trump?

All of this makes clear that a new export facility permitted now,
which will be built over the next five years and in service for the
next 50, won’t have anything to do with Ukraine or Russia or Europe.
Instead, the cargoes are bound for Asia – where new analysis shows
they will displace sun and wind energy, prolonging the climate crisis.
And prolonging the plague of fossil fuel pollution both along the Gulf
coast and in the countries where it’s eventually burned – one
death in five on this planet comes from breathing the combustion
byproducts of fossil fuel. The combustion associated with solar power,
by contrast, happens 93 million miles up in the sky.

Americans don’t want their country fracked to provide cheap gas for
China, and Europeans and Ukrainians don’t want to be used as a
justification for the climate crimes – and the environmental racism
– now under way in the Gulf of Mexico.

The obvious alternative is for countries to work together to spread
renewable energy everywhere – in windy Ukraine as it is rebuilt
after the war, and in the sun-drenched countries of the global south.
Germany – not exactly a tropical nation – now gets more power from
the sun and wind than from coal. This isn’t impossible. But it does
mean standing up to business as usual. Our diplomats need to realize
that security comes, above all, from a stable and working planet, and
that we are running out of time to secure that stability; 2023 was the
hottest year in the last 125,000, and 2024 is likely to be hotter
still.

Those state department officials pushing the Ukraine excuse as a
rationale for expanding gas need to talk with their counterparts who
were at Dubai, and face the fact that American foreign policy can’t
go in two directions at once. Either we’re serious about
transitioning off fossil fuels or we’re not, and Joe Biden gets to
make the call.

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Svitlana Romanko is the founder of Razom We Stand, working to win the
war in Ukraine and rebuild the country with green energy

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Bill McKibben is the founder of Third Act, which organizes Americans
over 60 for action on climate and democracy

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Luisa Neubauer is the author of Beginning to End the Climate Crisis: A
History of our Future

* Fossil Fuel
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* Climate Crisis
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* Ukraine
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