Tell President Biden and team: new fossil fuels need not apply

Fossil fuel billionaire Wes Edens and his company New Fortress want to radically expand US shipments of liquefied fracked natural gas (LNG). All they need is an expedited permit from the Biden Administration so they can get rich while cooking the climate, polluting an already-overburdened environmental justice community in Louisiana, and dooming our climate.

This is exactly the wrong way to respond to the war in Ukraine and the global climate & energy crisis we’re in.

We’ve been saying since the war began that President Biden needs to invoke the Defense Production Act to ramp up production of clean energy and heating tools, so we can fight fossil fueled fascists at home and abroad. But fossil fuel war profiteers have not been idle either. And now comes Mr Edens and his New Fortress plan to triple down on war, conflict and fossil fuels by cornering the market on as much as 16% of U.S. LNG shipments.

Not if we can stop it first. Sign here to tell President Biden’s administration, No war. No warming. We want a safe climate and a clean energy future for all, new fossil fuel infrastructure like New Fortress’ floating LNG platform need not apply.

New Fortress plan is audacious, almost laughably so. They propose to build build the first offshore LNG export facility in US history, have it running in 12 months, and then ship an eye-popping 11 million metric tons of fuel annually. Coming from a company that mostly owned power plants until last year and a billionaire best known for owning a basketball team it wouldn’t normally be a serious proposal.

And it’s not a brilliant plan: New Fortress’ floating LNG terminal would be built off the shore of Grand Isle Louisiana. As the only inhabited barrier island off the LA coast it’s been ravaged over and over again in recent years by sea level rise, hurricanes, and industrial pollution. The mostly black, brown and indigenous community that lives on Grand Isle is still rebuilding from Hurricane Ida.

New Fortress want’s Biden to give them permission to build an enormous, untested, dangerous, polluting LNG terminal before the community has a chance to respond. Click here to tell President Biden and his team to say no.

But the war in Ukraine has sent global fossil fuel prices soaring. Fossil fuel investors have been profiteering off the war, keeping prices high at the gas pump, the heating fuel delivery, and the global market while making record profits for investors like Edens. And that’s the key to New Fortress’ plan: if global prices stay high they can afford to spend whatever it takes on a new and untested LNG export terminal.

Even if prices crash, the plant explodes, or a climate-fueled superstorm trashes their investment in the next 10 years, they won’t care. New Fortress will have already made so much money they’ll just walk away from the disaster while our communities and climate suffer.

There are already too many onshore LNG export terminals planned or under expansion in the Gulf. These are huge, industrial and chemically complex factories that take at least five years to build and cost billions of dollars. Most of them have run into massive cost overruns and construction delays. The whole industry was in danger of collapsing in a pile of bad loans before the war in Ukraine sent global prices for gas spiking and got greedy fossil fuel war profiteers like Edens interested.

Edens is asking President Biden and his Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to fast track the New Fortress permit so they can make money fast, while gas prices are high. But the pollution, climate chaos, and fossil fuel dependance they create will last for decades – long past the deadline by which President Biden and our partners in Europe have promised to stop burning fossil fuels.

Now, fossil fuel war profiteers are dangerously close to cashing in, again, at an unconscionable price to our climate and communities. We need to act fast and tell the Biden Administration that the way to fight war and warming is with peace and clean energy, not war profiteers and fossil fuels. Send a letter now, before the May 26 comment deadline to tell President Biden and his team: new fossil fuels need not apply.