PITTSBURGH—Residents of the Mon Valley, a cluster of townships along the Monongahela River 20 miles south of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, endured some of the stinkiest and most polluted air in the nation this Christmas.
Starting on December 21, the region's air exceeded federal safety standards for daily levels of particulate matter—microscopic particles that penetrate the lungs and can trigger heart attacks and respiratory disease—for six consecutive days. One of the region's air monitors recorded the worst air quality in the entire U.S. and registered in the "Code Red" range for several hours on multiple days.
Residents complained that the air smelled like "rotten eggs," "sewer backup," "burning plastic," and "hospital waste," and reported symptoms like wheezing, coughing and choking, nausea, stinging eyes and headaches through the SmellPGH app, which uses crowdsourcing to map smells and symptoms associated with air pollution.
The monitor that registered the Code Red sits near U.S. Steel's Clairton Coke Works plant, which converts coal into "coke" used in steelmaking by cooking it at extremely high temperatures. The plant—one of the region's primary sources of air pollution—is notorious for breaking clean air laws and sickening residents. But this time the facility was operating in full compliance with its permit, according to the Allegheny County Health Department, which oversees air quality in the greater Pittsburgh region.
Clairton Coke Works (Credit: Mark Dixon/Flickr)
The unhealthy air was caused by a combination of U.S. Steel's emissions and a temperature inversion, which occurs during unseasonably temperate winter days when a warm air mass sits above a colder air mass, trapping pollutants that typically blow away close to the ground. The same type of inversion also caused the worst air pollution disaster in U.S. history—the 1948 "Donora Smog," which killed 20 people in the Mon Valley town of Donora, just 13 miles south of the Clairton Coke Works Plant, spurring the creation of the Federal Clean Air Act.
Temperature inversions like these are historically unusual, even in a place like the Mon Valley, which, like all valleys, is especially prone to stagnant air since the surrounding hills and mountains hem in it. But the last five years were the hottest ever recorded on the planet, and inversions are becoming more frequent: While the Mon Valley saw just four inversions of this scale in the previous decade, this was the second one to hit the region so far in 2019.
Some experts say that trend is likely to continue, and that cities around the world could see an influx of similar "super pollution events" as Earth continues to warm.
"For the last at least 60 years we have data for, we can clearly see a trend of increasing temperature inversions in midlatitude regions," Shiliang Wu, an atmospheric chemist and associate professor at Michigan Technological University, told EHN. "I believe this trend will continue in the coming decades, which will likely lead to an increase in extreme air pollution episodes."
Midlatitude regions are the temperate zones between roughly 30 to 60 degrees north or south of the equator. The midlatitudes encompass about 36 countries, including the U.S. and most of North America, and are home to more than half of the world's population.
Wu co-authored a 2016 paper on long-term changes in extreme air pollution meteorology, which he believes was the first to look at six decades of global meteorology data, to learn how events like temperature inversions and heat waves have changed over time. He found that heat waves in the summer and temperature inversions in the winter—both of which can lead to extreme air pollution events—have increased by up to 50 percent in the last 60 years in most midlatitude regions.
Allegheny County Health Department data show particulate matter spikes in late December. (Credit: GASP)
Heat waves often lead to higher ozone levels, while temperature inversions tend to have a stronger impact on particulate matter pollution. Like particulate matter pollution, ozone can also cause chest pain, coughing, throat irritation, and airway inflammation, reduce lung function, and worsen bronchitis, emphysema, and asthma. Particulate matter pollution is also linked to heart disease, heart attacks, and premature death in people who already have respiratory or heart disease.
Extreme air pollution events like the one that recently plagued the Mon Valley have also happened in Salt Lake City, Paris, London, and Beijing in recent years. Many of them were the result of either heat waves or inversions, and some have occurred despite relatively decreased emissions.
There's still some debate in the scientific community about the increase of inversions in winter, and about exactly how future changes in weather patterns will affect levels of particulate matter pollution. Wu believes the data from the last 60 years points to a clear and growing increase in wintertime temperature inversions, and that policymakers in urban areas should take note.
"Certain geographical regions like those in a basin or valley and major urban areas are more likely to be affected by inversions and see this kind of extreme pollution events," Wu said. "What just happened in the Mon Valley is obviously not as deadly as what happened during the Donora Smog, but it's still a serious threat to public health when you have air pollution at this level."
An aerial view of the Pittsburgh region. (Credit: Menghan Zhang/Unsplash)
In the Mon Valley, local environmental organizations have pointed out that this concern is not new to the region, and have continually called for stricter coke oven emission standards in general. Meanwhile, the local health department has acknowledged that climate change will lead to more temperature inversions, and has announced intentions to create regulations that would allow them to require polluters like U.S. Steel to reduce their emissions when they know an inversion is coming.
"[Allegheny County Health Department] recognizes that the increasing frequency of these temperature inversions is associated with climate change," an agency spokesperson said in a statement. "While we will continue to advocate for residents to do what they can to reduce emissions, we must also explore new regulations that would impose corrective action requirements on industry during short-term pollution events."
Other cities—particularly those located in basins and valleys—may need to take a similar approach.
"Air pollution permits are currently designed for average, normal day-to-day conditions, not extreme weather events like heat waves and inversions," Wu said. "I think that will have to change in the future."
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is set to introduce a series of new regulations aimed at reducing pollutants from America's power plants as part of a comprehensive environmental strategy.
The Biden administration is poised to announce up to four new EPA regulations targeting emissions and waste from fossil-fuel power plants.
These rules aim to address carbon emissions, air toxics, and waste from coal and gas-fired plants, with some still under review by the Office of Management and Budget.
The initiative is part of a broader strategy to provide regulatory certainty and address environmental concerns before a critical policy deadline.
Why this matters:
As awareness of climate change grows and the imperative to mitigate its effects becomes increasingly urgent, there's mounting pressure on regulatory agencies like the EPA to take decisive action.
CAMERON PARISH, La. — Late into the night, John Allaire watches the facility next to his home shoot 300-foot flares from stacks.
He lives within eyesight of southwest Louisiana’s salty shores, where, for decades, he’s witnessed nearly 200 feet of land between it and his property line disappear into the sea. Two-thirds of the land was rebuilt to aid the oil and gas industry’s LNG expansion. LNG — shorthand for liquified natural gas – is natural gas that's cooled to liquid form for easier storage or transport; it equates to 1/600th the volume of natural gas in a gaseous state. It’s used to generate electricity, or fuel stove tops and home heaters, and in industrial processes like manufacturing fertilizer.
In the U.S., at least 30 new LNG terminal facilities have been constructed or proposed since 2016, according to the
Oil and Gas Watch project. Louisiana and Texas’ Gulf Coast, where five facilities are already operating, will host roughly two-thirds of the new LNG terminals – meaning at least 22 Gulf Coast LNG facilities are currently under construction, were recently approved to break ground or are under further regulatory review.
Although the U.S. didn’t ship LNG until 2016, when a freight tanker left, a few miles from where Cameron Parish’s LNG plants are today, last year the country became the global leader in LNG production and export volume, leapfrogging exporters like Qatar and Australia. The
EIA’s most recent annual outlook estimated that between the current year and 2050, U.S. LNG exports will increase by 152%.
Allaire, 68, watches how saltwater collects where rainwater once fed the area’s diminishing coastal wetlands. “We still come down here with the kids and set out the fishing rods. It's not as nice as it used to be,” he told
Environmental Health News (EHN).
That intimacy with nature drew Allaire to the area when he purchased 311 acres in 1998. An environmental engineer and 30-year oil and gas industry veteran, he helped lead environmental assessments and manage clean-ups, and although retired, he still works part-time as an environmental consultant with major petroleum companies. With a lifetime of oil and gas industry expertise, he’s watched the industry's footprint spread across Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico’s fragile shores and beyond. Now that the footprints are at the edge of his backyard, Allaire is among a cohort of organizers, residents and fisher-folk in the region mobilizing to stop LNG facility construction. For him, the industry’s expansion usurps the right-or-wrong ethics he carried across his consulting career. For anglers, oil and gas infrastructure has destroyed fishing grounds and prevented smaller vessels from accessing the seafood-rich waters of the Calcasieu River.
From the view of Allaire’s white pickup truck as he drives across his property to the ocean’s shore, he points to where a new LNG facility will replace marshlands. Commonwealth LNG intends to clear the land of trees and then backfill the remaining low-lying field.
“You see what’s happening with the environment,” Allaire said. “When the facts change, I got to change my mind about what we’re doing.”
Community bands together
John Allaire, left, purchased 311 acres in Cameron Parish in 1998, and has watched the oil and gas industry's footprint spread to his property.
Credit: John Allaire
During an Earth Day rally in April, community members gathered in the urban center of Lake Charles to demand local oil and gas industries help deliver a safer, healthier future for all. In between live acts by artists performing south Louisiana’s quintessential zydeco musical style, speakers like James Hiatt, a Calcasieu Parish native with ties to Cameron Parish and a Healthy Gulf organizer, and RISE St. James organizer Sharon Lavigne, who’s fighting against LNG development in rural Plaquemines Parish near the city of New Orleans, asked the nearly 100 in attendance to imagine a day in which the skyline isn’t dotted by oil and gas infrastructure.
Not long ago, it was hard to imagine an Earth Day rally in southwest Louisiana at all. For decades, the area has been decorated with fossil fuel infrastructure. Sunsets on some days are highlighted by the chemicals in the air; at night, thousands of facilities’ lights dot the dark sky.
“It takes a lot of balls for people to start speaking up,” Shreyas Vasudevan, a campaign researcher with the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, told EHN in the days after the rally. In a region with its history and economy intertwined with oil and gas production, “you can get a lot of social criticism – or ostracization, as well – even threats to your life.”
Many are involved in local, regional and national advocacy groups, including the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, Healthy Gulf, the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Turtle Island Restoration Network, the Center for Biological Diversity and the National Audubon Society.
“You see what’s happening with the environment,” Allaire said. “When the facts change, I got to change my mind about what we’re doing.” - John Allaire, environmental engineer and 30-year oil and gas industry veteran
But environmental organizers are fighting a multi-billion-dollar industry with federal and state winds at its back. And LNG’s federal support is coupled with existing state initiatives.
Under outgoing Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards — a term-limited Democrat — the state pledged a goal of reaching net-zero greenhouse emissions by 2050. Natural gas, which the LNG industry markets as a cleaner-burning alternative, is cited as one of the state’s solutions. Louisiana is the only state that produces a majority of its carbon emissions through fossil fuels refining industries, like LNG, rather than energy production or transportation. Governor Edwards’ office did not return EHN’s request for comment.
This accommodating attitude towards oil and gas industries has resulted in a workforce that’s trained to work in LNG refining facilities across much of the rural Gulf region, said Steven Miles, a lawyer at Baker Botts LLP and a fellow at the Baker Institute’s Center on Energy Studies. Simultaneously, anti-industrialization pushback is lacking. It’s good news for industries like LNG.
“The bad news,” Miles added. “[LNG facilities] are all being jammed in the same areas.”
One rallying cry for opponents is local health. The Environmental Integrity Project found that LNG export terminals emit chemicals like carbon monoxide –potentially deadly– and sulfur dioxide, of which the American Lung Association says long-term exposure can lead to heart disease, cancer, and damage to internal or female reproductive organs.
An analysis of emissions monitoring reports by the advocacy group the Louisiana Bucket Brigade found that Venture Global’s existing Calcasieu Pass facility had more than 2,000 permit violations.That includes exceeding the permit’s authorized air emissions limit to release nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, particulate matter and volatile organic compounds 286 out of its first 343 days of operation.
The Marvel Crane, the first liquid natural gas carrier to transport natural gas from the Southwest Louisiana LNG facility, transits a channel in Hackberry, Louisiana, May 28, 2019.
“This is just one facility,” at a time when three more facilities have been proposed in the region and state, Vasudevan said. Venture Global’s operational LNG facility — also known as Calcasieu Pass — “is much smaller than the other facility they’ve proposed.”
In an area that experienced 18 feet of storm surge during Hurricane Laura in 2020 — and just weeks later, struck by Hurricane Delta — Venture Global is planning to build a second export terminal Known as “CP2,” it’s the largest of the roughly two dozen proposed Gulf LNG export terminals, and a key focal point for the region’s local organizing effort.
Residents “don’t really want LNG as much as they want Cameron [Parish] from 1990 back,” Hiatt told EHN of locals’ nostalgia for a community before storms like Rita in 2005 brought up to 15 feet of storm surge, only for Laura to repeat the damage in 2020. Throughout that time, the parish’s population dipped from roughly 10,000 to 5,000. “But the wolf knocking at the door is LNG. Folks in Cameron think that's going to bring back community, bring back the schools, bring back this time before we had all these storms — when Cameron was pretty prosperous.”
“Clearly,” for the oil and gas industry, “the idea is to transform what was once the center of commercial fishing in Louisiana to gas exports,” Cindy Robertson, an environmental activist in southwest Louisiana, told EHN.
Helping fishers’ impacted by LNG is about “actual survival of this unique culture,” Cooke said.
In a measure of organizers’ success, she pointed to a recent permit hearing for Venture Global’s CP2 proposal. Regionally, it’s the only project that’s received an environmental permit, but not its export permit, which remains under federal review. At the meeting, some spoke on the company’s behalf. As an organizer, it was a moment of clarity, Cooke explained. Venture Global officials “had obviously done a lot of coaching and organizing and getting people together in Cameron to speak out on their behalf,” Cooke said. “So, in a way, that was bad. But in another way, it shows that we really had an impact.”
“It also shows that we have a lot to do,” Cooke added.
Environmental organizers like Alyssa Portaro describe a sense of fortitude among activists — she and her husband to the region’s nearby town of Vinton near the Texas-Louisiana border. Since the families’ relocation to their farm, Portaro has worked with Cameron Parish fisher-folk.
“I’ve not witnessed ‘community’ anywhere like there is in Louisiana,” Portaro told EHN. But a New Jersey native, she understands the toll environmental pollution has on low-income communities. “This environment, it’s so at risk — and it’s currently getting sacrificed to big industries.”
“People don’t know what we’d do without oil and gas. It comes at a big price,” she added.
Southwest Louisiana’s Cameron Parish is one of the state’s most rural localities. Marine economies were the area’s economic drivers until natural disasters and LNG facilities began pushing locals out, commercial fishers claim.
Credit: Xander Peters for Environmental Health News
Residents “don’t really want LNG as much as they want Cameron [Parish] from 1990 back,” James Hiatt , a Healthy Gulf organizer, told EHN. "But the wolf knocking at the door is LNG."
Credit: Xander Peters for Environmental Health News
For the most part, Cameron Parish’s life and economy has historically taken place at sea. As new LNG facilities are operational or in planning locally, locals claim the community they once knew is nearly unrecognizable.
Credit: Xander Peters for Environmental Health News
A disappearing parish
The stakes are seemingly higher for a region like southwest Louisiana, which is the epicenter of climate change impacts.
In nearly a century, the state has lost roughly 2,000 square miles of land to coastal erosion. In part driving the state’s erosion crisis is the compounding impacts of Mississippi River infrastructure and oil and gas industry activity, such as dredging canals for shipping purposes, according to a March study published in the journal Nature Sustainability. Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority said Cameron Parish could lose more land than other coastal parishes over the next 50 years. A recent Climate Central report says the parish will be underwater within that time frame.
On top of erosion and sea level rise impacts, in August, 2023, marshland across southwest Louisiana’s Cameron Parish burned. The fires were among at least 600 across the Bayou State this year. Statewide, roughly 60,000 acres burned — a more than six-fold increase of the state’s average acres burned per year in the past decade alone.
But while the blaze avoided coastal Louisiana communities like Cameron Parish, the fires represented a warning coming from a growing chorus of locals across the region — one that’s echoes by the local commercial fishing population, who claimed to have experienced unusually low yields during the same time, according to a statement from a local environmental group. At the site of the Cameron Parish fires are locations for two proposed LNG expansion projects.
"The idea is to transform what was once the center of commercial fishing in Louisiana to gas exports.” - Cindy Robertson, an environmental activist in southwest Louisiana
It was an unusual occurrence for an area that’s more often itself underwater this time of year due to a storm surge from powerful storms. For LNG expansion’s local opposition, it was a red flag.
As the Louisiana Bucket Brigade has noted prior, the confluence of climate change’s raising of sea levels and the construction of LNG export terminals — some are proposed at the size of nearly 700 football fields — are wiping away the marshland folks like Allaire watched wither. Among their fears is that the future facilities won’t be able to withstand the power of another storm like Laura and its storm surge, which wiped away entire communities in 2020.
Amidst these regional climate impacts, LNG infrastructure has shown potential to exacerbate the accumulation of greenhouse gasses that cause global warming. For the most part, LNG is made up of methane — a greenhouse gas that’s more than 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Among the 22 current LNG facility proposals, the advocacy group Sierra Club described a combined climate pollution output that would roughly equal to that of about 440 coal plants.
The climate impacts prompt some of the LNG industry’s uncertainty going forward. It isn’t clear if Asian countries, key importers of U.S. LNG, will “embrace these energy transition issues,” said David Dismuke, an energy consultant and the former executive director of Louisiana State University’s Center for Energy Studies. Likewise, European nations remain skeptical of embracing LNG as a future staple fuel source.
“They really don't want to have to pull the trigger,” Dismukes added, referring to Europe’s hesitation to commit more resources to exporting LNG from the American market. “They don't want to go down that road.”
While there will be a tapering down of natural gas supply, Miles explained, “we’re going to need natural gas for a long time,” as larger battery storage for renewables is still unavailable.
“I'm not one of these futurists that can tell you where we're going to be, but I just don't see everything being extreme,” Dismukes said. “I don't see what we've already built getting stranded and going away, either.”
For now, LNG seems here to stay. From 2012 to 2022,U.S. natural gas demand — the sum of both domestic consumption and gross exports — rose by a whopping 43%, reported the U.S. Energy Information Administration, or EIA. Meanwhile, in oil and gas hotbeds like Louisiana and Texas, natural gas demand grew by 116%.
Throughout 25 years, Allaire has witnessed southwest Louisiana’s land slowly fade, in part driven by the same industrial spread regionally. Near where the front door of his travel trailer sits underneath the aluminum awning, he points to a chenier ridge located near the end of the property. It’s disappearing, he said.
“See the sand washing over, in here?” Allaire says, as he points towards the stretches of his property. “This pond used to go down for a half mile. This is all that's left of it on this side.”
Greenstone Resource Partners LLC sold water rights from Cibola, Arizona, to the Queen Creek suburb, sparking local fears and broader implications for water scarcity management.
Greenstone purchased nearly 500 acres in Cibola and later sold the water rights for a significant profit, redirecting water to Queen Creek, 200 miles away.
The transaction, conducted without a thorough environmental review, is now under legal scrutiny, with fears it sets a precedent for future large-scale water transfers.
Local residents and officials are alarmed, fearing this could lead to more agricultural land being sacrificed for urban water supplies.
Key quote:
"Here we are in the middle of a drought and trying to preserve the Colorado River, and we’re allowing water to be transferred off of the river."
Surging energy demands from a hub of global internet traffic are precipitating a shift back to coal power, impacting communities and energy policies across four states.
Massive data centers in Northern Virginia are causing increased demand for electricity, leading to proposals for expanding coal power usage and transmission lines.
This development challenges clean energy initiatives, with coal plants originally set to shut down being kept operational to meet energy demands.
Local residents express concerns over environmental and aesthetic impacts, feeling marginalized by decisions that favor industry needs over local well-being.
Key quote:
"It's not right. These power lines? They're not for me and my family. I didn't vote on this. And the data centers? That's not in West Virginia. That's a whole different state."
— Mary Gee, local resident
Why this matters:
Internet data centers require vast amounts of electricity to power servers, cooling systems, and other infrastructure. As more data is generated and accessed online, the energy demand of these centers skyrockets, contributing to greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel-based power sources.
Tesla announces job cuts for more than 10% of its workforce due to reduced demand for its electric vehicles and increased competition.
The company has also seen high-profile departures including Andrew Baglino, key in vehicle development, and Rohan Patel, former climate advisor.
There is a global slowdown in EV market growth, with Tesla facing strong competition from cheaper models and new entries from traditional automakers.
Key quote:
"I don’t want to make this sound too cynical, but it’s an indication that Tesla is a car company."
— Mike Ramsey, auto analyst at Gartner
Why this matters:
These layoffs could lead to a short-term reduction in EV production, affecting availability and potentially slowing down the overall adoption rates of electric vehicles. On the other hand, it might also lead to cost restructuring, resulting in more competitively priced models that could stimulate market demand.
In the Solomon Islands, Indigenous tribes are leveraging the lucrative carbon credit market to sustainably protect their ancient rainforests from logging while funneling vital income to their communities.
Several Solomon Islands tribes have united to form the Babatana Rainforest Conservation Project, preserving their forests and selling carbon credits internationally.
The project includes verified protected areas and employs local tribespeople as rangers, enhancing biodiversity and environmental stewardship.
The initiative provides significant economic benefits to the tribes, supporting community developments like education and infrastructure.
Key quote:
"If we misuse or destroy this land, we will not have any other,"
— Linford Pitatamae, leader of the Sirebe tribe
Why this matters:
Natural habitats play a significant role in the carbon market because of their ability to sequester carbon naturally. By valuing the carbon stored in these ecosystems, the market incentivizes their preservation. For example, a forest that might otherwise be cleared for agriculture could be maintained as a carbon sink. The revenue from selling carbon credits can make conservation financially viable for landowners and communities, providing an economic alternative to destructive practices like deforestation.
Amid growing scrutiny over the effectiveness of carbon offsets, a major philanthropic organization announces a groundbreaking plan to authenticate their impact by phasing out coal plants in Asia.
The carbon offset market is in disarray, with many credits failing to effectively counteract emissions as claimed.
The Rockefeller Foundation is launching an initiative to create credible offsets by closing down coal plants in Asia.
This effort aims to provide verifiable environmental benefits and support for communities affected by plant closures.
Key quote:
“There has been a lot of sloppy thinking [in the offset industry]. It has lead to bad practices and over crediting.”
— Joseph Curtin, managing director, Rockefeller’s Power and Climate Team
Why this matters:
A robust offset market can provide the financial mechanisms needed to transition to cleaner energy sources. Strengthening the market could help accelerate the retirement of coal plants by ensuring that investments in offsets lead to permanent reductions in greenhouse gases, thus contributing more effectively to the fight against climate change.
Biodegradable food packaging is a step in the right direction, experts say, but when composted carries risks of microplastic and chemical contamination.
Oregon’s Regenyx plant announced its closing in late February, with those involved calling it a success, despite never reaching planned capacity and millions of dollars lost.
Clairton Coke Works (Credit: Mark Dixon/Flickr)
Allegheny County Health Department data show particulate matter spikes in late December. (Credit: GASP)
An aerial view of the Pittsburgh region. (Credit: Menghan Zhang/Unsplash)
