The heat wave has primarily impacted California, Oregon, and Arizona, resulting in record-breaking temperatures and multiple fatalities.
Most victims were elderly and found in their homes; other deaths include a motorcyclist in Death Valley and a baby in Arizona.
Heat-related deaths are often underreported, as they are frequently attributed to other causes such as heart failure
Key quote:
“The extreme nature of the heat last summer and this summer has meant it’s in the forefront of everyone’s mind, including those in charge of classifying health outcomes and deaths."
— Ashley Ward, director of the Heat Policy Innovation Hub at Duke University
Why this matters:
As the climate crisis intensifies, the frequency and severity of heatwaves are expected to increase, posing a serious threat to public health and the environment. This brutal reminder of our changing climate heightens the pressure for action to mitigate the impacts of global warming. Read more: We are undercounting heat-related deaths in the US.
“Sabemos que es un negocio, y quieres obtener ganancias, pero considera a las comunidades vecinas.”
Las instalaciones industriales más contaminantes del condado de Harris, que incluye a Houston, son en su inmensa mayoría compañías petroquímicas responsables de la emisión de millones de libras de sustancias químicas y de cientos de violaciones ambientales estatales y federales, según un nuevo informe.
Usando las bases de datos de la Agencia de Protección de los EE.UU. (EPA por inglés) y la Comisión por la Calidad Ambiental de Texas (TCEQ por inglés), Air Alliance, una organización ambiental sin ánimo de lucro de Houston dedicada al aire limpio, identificó doce de los mayores contaminadores de Houston.
El informe detalla la emisión de millones de libras de sustancias químicas, gases de efecto invernadero y violaciones de regulaciones ambientales. Muchos de los químicos — que incluyen compuestos cancerígenos como el óxido etileno y el formaldehído — están relacionados con riesgos potenciales para la salud para las comunidades circundantes. Los gases de efecto invernadero contribuyen a problemas locales como aumentos en las tasas de la contaminación por el ozono y material particulado, y en un escala global al aceleramiento del cambio climático.
El informe examina 272 sustancias químicas en 350 instalaciones del Inventario de Emisiones Tóxicas (TRI por inglés) entre 2018 y 2022. La base de datos recopila las emisiones de sustancias químicas, como vertidos, fugas o emisiones, comunicadas por la propia industria. De las 350 instalaciones analizados, tres — ExxonMobil, Chevron Phillips Chemical y LyondellBasell — fueron responsables por la emisión de más de 19 millones de libras de sustancias químicas, que representan cerca de 60% de todas las emisiones en el condado de Harris durante ese periodo.
Esta es la lista de Air Alliance de la “docena más sucia”, las 12 instalaciones industriales más contaminantes del región, según el informe (sin orden específico):
ExxonMobil Baytown Site
Chevron Phillips Chemical
Shell Deer Park Chemical
LyondellBasell Industry
Altivia Oxide Chemicals
Equistar Chemicals Channelview
Atascocita Recycling Center
McCarty Road Landfill
Deer Park Energy Center
Dixie Holdings Inc
Ineos Oxide
Celanese Clear Lake
“Nos pareció necesario identificar las instalaciones más contaminantes para señalar la cantidad de emisiones liberadas por [ellas] y ser conscientes del impacto acumulativo de sus emisiones en las comunidades cercanas”, los autores del informe escribieron.
EHN contactó las tres compañías con la mayoría de emisiones de sustancias químicas.
"Ser un buen vecino es nuestra prioridad,” la representante de comunicaciones de ExxonMobil, Lauren Kight, dijo a EHN en un correo electrónico. "Estamos centrados en reducir las emisiones de nuestros sitios de manufactura, mejorando la calidad del aire en nuestras comunidades y ayudando a proteger el medio ambiente”.
Kight también dijo que el complejo de Baytown tiene “tres plantas industriales de escala mundial: una refinería, una planta de olefinas y una planta de sustancias químicas” para lo cual los datos en el informe de Air Alliance fueron “combinados” y “no se normalizan por tamaño o escala”.
La representante de comunicaciones de Chevron Phillips Chemical, Lisa Trow, dijo a EHN en un correo electrónico, “Chevron Phillips Chemical está comprometido con la operación responsable de nuestras instalaciones y con la mejora continua de nuestro rendimiento ambiental”.
Añadió que Chevron Phillips está trabajando en “reducir las emisiones del aire a través de un equipo de recuperación por gas de antorcha” para “reducir las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero mediante el abastecimiento de mayores cantidades de energía renovable”.
LyondellBasell no respondió a la solicitud de comentarios.
Diez de las instalaciones están dentro del centro petroquímico en las regiones sureste y este del área metropolitana de Houston. Según la EPA, las comunidades de la primera línea, que habitan en los códigos postales que rodean el centro industrial, sufren la mayoría de la contaminación y está compuestas principalmente por personas de color. Los individuos del área también tienden a tener menores ingresos que el promedio de condado.
“Sabemos que es un negocio, y quieres … obtener ganancias, pero considera a las comunidades vecinas”, dijo Inyang Uwak, epidemiológico ambiental de Air Alliance, a EHN en una conferencia de prensa en Baytown el martes pasado.
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.”
PITTSBURGH — On July 31, the federal government announced $30 million of funding for the Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub, or ARCH2, which plans to create hydrogen from natural gas and other sources.
ARCH2 is one of seven planned, federally funded hydrogen hubs across the country, and one of two (along with the Gulf Coast hub) that will rely primarily on fossil fuel sources rather than renewables to create hydrogen.
The $30 million award represents the first round of funding for ARCH2, with a total of $925 million available for this project over the next seven to twelve years. In total, the seven planned hydrogen hub projects are slated to receive $7 billion in federal funding.
The $30 million will be used to “solidify planning, development, and design activities around site selection, technology deployment, community benefits and engagement, labor partnerships, and workforce training,” according to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).
The announcement comes just weeks after Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro signed into law a controversial bill allowing carbon capture and storage in the state, which will be required for the development of the hydrogen hub.
The award announcement frustrated local environmental and community advocates, who say the DOE has not been transparent about the details of the project, its climate and economic benefits, or its potential to add pollution and cause health harms in environmental justice communities that are already overburdened with existing pollution sources.
“This award represents a continued commitment to invest in a natural gas industry that has added to the pollution and health burdens in the region while failing to deliver any measurable growth in jobs, income and population,” Sean O’Leary, senior researcher with the Ohio River Valley Institute, a progressive think tank, said in a statement.
Earlier this year, the Ohio River Valley Institute delivered a letter to the DOE on behalf of 54 Appalachian organizations and community groups calling for the suspension of ARCH2. The letter called on the DOE to release additional information about the projects and offer impacted communities more meaningful opportunities for engagement prior to awarding additional funds — neither of which has happened, according to the organizations that signed the letter.
“Affected communities know little about the proposed projects and their impacts,” the No False Solutions PA Coalition said in a separate statement about the award. “Nevertheless, millions of dollars are being awarded to projects that will surely impact our health and environment BEFORE affected communities have had a chance to weigh in.”
“There’s been a lot of talk about how hydrogen will be a cleaner energy source, but that overlooks the entire picture which includes reliance on the natural gas industry, which we know pollutes and harms communities and drives climate change with methane leaks,” Talor Musil, a field manager with the Environmental Health Project, a public health nonprofit, told EHN.
As Kamala Harris secures her position as the Democratic nominee, her choice for VP could influence her climate agenda, with potential candidates ranging from a senator confronting extreme heat to a transportation secretary pushing for green infrastructure.
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro has pushed for renewable energy and economic revitalization but remains ambivalent about fracking.
Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear acknowledges climate change but navigates a Republican-led legislature, balancing fossil fuel use with renewable energy growth.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg emphasizes evolving transportation policies to address climate impacts and promote electric vehicle infrastructure.
Key quote:
"Our climate is evolving. Our policies and our technology and our infrastructure have to evolve accordingly, too."
A rapid analysis shows the heat dome over Europe and North Africa, which is affecting the Paris Olympics, would not have been possible without human-caused global warming.
Scientists report that carbon emissions have raised temperatures by 2.5C to 3.3C, making extreme heat events more frequent and expected every decade.
Olympic athletes struggle with the heat, while Mediterranean residents without cooling options face health risks, with extreme temperatures causing increased premature deaths.
Key quote:
“Climate change crashed the Olympics on Tuesday. The world watched athletes swelter in 35C heat.”
— Dr. Friederike Otto, climatologist, Imperial College London
Why this matters:
The intensifying heatwave illustrates how global warming is not a distant threat but an immediate danger impacting lives worldwide. As fossil fuel emissions persist, extreme weather events will worsen, threatening human health and safety globally.
The EU's draft position for COP29 seeks contributions from newly wealthy nations to aid developing countries in climate action.
China, the world's second-largest economy and top greenhouse gas emitter, is a focus for increased financial support.
The EU emphasizes that most of the required investment should come from private sources, not national budgets.
Key quote:
"Such broadening of contributions provides an opportunity to increase the finance to support the most vulnerable countries and communities and reflects strong global solidarity towards them."
— Draft of the EU's COP29 position document
Why this matters:
Encouraging contributions from China and other emerging economies could significantly boost funding for climate initiatives. As climate change impacts intensify, equitable financial support is crucial to aiding vulnerable nations in mitigating and adapting to global warming challenges.
Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance played a significant role in weakening federal rules aimed at protecting steelworkers and nearby communities from harmful emissions, according to documents reviewed by The Lever.
JD Vance urged the EPA to drop proposed rules to limit carcinogenic emissions from steel plants, claiming it would harm U.S. steel production and the economy.
The EPA's revised rules, influenced by Vance and others, weakened protections against emissions known to cause cancer and respiratory diseases.
Vance's actions reveal a pattern of prioritizing industrial interests over public health, echoing his past opposition to environmental regulations.
Key quote:
“We have 4 air purifiers, which need [to be] cleaned every 2 days. I try to dust every day, but it's worthless. It's back by that night. My doctor told us if we don't move we'll be in an early grave. You can taste it in your mouth.”
Power shutoffs or wildfire evacuations can be deadly for disabled people, especially nondrivers who may not have a way to get to a cooling center or evacuation point.
