Message From the Editor

As the pandemic spread in the United States, Louisiana has been identified as a hotspot for the virus. Last April, Gov. John Bel Edwards identified the African-American community in St. John the Baptist Parish as having an alarming death rate. This community lies in the middle of Cancer Alley, an 80-mile stretch along the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge that is lined with more than a hundred refineries and petrochemical plants. A few days later, the governor announced the new Louisiana COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force, created to look at how health inequities are affecting communities most impacted by the coronavirus. But to this day, residents remain frustrated with the slow progress. Julie Dermansky has the story.
This week Exxon reported that it has removed over 30 percent of its proved reserves from its books — essentially wiping the value of its Canadian tar sands holdings from its books. Along with wiping out the value of its tar sands holdings, Exxon also noted that it wrote off “approximately 1.5 billion oil-equivalent barrels, mainly related to unconventional drilling in the United States.” This refers to the fracking business, which has been a financial disaster for all involved. Read more here by Justin Mikulka.

Meanwhile, as temperatures across Texas plunged in mid-February and debates surged over renewables, what was lost in the fray was what the Texas catastrophe revealed about natural gas, now the nation’s primary source of electrical power and a fuel widely marketed as a more reliable backstop to fluctuating wind and solar power. Events in Texas exposed ways gas supply chains can freeze up when cold weather strikes — raising questions about the fuel’s reliability under tough conditions. Sharon Kelly takes a look.

Have a story tip or feedback? Get in touch: editor@desmogblog.com.

Thanks,
Brendan DeMelle
Executive Director

P.S. Readers like you make it possible for DeSmog to hold accountable powerful people in industry and government. Even a $10 or $20 donation helps support DeSmog’s investigative journalism.

From Pollution to the Pandemic, Racial Equity Eludes Louisiana’s Cancer Alley Community

— By Julie Dermansky (12 min. read) —

Mary Hampton, president of the Concerned Citizens of St. John the Baptist Parish, a community group in Louisiana fighting for clean air, opted to do everything in her power to avoid getting the coronavirus after Robert Taylor, the group’s founder, was hospitalized with COVID-19 earlier this year. So she got vaccinated as soon as she could. “Either the vaccine is going to make me sick,” Hampton reasoned, “or the virus is going to kill me.”

Like many African Americans, Hampton’s hesitation around vaccination stems from hearing about the way Black men were left to suffer during the Tuskegee syphilis study, an experiment between 1932 and 1972 which withheld lifesaving treatment, and from her own lifetime of experiences with unequal healthcare access. She told me that she and her family often had to wait hours to see a doctor for medical care while white people would go right in.

Analysis: How Exxon Is Being Forced To Accept The Reality Of Bad Fossil Fuel Investments

— By Justin Mikulka (8 min. read) —

Last August, ExxonMobil warned that it may need to remove 20 percent of its oil and gas proved reserves from its books. While that was a shocking number from the oil major, reality proved to be even more of a shock to the company. On February 24, Exxon reported that it would actually remove over 30 percent of its proved reserves from its books — essentially wiping out the value of its Canadian tar sands holdings from its books.

According to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), proved reserves are “the estimated quantities of crude oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids which geological and engineering data demonstrate with reasonable certainty to be recoverable in future years from known reservoirs under existing economic and operating conditions.”

Fossil Freeze: Deadly Texas Catastrophe Shows How Natural Gas Systems Can Fail when Demand Spike

— By Sharon Kelly (16 min. read) —

As temperatures across Texas plunged in mid-February, memes showing frozen wind turbines — some including misleading photos from Europe in 2015 — spread rapidly on social media. Politicians like former Texas governor Rick Perry and current governor Greg Abbott were quick to (incorrectly) claim that renewables were to blame for the state’s extraordinary power failures.

Those false claims were rapidly called out, rebutted not just by backers of renewable energy but also by Texas’ own power grid operators, who revealed that wind turbines were among the least of the Lone Star State’s problems. Other politicians made headlines for absurdly blaming the “Green New Deal” — a sweeping proposal to rapidly decarbonize the economy that neither Texas nor the U.S. has yet adopted.

From Capture to Culture: Aquaculture in the US

— By Ian Urbina (7 min. read) —

As the Biden administration turns to environmental concerns, one of its top priorities will be how to better protect the world’s oceans. With more than 80 percent of the world’s fish stocks at or near collapse, some marine conservationists suggest that aquaculture might help counter the problem of overfishing.

Now that the new administration is in office and rapidly attempting to reverse many of the policy priorities of its predecessor, marine advocates are watching to see what their posture will be toward aquaculture. But the push to expand fish farms is spurring a fiery debate, prompting calls from the U.S.-based commercial fishing industry for more support while drawing skepticism and critique from many marine biologist and environmentalists.

'No Safe Amount': Environmentalists Sound Alarm Over Texas Refineries' Release of Hundreds of Thousands of Pounds of Pollutants During Storm

— By Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams (3 min. read) —

Texas oil refineries released hundreds of thousands of pounds of pollutants including benzene, carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide, and sulfur dioxide into the air as they scrambled to shut down during last week's deadly winter storm, Reuters reported Sunday.

Winter storm Uri, which killed dozens of people and cut off power to over four million Texans at its peak, also disrupted supplies needed to keep the state's refineries and petrochemical plants operating. As they shut down, refineries flared—or burned off—gases in order to prevent damage to their processing units.

Why the US Rejoining the Paris Climate Accord Matters at Home and Abroad — 5 Scholars Explain

— By Morgan Bazilian, Colorado School of Mines; Deb Niemeier, University of Maryland; Edward R. Carr, Clark University; Kristie Ebi, University of Washington, and Walt Meier, NASA (7 min. read) —

The United States is formally back in the Paris climate agreement as of February 19, 2021, nearly four years after former President Donald Trump announced it would pull out.

We asked five scholars what the U.S. rejoining the international agreement means for the nation and the rest of the world, including for food security, safety and the changing climate. Nearly every country has ratified the 2015 agreement, which aims to keep global temperature rise well below 2 degrees Celsius. The U.S. was the only one to withdraw.

From the Climate Disinformation Database: Mark Steyn

Mark Steyn is the author and columnist of SteynOnline.com, where he writes “Steynposts”—commentary on current events and on free-speech issues in the “Defend Free Speech! section” of his website. Mark Steyn was among dozens of the individuals and organizations profiled in DeSmog's Disinformation Database who posted online or gave interviews about the events surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection. Steyn appeared on the Fox News show Tucker Carlson Tonight on Jan. 6, 2021. As he recounted on his website: “On Wednesday I joined Tucker Carlson to discuss the so-called storming of the Capitol. … The media may be sentimental about the Capitol, but in my unscientific survey of my North Country neighbors the people aren't.”

Read the full profile and browse other individuals and organizations in our Climate Disinformation Database and Koch Network Database.