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All of a sudden, the U.S. has become the biggest liquid-natural-gas exporter in the world. Supplied by a souped-up hydraulic-fracturing industry, and spurred by Russia’s war on Ukraine, which has hampered European gas access, LNG export terminals are being built on a monumental scale throughout the U.S. Gulf Coast, in places so beset by climate disasters that homes there are now deemed uninsurable.
Shipping LNG abroad could be its own climate disaster, with questionable benefits: Recent research found that it may be worse for the environment than burning coal; other reports suggest that the build-out will quickly outpace future European demand or financially benefit global commodity traders over European consumers. These discrepancies have prompted questions about whether the Biden administration would step in to halt the infrastructure boom.
The answer was not obvious: America’s climate policy under President Joe Biden has been full of contradictions. Biden ran on a platform that presented him as the first climate president, then led the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest investment the U.S. has made in curbing climate change. He launched the American Climate Corps, set a new national goal to reduce emissions, and made moves to phase down super-pollutant HFCs and methane emissions. At the same time, he has supervised perhaps the single-most oil-and-gas-intensive year in U.S. history. America now produces more oil than any other country ever has. He granted a key permit for a gas pipeline in Appalachia maligned by activists for its threat to forests and waterways, and signed off on the Willow Project, a sprawling new $8 billion oil-drilling project on pristine federal lands in Alaska. Activists rightly called it a “carbon bomb,” and its approval left young voters embittered.
As of last summer, most Americans disapproved of Biden’s handling of climate change, per a July Washington Post–University of Maryland poll. Yet, in 2024, Biden still seems to want to present himself as the climate president. Today the White House announced that the administration would pause the approval process for LNG exports; as The New York Times previewed earlier this week, this decision has the potential to delay the largest of the proposed export terminals, known as CP2, in southwest Louisiana. The Department of Energy is responsible for determining whether infrastructure is in the public interest; the White House now says the analyses that go into those decisions do not adequately account for emissions that contribute to climate change. “This pause on new LNG approvals sees the climate crisis for what it is: the existential threat of our time,” the White House said in a statement.
This decision hands climate activists their swiftest victory in recent memory. Whereas fights against other “carbon bomb” projects, such as the Keystone XL pipeline, dragged on for years, the LNG fight was just gaining national momentum, with grassroots groups and major figures lining up behind it. “We’ve been pushing so hard for this,” James Hiatt, a former refinery worker in Louisiana who started his own organization last year to oppose the LNG build-out in his home state, told me. Several LNG terminals have been approved under a system that determines public interest without explicitly considering climate change; gas exports have also been driving up prices for gas consumers in the U.S. To Hiatt, nothing about that is in the public interest. Updating that determination to include the carbon and economic impacts may delay projects for months or indefinitely.
Sixteen other proposed terminals like CP2 could eventually be affected by the administration’s new public-interest evaluation. Hiatt said he would like to see clear confirmation that any new analysis applies to all of those. The petroleum industry is already signing letters to oppose any delays in approving exports. And Biden has likely teed up a legal fight. But clearly, his administration felt it would be worth it.
A recent voter analysis helps explain why: Climate can absolutely swing elections. Researchers found that voters’ concerns over climate change may have cost Republicans the presidency in 2020. All else being equal, they found that Republicans could have gained a 3 percent margin in the popular vote if climate-change worries had stayed at 2016 levels, rather than substantially rising in the intervening years, as they did. Without that, the presidency would very likely have gone to Donald Trump.
If this surprises you—climate is typically given scant airtime during national elections, and ranks a relatively minor issue for many voters—you’re not alone. “I was a little bit surprised too,” Matt Burgess, the director of the Center for Social and Environmental Futures at the University of Colorado at Boulder and an author on the report, told me. But according to the report, views on climate change were one of the strongest predictors of how people voted in 2020, especially among independents, and more than a quarter of Republicans who think climate change is “very important” voted for Biden that year. Democrats have a 26-point lead over Republicans on the issue, per a recent poll.
Less than 5 percent of voters see climate change as their top issue, ranking it below such issues as the economy, crime, immigration, and health care. And yet it still holds sway. “Most of those, if not all of those, issues are affected by climate change. Maybe voters are becoming more aware of that and seeing those connections,” Burgess said. He also thinks that moderate voters who are concerned about climate might explain the effect his analysis found. These voters might not see climate as their top issue, but they might still pause before voting for a candidate who derides climate change, given the strength of the evidence now supporting both its existence and effects. Such a candidate might be seen as pandering, or out of touch with reality. “I am that voter in Canada,” Burgess, who is Canadian, said. He’s voted conservative in the past, but “I would not vote for a climate denier, full stop.”
The decision to delay the LNG build-out might appeal to a broad swath of voters worried about energy costs: The White House said it would evaluate “potential energy cost increases for American consumers and manufacturers” caused by exporting LNG, and energy prices are a key issue in any election year. Still, the people who have been most vocal about the export expansion are the people who live in the places these terminals will be built, along with left-leaning climate activists—Jane Fonda was in New Orleans earlier this month protesting the terminals. The administration noted this too, saying, “We will heed the calls of young people and frontline communities who are using their voices to demand action from those with the power to act.” And activists are celebrating this delay. They may not see Biden as the climate president, but they will mark this at least as one point in that column.
Hiatt says he thinks the move would certainly help endear Biden to otherwise disappointed climate voters. Delaying LNG exports is “showing that he’s willing to at least stand up to some oil and gas,” Hiatt said. For young people who felt “stabbed in the back,” as Hiatt put it, by Biden’s Willow Project approval, and for climate-conscious voters who might be more inclined to vote third-party, “it’s a good indication that he’s wanting to do the right thing.”
