A flare burns at Venture Global LNG in Cameron, Louisiana.Martha Irvine/AP

In a major win for environmentalists, the Biden administration announced late last month it would put a temporary hold on new export permits for liquefied natural gas to “take a hard look” at the impacts of the fuel on “energy costs, America’s energy security, and our environment.” In a statement explaining the hold, Joe Biden gave credit to “young people and frontline communities who are using their voices to demand action from those with the power to act.”

One of those frontline activists picking up the megaphone, so to speak, is Elida Castillo, the program director of Chispa Texas, a local initiative of the League of Conservation Voters, who is sounding the alarm about the dangers she says LNG projects pose to the people living in their shadow. Castillo has worked for years to push back against the growing number of industrial facilities in her community, including the Cheniere LNG export facility in Gregory, Texas, on the Gulf Coast.

Liquified natural gas, or LNG, is gas that’s been super-cooled to about –260° F, at which point it becomes liquid, making it easier to ship around the world. According to the Department of Energy, there are currently eight existing facilities in the country that export LNG, with more than a dozen already approved for construction, mostly in Louisiana and Texas. After the war in Ukraine sparked an increase in gas exports, Castillo says, she and other communities along the coast began to organize as a coalition against the terminals. As the Guardian reports, environmentalists have billed these projects as carbon “mega bombs” with the potential to release 3.2 billion tons of greenhouse gases, or as one researcher estimates, roughly what the entire European Union emits in about a year. On a local level, some worry about the health impact of the terminals’ pollutants, which include volatile organic compounds, carbon monoxide, and more.

Castillo, who was born in and is currently residing in Taft, Texas, just eight or nine miles from Cheniere’s LNG export facility, tells me that “flares” from the plant, the burning of excess fuel, happen constantly, causing noise and light pollution for residents. Add to that the possibility of explosions: As Castillo vividly recalls, part of an LNG facility in Freeport, Texas, went up in a ball of fire in June 2022. Miraculously, no one was injured. But to........

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