2025-06-07 18:00:00
This story was reported by Floodlight, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action.
It began with a lobbyist’s pitch.
Tennessee Rep. Rusty Grills says the lobbyist proposed a simple idea: repeal the state’s requirement for reflective roofs on many commercial buildings.
In late March, Grills and his fellow lawmakers voted to eliminate the rule, scrapping a measure meant to save energy, lower temperatures, and protect Tennesseans from extreme heat. Grills, a Republican, said he introduced the bill to give consumers more choice.
It was another win for a well-organized lobbying campaign led by manufacturers of dark roofing materials.
Industry representatives called the rollback in Tennessee a needed correction as more of the state moved into a hotter climate zone, expanding the reach of the state’s cool-roof rule. Critics called it dangerous and “deceptive.”
“The new law will lead to higher energy costs and greater heat-related illnesses and deaths,” state Rep. Harold Love and the Rev. Jon Robinson wrote in a statement.
It will, they warned, make Nashville, Memphis, and other cities hotter—particularly in underserved Black and Latino communities, where many struggle to pay their utility bills. Similar lobbying has played out in Denver, Baltimore, and at the national level.
Industry groups have questioned the decades-old science behind cool roofs, downplayed the benefits and warned of reduced choice and unintended consequences. “A one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t consider climate variation across different regions,” wrote Ellen Thorp, the executive director of the EPDM Roofing Association, which represents an industry built primarily on dark materials.
But the weight of the scientific evidence is clear: On hot days, light-colored roofs can stay more than 50 degrees cooler than dark ones, helping cut energy use, curb greenhouse gas emissions, and reduce heat-related illnesses and deaths. One recent study found that reflective roofs could have saved the lives of more than 240 people who died in London’s 2018 heatwave.
At least eight states—and more than a dozen cities in other states—have adopted cool-roof requirements, according to the Smart Surfaces Coalition, a national group of public health and environmental groups that promote reflective roofs, trees, and other solutions to make cities healthier.
Industry representatives lobbied successfully in recent months against expanding cool roof recommendations in national energy efficiency codes—the standards that many cities and states use to set building regulations.
The stakes are high. As global temperatures rise and heat waves grow more deadly, the roofs over our heads have become battlefields in a consequential climate war. It’s happening as the Trump administration and Congress move to derail measures designed to make appliances and buildings more energy efficient.
The principle is simple: Light-colored roofs reflect sunlight, so buildings stay cooler. Dark ones absorb heat, driving up temperatures inside buildings and in the surrounding air.
Roofs comprise up to one-fourth of the surface area of major US cities, researchers say, so the color of roofs can make a big difference.
Just how hot can dark roofs get?
“You can physically burn your hands on these roofs,” said Bill Updike, who used to install solar panels and now works for the Smart Surfaces Coalition.
Study after study has confirmed the benefits of light-colored roofs, which typically cost no more than dark roofs.
A study by the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that a cool roof on a home in central California saved 20 percent in annual energy costs.
In a three-story rowhouse in Baltimore, Owen Henry discovered what a difference a cool roof can make.
Living in a part of the city with few trees—and where summer temperatures often climb into the 90s—Henry wanted to trim his power bills and stay cooler while working in his third-floor office. So in 2023, he used $100 worth of white reflective roof paint to coat his roof.
Henry said he and his wife immediately saw the indoor temperature drop. They reduced their electricity use by 24 percent.
Known for its durability, a black synthetic rubber known as EPDM once dominated commercial roofing. But in recent years it has been surpassed by TPO, a plastic single-ply material which is typically white and is better suited to meet the growing demand for reflective roofs.
Leading EPDM manufacturers—including Johns Manville, Carlisle SynTec, and Elevate, a division of the Swiss multinational company Holcim—have fought against regulations that threaten to further diminish their market share.
Kurt Shickman, former executive director of the Global Cool Cities Alliance, said those companies have the money to hire top-notch lobbyists who know their way around hearing rooms—and who are on a first-name basis with decision makers.
The EPDM industry has paid for research that has asserted that the impact of cool-roof mandates is inconclusive, and that insulation plays a bigger role in saving energy than cool roofs.
In an emailed response to Floodlight’s questions, Thorp argued that many of the studies cited to support cool roof mandates leave out important factors, such as local climate variations, roof type, tree canopy, and insulation thickness.
And she pointed to a recent study by Harvard researchers who concluded that white roofs and pavements may reduce precipitation, causing temperatures to unexpectedly increase in surrounding regions.
But Haider Taha, a leading expert on urban heat, identified multiple flaws in the Harvard study, stating, “The study’s conclusions fail to provide actionable insights for urban cooling strategies or policymaking.”
When Baltimore debated a cool roof ordinance in 2022, Thorp’s group and the Asphalt Roofing Manufacturers Association (ARMA) lobbied hard against it, arguing that dark roofs are the most efficient choice in “northern climates like Baltimore.”
In cold climates, industry representatives note, cool roofs can lead to higher winter heating bills. “Current research does not support the adoption of cool roofs as a measure that will achieve improved energy efficiency or reduced urban heat island,” Thorp wrote in a letter to one council member.
Multiple studies show otherwise. They’ve concluded that reflective roofs do save energy and cool cities by easing the “urban heat island effect”—the extra heat that gets trapped in many city neighborhoods because buildings and pavement soak up the sun.
Researchers have also found that even in most cold North American climates, the energy savings from cool roofs during warmer months outweighs any added heating costs in the winter.
Despite the opposition, Baltimore passed a cool-roof ordinance in 2023.
Opponents of cool roof requirements like Baltimore’s say they oversimplify a complex issue. In an email to Floodlight, ARMA Executive Vice President Reed Hitchcock said such rules aren’t a “magic bullet.” He encouraged regulators to consider a “whole building approach”—one that weighs insulation, shading, and climate in addition to roof color to preserve design flexibility and consumer choice.
Henry, the Baltimore homeowner, said he thinks the city’s ordinance will help all residents. “Phooey to any manufacturer that’s going to try and stop us from maintaining our community and making it a pleasant place to live,” he said.
Elsewhere, the industry’s lobbyists have notched victories. They’ve lobbied successfully against a cool-roof ordinance in Denver and against stricter standards set by the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE)—a professional organization that creates model standards for city and state regulations.
The current ASHRAE standard recommends reflective roofs on commercial buildings in US climate zones 1, 2, and 3—the country’s hottest regions. Those include most of the South, Hawaii, almost all of Texas, areas along the Mexican border and most of California.
“We’ve been able to stop all of those…mandates from creeping into climate zone 4 and 5,” Thorp said in a recent interview.
Another group headed by Thorp—the Coalition for Sustainable Roofing—worked with the lobbyist to propose the bill that eliminated Tennessee’s cool-roof requirement.
That rule once applied to commercial buildings in just 14 of the state’s 95 counties, but an update to climate maps in 2021 expanded the requirements to 20 more counties, including its most populous urban area—Nashville.
Brian Spear, a homeowner in Tempe, Arizona, has lived in the Phoenix area since the 1980s, back when there were fewer than 30 days a year when the temperature reached 110 degrees. Last year, there were 70 of those days—the highest on record—followed only by 2023, when there were 55 days of 110 degrees plus.
These days, summer mornings start out scorching, he says, “and I feel like if you go outside between 10 and 4, it’s dangerous.”
Spear says he’ll soon replace the aging roof on an Airbnb home that he owns. After weighing the usual concerns—cost and aesthetics—he has chosen a surface that he believes will help rather than harm: a gray metal roof with a reflective coating.
“If someone told me you couldn’t put a dark roof on your house…I’d understand,” he said. “I’m all about it being for the common good.”
2025-06-07 08:45:02
On Friday afternoon, thousands of veterans who fought wars on behalf of the United States descended on the National Mall in Washington, DC, to fight something else: cuts proposed by the Trump administration.
Since his inauguration in January, President Donald Trump has moved to slash and burn the federal workforce—and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is no exception. Already, the sprawling agency serving America’s 16 million military veterans has fired 2,400 probationary workers and proposed eliminating an additional 15 percent of its workforce—about 80,000 people.
Veterans rely on the VA for help with critical needs like counseling for addiction and PTSD, prostheses, senior services, and treatments for cancer stemming from exposure to toxic chemicals. Medical research by VA doctors and scientists not only saves veterans’ lives, but benefits civilians; over the years, the breakthroughs have included pacemakers and CT scans.
“Veterans are the canary in the coal mine for how the rest of Americans are going to experience health care,” an Army veteran from Maryland who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan told Mother Jones.
In addition to protesting job cuts, many in the crowd were incensed by Trump’s executive order to ban trans people from the military. “It is a shame that we’re letting hard-working, able-bodied, willing people go in a time of great need in our military,” said a DC resident who says his trans friend is being forced out of the Navy.
Organizers opted to hold the protest on Friday in part because of its historical significance: June 6 is the anniversary of D-Day, when the US military and Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy, France, in 1944 to help end World War II.
The rally featured a performance by Dropkick Murphys and speeches from former congressman Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), an Air National Guard veteran, and Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), who lost both legs after her helicopter was shot down in Iraq.
“We are sick of politicians promising to look out for veterans when they are on the campaign trail and then abandoning them when they take office,” Duckworth told the crowd.
2025-06-07 01:53:40
Last fall, members of the California Coastal Commission criticized Elon Musk’s political rhetoric during a meeting in which they voted against allowing SpaceX—Musk’s rocket company—to conduct more launches. Musk, one commissioner complained, had been “hopping about the country, spewing and tweeting political falsehoods and attacking FEMA while claiming his desire to help the hurricane victims with free Starlink access to the internet.”
“Incredibly inappropriate,” Musk tweeted in response. “What I post on this platform has nothing to do with a ‘coastal commission’ in California!”
The commissioners’ behavior amounted to “naked political discrimination…in violation of the rights of free speech and due process,” SpaceX has charged in its ongoing lawsuit against the agency. “Rarely has a government agency made so clear that it was exceeding its authorized mandate to punish a company for the personal political views and statements of its largest shareholder and CEO.”
I couldn’t help thinking of that incident yesterday, as Donald Trump—the man Musk once promised would protect free speech and “preserve the Constitution”—weaponized his government power against a political enemy in a way that Golden State bureaucrats could hardly dream of. And that political enemy was none other than Musk himself.
Importantly, yesterday’s meltdown seems to have grown largely out of policy and personnel disputes. In particular, Musk has enraged the White House by calling on lawmakers to sink Trump’s signature budget bill—supposedly because it would add too much to the deficit. (It would also eliminate electric vehicle incentives that benefit Tesla, though Musk insists that isn’t why he’s trying to kill the legislation.)
But as the two billionaires traded insults and allegations, it was the president who took the fight to a lawless new level. He seemingly threatened to retaliate against his former ally by cancelling the government contracts held by Musk’s companies.
“The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!”
Some Trump allies went even further. Steve Bannon called on Trump to “sign an executive order” seizing control of SpaceX, suspend Musk’s security clearances, and possibly have him deported from the country. “He crossed the Rubicon,” Bannon told NPR. “You can’t sit there and…try to destroy the bill. You can’t come out and say kill the president’s most important legislative occurrence.” Bannon also slammed Musk for calling for Trump’s impeachment and for attempting to link the president to Jeffrey Epstein.
Musk, of course, is not a sympathetic figure. If he got his way, Trump’s budget bill would hurt even more people than it already does. Nor is Musk anything close to a reliable defender of free speech. He’s done nothing to stop Trump from using presidential power against other political enemies. But in a democracy, politicians simply cannot be allowed to punish dissent by threatening to destroy the businesses of people who cross them—whether those businesses are media companies, law firms, or a defense contractor run by the world’s richest man.
After his felony conviction in New York last year, Trump claimed to be the victim of political persecution. “If they can do this to me, they can do this to anyone,” he said. That’s worth remembering. If Trump can do this to Elon Musk, he can do it to you.
2025-06-06 23:25:25
In May, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka made headlines when he was arrested during a protest outside of an immigration detention facility in New Jersey and charged with trespassing. Baraka has staunchly opposed the reopening of the 1,000-bed detention center, called Delaney Hall, since Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced a deal with the private prison company that owns it. The trespassing charge against Baraka was later dismissed, but he told supporters that he had been “targeted” by the Trump administration for speaking out. On Tuesday, he filed a lawsuit against Alina Habba, the interim US attorney for New Jersey, claiming that he had been maliciously prosecuted.
The encounter drew national attention at an opportune moment for Baraka, whose gubernatorial campaign has gained unexpected traction. An idiosyncratic figure, he is known for his radical political upbringing and his surprising success addressing violent crime in Newark. He is the son of Amiri Baraka, the firebrand poet and activist who spearheaded the Black Arts Movement, and Amina Baraka, also a central figure in the city’s Black cultural and political scene. Baraka followed in his parents’ shoes in both regards. In 2003, he performed a spoken word poem on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam. He was a school teacher and public school principal before becoming mayor in 2014.
As mayor, Baraka has been unapologetically progressive on most counts and shown an unusual willingness to experiment with policy. During his tenure, Newark conducted a guaranteed income pilot program, allowed 16-year-olds to vote in school board races, and, in an effort to boost homeownership, held a lottery that allowed residents to purchase city-owned properties for $1. Newark has seen significant decreases in most categories of crime since Baraka took office and, in 2022, homicides hit a 60-year-low. Baraka notably broke from the left in 2020, when he rebuffed calls to defund the police and described it as a “bourgeois liberal” stance that did little to address systemic problems.
Baraka is perhaps the most interesting personality in a crowded Democratic primary to replace term-limited New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy. He is running to the left of a field that includes Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop; US Rep. Josh Gottheimer; US Rep. Mikie Sherrill; former state Sen. Stephen Sweeney; and Sean Spiller, president of the state’s largest teacher’s union. Sherrill, a former Navy pilot, pulled ahead of the pack with a 17-point lead in a recent poll. Baraka and a handful of other candidates were clustered around 11 percent.
It’s highly likely that the general election will also be competitive. President Donald Trump recently campaigned for former state assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli, who is favored to win the Republican primary. And last November, Kamala Harris won New Jersey by only six points—a significant downturn from Biden’s 16-point victory in 2020.
So it is remarkable that Baraka has centered his campaign on a full-throated defense of immigrants. The positions that have cemented Baraka’s popularity in Newark may not play as well in a state-wide primary—or in the general election. New Jersey is mostly suburban and around 60 percent white. If he wins, Baraka would be the state’s first Black governor.
Earlier this week, I traveled to Newark to interview Baraka. It was a sweltering afternoon, and the downtown business district was sedate. Outside of a Kenyan restaurant, an aide pointed to the city’s changing skyline as evidence of the success of the mayor’s housing agenda: There were several high-rise apartment buildings going up, each representing hundreds of affordable units. Inside, I met Baraka, who was wearing a gray suit and a floral tie. Though he is a commanding presence on the debate stage, he was soft-spoken and unhurried during our interview. He seemed a bit world-weary—the primary is in its home stretch. Early voting is already underway, and election day is this Tuesday.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What was it like growing up in Newark with two very prominent artists and activists as parents?
I grew up in the heart of the South Ward, and the block was filled with its share of folks who were prominent in our community. We always had people come over—artists and musicians and poets and community activists from around the world.
It was pretty different growing up in that kind of environment. Early on, we were a part of what was called the African Free School [an alternative community school founded by Baraka’s parents]. My parents were also involved in electing the first African American mayor of Newark [Kenneth Gibson] and in the 1972 National Black Political Convention. There was both positive recognition from the community, and people who didn’t like my father. He was always center stage, whether you wanted it to be that way or not.
What your parents were doing was community activism, which is very different from running for public office.
Completely different.
How did you decide to get involved in electoral politics?
I was a community activist when I was a teacher. We would always be marching and protesting down to City Hall. And I wondered, why are we coming here to this building?
When I was 24, I ran for mayor. We raised $10,000 from fish fries and poetry readings. I remember debating [Newark Mayor] Sharpe James and William Payne [who later became a state assemblyman]. It’s like you’re in a fight and you get hit a couple of times, but you don’t get knocked out. You think, “Oh, I can handle this.”
That was my first foray into understanding what political power meant, as opposed to just having a defensive strategy. What does it mean to go on offense?
One of your platforms at the time was universal healthcare. Do you think that coming into office requires giving up on some of that progressive idealism and moderating?
No. I think that all of the things that we’re trying to do can get done. But they have to get done in this way. I just told somebody yesterday that I’m a Democrat because that’s the only weapon we have. The Democratic Party is the tool that we have to push the ideas we want to push, and organize the things we want to organize—right until something else is created.
All of the things that we’re trying to make happen—whether it’s universal healthcare or free education—that struggle is protracted, and it may take stages. But we have to do our part until other people can take it a little further than we can. There were no breakfast programs in schools until the Black Panthers started them, and public housing was an issue that came from the community. A lot of these things may start in a humble, small place and become more universal, more acceptable, through education and advocacy.
How do you strike a balance between meeting people where they are and persuading them on issues?
I learned that early on. I lost a lot of races because I thought I was right and other people were wrong. It was actually me being wrong, because I could not unite what I was saying to the things that they thought that were important.
My mother used to say you can’t bring people to the community meeting if they’re hungry. You got to feed them first, and then they’ll come to the meeting. The reality is, we have to meet people’s needs in order to make them care about the things that we think are important. To talk to them about why they don’t have food in the first place, right?
I think the Democrats have it a little backwards. They like to have these discussions without people eating. People have to eat first, then you can talk to them about billionaires who are taking their resources away.
This seems like a good time to turn to Delaney Hall and your sustained activism around the administration’s immigration agenda. Why has that been so central for you?
I think what these people are doing is dangerous, and if we allow it to continue to happen, many of us will be in jeopardy. Our lives, our rights, our democracy will be in jeopardy.
So it’s more than just what the polls say. You’re not pushing for things simply because they’re popular. I would imagine that people’s sentiment prior to Trump’s re-election is completely different than what it is now. Across this country, people are coming out of their houses, videotaping and trying to stop ICE from kidnapping people off the street.
Are you able to talk about your arrest and the lawsuit that was just filed?
The irony is that they keep saying that we tried to get arrested. Well, you don’t have to try to get arrested. They were itching to do that from the very sight of me.
They had no lawful reason to arrest me. Trespassing is a state charge that you get a summons for. You don’t get handcuffed, fingerprinted, have a mug shot taken, and be interrogated in a room. That doesn’t happen for a Class E misdemeanor, certainly not here in New Jersey.
These people violated my rights, and, more importantly, they violated the constitution of this country. They think they can do it arbitrarily, and nobody should say anything about it. So I don’t agree with that. I think somebody should say something about it.
What’s the significance of the Trump administration potentially targeting an elected official?
They just don’t care. And that’s really the danger of it. The cameras, the videos, should give you some pause, but it doesn’t. They lied on TV. When I got out of the holding cell, I had to listen to these people saying all this stuff that didn’t happen: that we broke the law. That the Congresswoman [LaMonica McIver] assaulted people. That we slammed ICE agents, and we barged our way into this place. All of this was not true. I thought I was in The Twilight Zone. And so we just started dropping the footage everywhere, so they could see what these people are manufacturing—lies.
I want to turn to the governor’s race. Affordability has been a common platform in the Democratic primary, but it was also one of the most persuasive issues that Trump ran on last November. Nationally, Democrats have had trouble convincing voters that they’re willing to prioritize affordability. How are you confronting that?
I think the Democratic message is right. People want the message; they just don’t like the messengers. We’re now yelling and screaming at Donald Trump’s spending plan that’s given some billion dollars of tax breaks to the wealthy, but the Democrats have talked about doing the same thing. The party of working families has not helped working families.
Health care in New Jersey is too high. Insurance companies and hospitals are killing us economically, and nobody is reining them in. LLCs are buying up all these properties and driving our mortgages up artificially, and nobody is reining them in. Childcare costs are higher than people’s rent. We can’t solve these problems. We don’t have the will to, and so people lose faith in our ability to govern.
Democrats are mistaking other Democrats staying home for approval for Donald Trump. It’s not approval for Trump. It’s disapproval for you.
You’ve campaigned on your record as the mayor of Newark, but this city is demographically and geographically different from the rest of New Jersey. How do those accomplishments translate to statewide issues?
The issues are the same: housing, crime, the environment, access to education and opportunity. We have reduced people’s healthcare costs in Newark. We have created homeownership. We have reduced crime.
It’s a mistake to think there are Black problems and white problems. Black people have a specific and unique history in this country that causes us to experience problems disproportionately. Doesn’t mean that other people don’t have them.
Maybe it’d be useful to talk specifically about affordable housing, which is an issue that can be very divisive in some of the suburban areas of the state. How are you talking to voters about your platform on that?
When people think of affordable housing, they think of a 30-story housing project full of poverty and violence. That idea is fueled by prejudice and racism. But affordability is a problem for everybody in New Jersey. In order to drive your taxes down, drive your rents down, drive your mortgages down, you have to build more housing. That’s just simple supply and demand that you learn in capitalism. Nobody disagrees that we need to build more housing. They just disagree on how and where.
When you’re out in the suburbs talking to those voters, who are predominantly white, are you trying to change the face of affordable housing?
The atmosphere has changed it for us. We just have to state it right. People know their children can’t afford to live here. They’re spending 30 or 50 percent of their income on rent. They’re living in their childhood bedrooms and attics and basements. When I say it, people laugh, because they know it’s true.
They know who these people are, right? I don’t have to change their face. It’s them. Your taxes are going up. You’re one month away from not being able to pay your mortgage, because it’s going up. It’s getting incredibly hard for you to sustain yourself. That resonates in everybody’s community, even in the suburbs.
To end on a lighter note, a video of you performing on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam has been featured in Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter tour. Did you know that was happening?
I didn’t know that she was going to do that. I was shocked and humbled. I wrote that decades ago, fresh out of college. I would have never known—I didn’t even know Beyoncé when I wrote that. I don’t think there was a Beyoncé.
2025-06-06 18:00:00
This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
More than three-quarters of new gas pipeline capacity under development in the US would feed additional liquefied natural gas exports rather than supporting domestic energy needs, a new report concludes.
Greenhouse gas emissions tied to that new capacity would be far larger than the current climate pollution from all coal-fired power plants nationwide, according to the report, published Monday by the Center for Energy & Environmental Analysis. CEEA is a recently formed think tank based in Arlington, Virginia, that focuses on energy and environmental policy.
“The money flowing to gas pipeline infrastructure is not slowing and is intended to push US gas production even higher from its current record levels,” Jeremy Symons, president of the CEEA and a former federal climate policy advisor, said in a written statement. “This buildout will extend our dependency on natural gas for decades to come, slowing the transition to cleaner, more affordable alternatives.”
Planned natural gas transmission pipelines would add 99 billion cubic feet per day of additional capacity, a figure just below the total volume of US natural gas production in 2024, according to the report. The 10 largest planned pipelines across the country—and 80 percent of total capacity of active pipeline projects—are intended to export gas overseas as LNG, based on the authors’ assessment of federal data and other public records.
The additional gas shipments would have significant implications for climate change. If all of the pipelines are built and run at full capacity, carbon dioxide emissions from burning this additional gas would be two and half times greater than the CO2 currently released from all US coal-fired power plants, the report found.
This doesn’t include emissions of methane, a climate super pollutant and the primary component of natural gas. Methane emissions occur at every step of the natural gas supply chain—from wellheads and pipelines to LNG vessels and end users—as the gas leaks or is intentionally vented.
“If we are just exporting our emissions to other countries, that’s still going to cause climate change.”
Methane emissions from the additional pipelines would pack a climate punch nearly twice that of CO2 emissions from coal-fired power plants over a 20-year period, according to the report.
The amount of gas leaks from the oil and gas sector will likely increase as the Trump administration rolls back the industry’s methane regulations, the report noted.
“We know from hundreds of thousands of aerial and satellite measurements that methane leaks from oil and gas production are far worse than we previously realized, which makes the climate footprint of natural gas as bad as coal in many regions of the country,” said Danny Richter, a senior fellow with CEEA and the report’s lead author. “We had a clear path to clean up the methane problem, including the methane emissions reduction program enacted by Congress in 2022 as well as EPA regulations for the oil and gas industry. But that pathway has been shut down by the current administration.”
A fee on excessive methane emissions from oil and gas producers implemented under the Biden administration was rescinded by the Trump administration on May 12.
“It is clear from the beginning of this ‘report’ that it was created with the outcome already determined and no desire to provide facts,” an EPA spokesperson told Inside Climate News. “US methane emissions have been falling for decades thanks to American innovation, not heavy-handed government regulations, while domestic production of oil and gas has exponentially increased. According to EPA, methane emissions in the United States decreased by 19% between 1990 and 2022.”
Measurements in the field have repeatedly shown that reported methane emissions far understate actual releases.
The American Petroleum Institute, an oil and gas industry group, did not respond to a request for comment.
The report is based on US Department of Energy data on 104 pipeline projects currently under development. It is unclear whether all of the planned pipelines will be built. Fifty-four of the projects, slightly more than half of all pipelines under development, have either not yet been approved or are on hold.
This includes one of the largest proposed pipelines, the $45 billion Alaska Nikiski LNG project. The pipe, which proponents have sought for decades, would transport gas 805 miles from Alaska’s North Slope to an LNG export terminal in southern Alaska. Completing the proposed export terminal, a retrofit of an existing import terminal, is included in the project’s projected cost.
The developer, the Alaska Gasline Development Corp, has applied for permits for the pipeline, many of which were approved during the last Trump administration, but still requires more.
President Donald Trump has directed agencies to speed up permitting and roll back environmental protections. He touted the Alaska Nikiski LNG project in an address to Congress earlier this year as “truly spectacular” and said “the permitting is gotten.”
Arvind Ravikumar, co-director of the Energy Emissions Modeling and Data Lab at the University of Texas at Austin, cautioned that the report included figures for carbon dioxide emissions of gas burned by end users in other countries that import the LNG. “The way international carbon accounting works in this space is that you count only those emissions that happen within your national border,” Ravikumar said.
However, David Lyon, a senior methane scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund, said including emissions from burning the gas, wherever it occurs, made sense. “Climate change is global,” Lyon said. “If we are just exporting our emissions to other countries, that’s still going to cause climate change and have impact.”
However, Lyon noted that in some cases, building gas pipelines could actually help reduce emissions. For example, in the Permian basin of West Texas and southeastern New Mexico—the largest oil and gas producing region in the country—gas is often flared, or vented, due to a lack of sufficient pipeline capacity.
In such cases, additional pipelines could help reduce flaring and its associated emissions. But it would be better to avoid drilling new wells in areas that lack sufficient pipeline capacity in the first place, Lyon added.
In comparing greenhouse gas emissions associated with the planned pipelines to those of coal-power plants, the report only compares CO2 emissions between the two fuel sources. Elsewhere, the report discusses methane emissions from the gas supply chain, but does not consider methane emissions from coal mines that feed coal-fired power plants. A recent peer-reviewed study comparing the greenhouse gas emissions of LNG and coal found methane emissions from coal mines were relatively modest compared to coal’s CO2 emissions.
In addition to permitting issues, economic forces could also limit the number of pipeline projects that get built in the coming years, or the extent to which completed pipelines operate at full capacity. China, the world’s largest importer of LNG, stopped taking US gas entirely in March in response to US tariffs on Chinese goods.
Symons said the ongoing pipeline buildout could commit the US to significantly larger LNG exports for decades to come. “This locks in more fossil fuel dependency that future presidents won’t be able to make go away,” he said. “Policies like tax incentives come and go, but pipelines are forever.”
Correction, June 6: This story has been updated to credit its original publisher, Inside Climate News.
2025-06-06 05:12:04
A new Trump-backed attack on domestic violence services just dropped—and this time, it’s targeting survivors’ pets.
Tucked inside the 1,200-page appendix to the White House’s budget request to Congress is a proposal to eliminate a grant program, funded by the Agriculture Department and administered by the Department of Justice, that provides domestic violence shelters with money to support survivors’ pets. Advocates say the program, known as PAWS, helps fill a critical gap despite its relatively small budget of $3 million: Many domestic violence shelters do not allow people to bring their pets with them, which can prevent survivors from leaving their abusers or lead them to return to them, according to a survey conducted by the Urban Resource Institute (URI) and the National Domestic Violence Hotline.
“Survivors won’t leave, they can’t leave, if they’re going to leave their pets behind,” said Lauren Schuster, vice president of government affairs at URI, a New York City-based domestic violence service provider that lobbied for the creation of PAWS and received one of the program’s first grants. “Pets are often the only source of unconditional love that a survivor experiences when they’re in abusive relationships. So many leave [abusers] with little more than the clothes on their backs, their children and their pets, and to have them be forced to make a decision [to leave their pets] is too much for them to bear.”
The PAWS funds were first distributed in 2020, after being authorized as part of the passage of the 2018 Farm Bill. Since then, more than 44 PAWS grants have been distributed to organizations across 26 states, according to Schuster and Nancy Blaney, director of government affairs at the Animal Welfare Institute, an organization that also lobbied for the creation of the program. URI received a $600,000 grant during the first year of PAWS’ distribution, which funded food, supplies, and veterinary care, Schuster said. Now, 11 of their 24 New York City shelters are pet inclusive, thanks to private funding and some other government grants the organization has secured, she added.
The proposal to eliminate the program comes as just the latest example of the Trump administration’s attacks on domestic violence services. The DOJ previously canceled hundreds of grants that were reportedly valued at more than $800 million and supported victims of domestic violence and other crimes. Some of those cancelations were subsequently reversed following repots from Mother Jones and other news outlets.
The administration’s attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion and transgender people have also led domestic violence service providers to purge resources offering particular support for LGBTQ survivors. Trump’s short-lived federal funding freeze also threw the nonprofits providing services to survivors into disarray. The federal budget also proposes eliminating the office focused on violence prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
While this is not the first time a presidential budget has proposed cutting the program—Biden’s proposed budget last year did, too—advocates say the threat feels more pressing now, in light of the ways the Trump administration has already undermined support for domestic violence service providers and survivors.
Congress has signaled they could move forward with decimating PAWS. On Thursday, the House Appropriations Agriculture Subcommittee passed a version of their budget bill that lacks funding for the PAWS program.
“It’s disappointing to see the failure to understand the importance of these grants to these individuals and how much it means to provide those resources so domestic violence survivors can get out of a dangerous situation,” Blaney, from the Animal Welfare Institute, said.
The proposal to cut the funds is also puzzling in light of the fact that Attorney General Pam Bondi previously reversed grant cancelations that offered similar support for pets, and extended her personal appreciation to some of those service providers, NBC News reported. “Our understanding is that all the pets grants were reinstated as it is a passion area for the AG,” Jennifer Pollitt Hill, executive director of the Maryland Network Against Domestic Violence, which had its canceled grant for pet support restored, previously told me. Now, though, Bondi’s office could lose grants that offer similar critical support. (Spokespeople for the DOJ, the USDA, and the White House did not respond to questions from Mother Jones.)
Democratic Whip Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.), who sponsored the House version of the 2017 bill proposing the creation of the grant program, expressed her disappointment in a statement provided to Mother Jones on Thursday. “By raiding the PAWS Act to give their mega-donors a tax break, Republicans aren’t just abandoning vulnerable animals—they are betraying women, children, and families.”
Stephanie Love-Patterson, president and CEO of the National Network to End Domestic Violence, said that shelters often do not allow pets for a variety of reasons, including having lack of access to funds or because survivors may be scared of or allergic to certain pets. But that can have tragic consequences for survivors. Love-Patterson recalled an incident from her days working as an advocate at a domestic violence shelter that did not accept pets. When one of the survivors had to leave her golden retriever at home, “her husband called her regularly just so she could hear him torturing the dog,” Love-Patterson told me.
“She oftentimes had one foot in the shelter and one foot going back home,” she added. “That was her baby.”
Correction, June 6: An earlier version of this story misstated the number of pet-inclusive Urban Resource Institute (URI) shelters in New York City.
