President Biden did the right thing for the country and for the environment by putting a pause on new oil and gas drilling permits. My family and I also support Senators Brown and Merkeley’s effort to ban Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) to China of all places. The Fossil Fuel industry is looking away from Europe to China for massive profits, profits that would continue to enrich a few at the expense of our entire planet. I urge you to seek out any ‘riders’ to future spending bills that allow LNG export to China. The Republicans in Congress will use the old idea that we need to extract more LNG for national security. This is a smoke screen, literally. What these massive exports to China will do is not only enrich the likes of Exxon, it will also increase the cost for consumer, just as it has during the last administration. Instead of subsidizing these sales in Congress, we ought to be taking away their subsidies they currently enjoy. The effect of the climate crisis is playing out now. If China burns more of our own LNG, not even mitigating by the bare minimum of emissions controls that we also fight over with the fossil fuel industry, we are sure to increase the amount of carbon by an ever-larger margin. As it is, it’s going to be difficult to put the genie back in the bottle and stabilize our climate. I urge you, in the strongest possible terms to stop any and all attempts to write lines into spending bills that allow this kind of export, and allow more exploitation of LNG that we do not need. Vote NO on such bill modifications. Vote yes to make renewables easier to permit and deploy. But that’s another subject for another letter. Thank you.
