Last week, the people of Tacoma received a glossy mailer from Puget Sound Energy touting their proposed Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) facility that has been nearly completed without the proper permits. In the mailer, residents were told: "LNG is cleaner. Tacoma LNG will reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Using LNG as a transportation fuel will improve air quality by reducing carbon and particular matter, benefiting both human health and the environment."
On this episode of Locus Focus we talk with two activists on the frontlines of fighting major LNG projects in the Pacific Northwest, who have been innundated with this kind of greenwashing propaganda. Claudia Riedener is the co-founder of Redefine Tacoma, a grassroots environmental group working to stop Tacoma LNG, and Larry Mangan is a landowner in Coos County, Oregon, whose 100 acre ranch is threatened by the Pacific Connector Pipeline that would carry fracked gas to the proposed Jordan Cove LNG Terminal along Coos Bay. We're also joined by Dan Serres, Conservation Director with Columbia Riverkeeper, who has been helping coordinator struggles to stop fracked gas projects across the region. We'll not only talk about how companies try to greenwash projects like Tacoma LNG, Jordan Cove and Kalama Methanol in order to make them more palatable to the communities they are invading. We'll also discuss the intensive campaign being waged to greenwash fracked gas (generally known as "natural" gas) as a bridge fuel to (a very far off) renewable future.
- KBOO