Cascading Disasters on the Gulf Coast Clarify the Need for a Green New Deal
By Zef Egan, Claudia Tomateo and Karim Ahmed
A RESILIENCE essay series in collaboration with the Urban Systems Lab. Read part one here: Coronavirus, Hurricanes, and Politics on the Gulf Coast: Winning Strategies and Unequal Vulnerability.
The 2020 hurricane season and Winter Storm Uri contributed to changing underlying questions for infrastructure and climate resilience. We are no longer asking: How do we prepare for climate chaos? We are asking: How do we recover? And how can our recovery prepare us for future shocks?
On August 25, 2020, Motiva’s Port Arthur Refinery, the largest in the country, shuttered operations with Hurricane Laura approaching. Days later Laura made landfall in Cameron, Louisiana and barreled through the Gulf. The storm veered slightly east, sparing Port Arthur the worst impacts.
Residents of Port Arthur nevertheless suffered the consequences. Before the storm, Motiva flared an estimated 130,000 pounds of pollution into the neighborhood, blackening the sky with benzene, carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide. Refineries must flare when shutting down so as to prevent damages to the machinery. Damages to people living around refineries include asthma and other respiratory illnesses and hypertension. Hypertensive and respiratory ailments can cause sickness and death in people infected with the novel coronavirus. A Harvard study found that parishes in Louisiana with the highest COVID-19 death rates are all in Cancer Alley, a petrochemical hub.
Just over a month later Hurricane Delta hit Port Arthur with even stronger winds. Once again, Motiva had to shut down a unit, releasing flares. Hurricane Delta compromised oil and gas infrastructure, causing blackouts. It damaged houses and forced evacuations in communities that were still recovering from Hurricane Laura. Stories like these of cascading disasters echoed throughout the Gulf Coast. It was the most active hurricane season on record.
By February, COVID-19 infection rates in Louisiana and Texas had finally begun to decline. Communities recovering from hurricanes found that contractors and volunteers were stretched thin by the sheer number of disasters from which to rebuild.
On February 13, Winter Storm Uri descended on the Southern States. Freezing temperatures lasted 4 days. Two million homes lost power. Water outages were rampant.
Winter Storm Uri caused 51 deaths in nine states. In Mexico, where power plant failures in the United States led to rolling blackouts, at least twelve people died. Tabulating an accurate death count will be difficult, as with other recent climate disasters the toll will likely mount as investigations become more comprehensive, and include marginalized communities. The storm is the costliest in history according to the Insurance Council of Texas; AccuWeather estimates it will cost Texas $130 billion, double the total damage from all 2020 Atlantic storms. Nationwide 6 million vaccines were delayed. The Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center called for urgent blood donations and supplies fell dangerously low. Hospitals in Austin without running water had to evacuate patients. St. David’s South Austin Medical Center, already operating without water, began losing heat. In a prison in Texas, where over half of the women incarcerated had just tested positive for COVID-19, water and sewage pipes burst. The inmates had to wade in feces to clean the flooded, freezing facility. They were deprived of drinking water for seven hours. Coronavirus may spread through fecal matter, and hydration is paramount to recovery.
Multiple systems failed due to the implosion of fossil fuel infrastructure. Refineries in Texas and Louisiana were forced to shut down. The five largest alone flared an estimated 337,000 pounds of petrochemical pollutants. By February 15, 26 of the 34 gigawatts that had gone offline were from gas and coal. Natural gas shortages forced closures at the majority of Texas’ peak power plants. Equipment at nuclear and coal plants froze. Some wind turbines froze, too, although renewable sources sustained at or above average winter generation during the storm. Northern states winterized turbines and coal plants alike, which kept generating through colder weather. ERCOT instituted rolling blackouts to prevent worse outages. In Houston, corporate skylines shone brightly overnight while ERCOT issued rolling blackouts to historically marginalized communities.
In an attempt to distract attention from their failures, Governor Abbot and other Republicans blamed the yet to be instituted Green New Deal. Meanwhile, wind and solar kept producing at or above planned capacity.
Clearly the isolation of Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) from the national grid and subsequent industry directed deregulation put Texans at risk. It also ensured that working class people would front the bill as scarcity pricing skyrocketed to $9,000 per megawatt-hour. The exact same sequence of system failures ensued after the storm of February 2011. Legislatures and private companies failed to adapt to winter. Pretending that Winter Storm Uri was a force majeure ignores science and recent history. Governments are tasked with regulating utilities. When they fail to do so, disasters ensue.
Winter Storm Uri proved that emergency preparedness and recovery must adapt to cascading disasters. Sudden winter storms and cold spells are likely to become more frequent in Texas due to climate change, even as winters grow milder. Even without climate stressors, the politics of privatization and austerity expose communities — particularly BIPOC communities — to climate disasters with deadly consequences.
Cascading disasters challenge traditional recovery efforts. With no single event to mobilize around, the trouble is chronic. Responding efficiently and equitably will become increasingly valuable as the impacts of climate change mount. We must transform emergency preparedness and recovery so that Federal funds are used in the public interest rather than for the benefit of special interests.
Extremes are symptomatic of climate chaos. A warming Arctic weakens the jet stream which unleashes freezing temperatures and storms on the Midwest and South. In January 2019, the polar vortex caused blackouts and burst water mains throughout the heartland. In many states the shock spurred energy innovation, including winterizing wind turbines. In Texas, rolling blackouts from a February cold spell in 2011 did not lead to adaptation from regulators or businesses.
Leanna First-Arai details the relationship between weather extremes in her Truthout article, “Winter Storms Offer a Taste of the Climate Chaos Ahead If We Don’t Cut Emissions. Sarah Kapnick, a NOAA scientist, told First-Arai that the “current cold snap is linked to a warming event that disrupted the jet stream in January.” Dr. Kapnick stressed that “in building resilience to climate change, we can’t just focus on extreme heat, as extreme cold, while less likely, can still happen.”
In 2007, climatologist Stanley A. Changnon published “Catastrophic winter storms: An escalating problem” in the journal Climate Change. Dr. Changnon found that Southern States experienced “sizable time increases in [winter] storm occurrences…States with storm occurrences in 1984–2003 that were more than 100% greater than those in the prior 20 years (1964–1983) included Texas (220%)… ” The intensity and frequency of winter storms were mounting, and the increases “were greatest across the southern two-thirds of the nation.” According to Changnon, this trend would accelerate. Already, southern winters had been transformed by climate change, and in no state more so than Texas, where the frequency of winter storms more than doubled in two decades.
Climate change will likely increase the frequency and severity of heat waves and freezing temperatures in the Southern United States. Winter Storm Uri revealed the vulnerability of ERCOT. The failure to adapt appears especially stark because Texas has plentiful renewable resources. Researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the National Center for Atmospheric Research projected that Texas’ share of renewable resources may actually increase with climate change: “Overall solar and wind electricity generation will increase, while their extreme hourly variability will decrease across Texas by mid-twenty-first century (2040–2050) compared to the historical reference period (1995–2005).” Whereas some regions like the Pacific Northwest may see a decline in wind energy density due to climate change, researchers at Wake Forest University estimate that northern Texas could see an increase “as high as 5%.”
In part 1 of this series, we covered how subsidies, bailouts and layoffs had become endemic to the oil and gas industry in Louisiana and Texas.
Communities that suffered the impacts of Winter Storm Uri are also suffering from recent layoffs. Despite the stimulus designed by industry lobbyists, oil and gas companies fired 112,000 workers in 2020. ExxonMobil will lay off 1,900 people, mostly in Houston. The corporation projected a 15% reduction of its workforce, likely making more employees in the Gulf region vulnerable. Motiva began laying off 10% of its workforce, the majority in Houston and Port Arthur.
These corporations lobbied congress and benefited from Federal stimulus. Some stimulus programs like the Paycheck Protection Program stipulated that businesses “keep their workforce employed.” But much of the benefits came with no strings attached — especially those for which fossil fuel companies lobbied congress — like the ability to pay off past debts through favorable or forgivable CARES act loans, and no limit tax refunds. This part of the Federal stimulus is known as the “stealth bailout.”
Motiva is owned by Saudi Aramco, which benefited from the Saudi stimulus amounting to $32 billion. Occidental Petroleum was among the largest beneficiaries of the Federal stimulus. By May, Occidental Petroleum received refunds and deferrals worth $195 million. Five months earlier, Occidental began widespread layoffs. The taxpayer had bailed-out a company that had already cut jobs.
In April, Vice President Don Wallette told investors that ConocoPhillips was “in a zero-tax-paying position in the U.S. and expects to stay there for quite some time.” ConocoPhillips paid no taxes in 2020, and will continue to pay no taxes, because they had exceptionally profitable quarters to close out 2019, which positioned them to capitalize on refunds from the stimulus. As detailed in our previous piece, ConocoPhillips and other fossil fuel multinationals benefited from the legislation engineered by the Trump administration and Republican Senate majority to boost oil profits. Corporations that were especially profitable before the pandemic, like the oil and gas industry, received a larger bailout during the downturn.
How did ConocoPhillips choose to use the stimulus? In December, ConocoPhillips announced that it would lay off 500 employees at its Houston headquarters, a fifth of its workforce.
Politicians justified the stimulus by claiming it would preserve jobs On April 8, 2020 Senator Cassidy claimed “We’re also working on a plan with the Treasury that would be specific for these small and medium-size oil and gas companies to allow them to get bridge loans.” Fossil fuel companies that benefited disproportionately from the stimulus kept firing workers. Why? Because the Trump administration, legislatures and industry lobbyists designed the stimulus so that corporations could receive taxpayer funds while laying off workers.
The Federal Response to the pandemic involved multiple forms of subsidies for corporations operating in Lake Charles. The CARES Act granted Citgo $48 million tax benefit and Phillips substantial tax savings contributing to a $1.3 billion income tax receivable. Another refinery in Lake Charles, operated by the Calcasieu Refining Company has received a pandemic waiver. These permit refineries to override regulations that ensure safe storage and disposal of hazardous chemicals.” The majority of people in Lake Charles are of color. Hurricane Laura and Delta hit Lake Charles just months apart. While the community was recovering, with some residents living out of trailers and tents, Winter Storm Uri caused rolling blackouts and water outages. Extreme weather imperils the long term health of frontline communities exposed to contamination from leaks and flares. And the pandemic aggravates infrastructure failures. Is it safe for an elderly person with running water to welcome neighbors whose pipes burst into their home?
Kate Aronoff concluded her piece in the New Republic with a reminder “A greener and more reliable grid is within reach. Obviously loading it up with fossil fuel infrastructure isn’t the answer. But neither is simply flooding it with renewables. Everything from physical infrastructure to energy consumption habits needs to change. For that, we need a plan.”
Winter Storm Uri clarified how the grid operates socially. Energy may go to power essential services — dialysis machines, elevators in senior residences — or for overnight lighting of office towers where the majority of employees are already working from home. Energy systems are fundamentally social.
In Texas the grid was geared to summer peaks during heat waves, not deep freezes. Climate chaos will likely increase heat waves and winter storms in the South. While extreme weather stresses every aspect of the energy system, we are learning in real time that oil and gas are intractably vulnerable.
Oil rigs must rapidly prepare for extreme weather. Oil and gas wells often leak at the source. Refineries and plants are equally vulnerable. Hulking infrastructure in the path of a storm must be rapidly shuttered. Large plants centralize the energy system. There is less distribution and redundancy, and so less resilience. Securing and shutting down refineries in the face of extreme weather risks workers’ health. Before shuttering a refinery, chemical flares poison neighboring communities, and release greenhouse gases.
Already these plants and refineries are employing less workers. Layoffs decimate local economies. Refineries take weeks to reopen after extreme weather. Personnel reopening rigs and refineries may be exposed to contaminants.
Compare this to a weatherized wind turbine. In Iowa wind turbines continue to generate with temperatures as low as 20 degrees below zero. During very high winds or very low temperatures, wind turbines automatically shut down. There are no flares. They do not release the pollutants before a storm. And crucially, the failure of a single turbine does not compromise the grid like the failure of a single coal or nuclear plant. The distributed risk renders the grid resilient.
It will be a challenge to create a sustainable energy grid. Obscuring the pitfalls of renewable energy — intermittency, storage, the inability to recycle parts, and the labor and health risks associated with manufacture and disposal — puts us in an even more precarious position. The fossil fuel and renewable energy industries both have track records of compromising the health of marginalized communities for profit. A progressive Green New Deal must center transparency, science, public oversight, and marginalized voices. When special interests dominate debate the best ideas lose. Individual liberties depend upon communal systems. The question is simply whether these systems will be intelligently managed by experts who understand the science and belong to and care about the communities they serve. Or will lobbyists replace legislators, and financial engineers replace actual engineers.
In 2020, fossil fuel multinationals received $5 trillion in global subsidies and $15 billion in coronavirus relief from the United States taxpayer. They still fired 112,000 workers. Subsidies and bailouts benefit shareholders. Unions and job guarantees benefit workers. Installing and upkeeping solar panels and wind turbines would create constant and distributed employment that does not uproot workers and subject communities to the whims of a single refinery, instead these generate sustained, renewable blue collar jobs for rural communities.
Wintering coal plants that will soon become antiquated seems like a bad investment. Natural gas, often marketed as a reliable bridge fuel, is particularly vulnerable to extreme weather. Building a grid that withstands climate change will be challenging regardless of whether it depends on renewable energy or fossil fuels. But the politics of delay have ended.
Gov. Abbott removed most COVID restrictions in Texas on March 3rd, without the support of the advisors who he had previously been in contact with throughout the pandemic. As authors, we do not presume to know the motivation behind any single decision, but the combined policies and public statements of Gulf State elected officials of the Republican Party at the state and federal level do coalesce into a concise — if not dangerous — strategy.
It appears the GOP approach in recent years, whether in energy policy or health policy, is to take immediately gratifying but ultimately irresponsible measures in the name of freedom. The approach moves responsibility from the government to individuals for collective decision-making and often provides a short term perk for some constituents to justify short-sighted policy. This is perverse because the purpose of representative government is to organize representatives to make decisions that individuals cannot make alone; decisions to act collectively to enact and enforce policy for the collective. It is additionally perverse because large entities such as fossil fuel companies receive subsidies from the government, while the politicians who allowed those subsidies obstruct individual citizens to receive financial aid. The burden to deal with the consequences of the absence of order and policy is then presented as a freedom to constituents, i.e. the freedom to not wear a mask, which raises the likelihood of contracting COVID-19; the freedom to use fossil fuels, which cause long term climate change; and the freedom from regulations, which led to a woefully unprepared power grid system during a severe storm. However, the only freedom granted to constituents is the freedom to figure out how to deal with a self-inflicted crisis. It is no more than the freedom to suffer, the freedom to be needy, the freedom to want.
Eighty Years ago, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt read his State of the Union address, known as the Four Freedoms speech. In it he spoke of the value and need to globally advocate for two of the hallmark freedoms of the First Amendment in the United States Constitution and added to them two other freedoms which had no direct precedent in the founding documents of the United States — The Freedom from Want and the Freedom from Fear. FDR had, in fact, passed much of his agenda — particularly in regards to the Freedom from Want — in the prior decade through the New Deal, which can be characterized as the domestic content of the Four Freedoms; created before it was named. Today we find that the Freedom from Want has been perverted into a Freedom to Want.
It is no coincidence that FDR was the president who led the effort of the New Deal to bring relief to Want following the Great Depression — and that today, Pandemic Relief Bills and the Green New Deal have been targeted by detractors who preemptively deride their potential to provide freedom from want. His elected conservative detractors in his day found that the Four Freedoms “seemed like a reiteration of the New Deal. Politicians on the right feared a rise in federal power (which the war mobilization inevitably brought) and the implication that human rights rhetoric might foster racial equality in America.” In eighty years, not much has changed. The risks, however, have evolved.
Winter Storm Uri and the 2020 hurricane season contributed to changing the underlying questions. We are no longer asking: How do we prepare for climate chaos? We are asking: How do we recover? And how can our recovery be conducted equitably and prepare us for future shocks. Transforming the energy system is a requirement. Even if the United States continues to rely partially on fossil fuels and nuclear energy, massive infrastructure spending is required to render energy generation, storage and distribution resilient to climate change. The question that remains is whether that transformation will be dictated by special interests, or by innovation, public transparency, and the right of working people and marginalized communities to dignity and agency.
This story is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.
Zef Egan is a teacher and writer, and the managing editor of Resilience Quarterly. @EganZef
Claudia Tomateo is a Research Fellow in the Urban Systems Lab. She is an architect, urban designer and researcher with a focus in the intersection between cartography, urban narratives and strategic design.
Karim Ahmed is a founding principal of Reform Architecture, an architecture practice based in the South Bronx focused on creating an ethical design practice. Prior to starting his own practice he worked as a construction detailer in New York City and also at the transportation planning think-tank ReThink Studio on design, lobbying and outreach. He graduated from The Cooper Union with a Bachelor of Architecture in 2013. He is a registered architect in the State of New York and a member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and the Design for Risk and Reconstruction Committee. Karim has taught at New York University’s Gallatin and Tisch Schools, and is currently an adjunct professor at The New School’s Parson’s School of Design, where he was also a Research Fellow at the Urban Systems Lab.
Rush Jagoe is a New Orleans based photographer. Rush is known for his ability to tell stories and conceptualize stories across personal, editorial and commercial work.