Natural Gas, The Bridge To Climate Disaster

to

the fossil fuel

industry

it's the end

of your reign!

it's the end of your reign!

One day, scrolling, an ad popped up in my feed.

It was difficult to tell what it was advertising,

but it seemed promising.

It told me to fall in love, follow my dreams,

keep my friends until old age, get a dog, a cat,

and even start a family.

Just wondering…

what was it selling?

Insurance?

Bank credit?

A car?

No, not this time.

At the end, there’s a beautiful image of an extraction platform in the sunset,

looking almost romantic.

This was an ad by OMV Petrom, one of the companies investing in the Neptun Deep platform,

the biggest gas exploitation project in the Black Sea region of Romania.

Its main motto was:

Never stop making plans for a better future.

Wow.

Imagine being a fossil fuel company,

directly responsible for anthropogenic climate change,

and promising young people a good future.

No, no, wait, wait,

“a better future”.

Why is it better?

Because they are going to invest 11 billion euros until 2030 into…

pictures of sunsets, I suppose?

Their audacity shouldn’t surprise us anymore,

yet it still does.

But they’ve been heavily investing in ads for decades,

and at least some of them…

are mind-blowing.

1. Ads! for heating the planet

Let’s go back to a time before the IPCC,

COP,

Greta Thunberg,

Just Stop Oil,

Extinction Rebellion,

or Ende Gelände.

Let’s remember the weirdly truthful 1962 ad by Humble Oil,

a company now called ExxonMobil,

which is known for its investment in climate research, denial, and obstruction.

Showing a blue-white picture of a glacier, the ad said

“This giant glacier has remained unmelted for centuries.

Yet, the petroleum energy Humble supplies, if converted into heat,

could melt it at the rate of 80 tons each second.”

Looking back on it now, it feels so eerie it is almost funny.

Can you believe they said the truth for once,

even unwillingly?

That’s so rare,

as the fossil fuel industry has put a lot of money

into advocating for anything that would keep them going,

subtly modifying their tactics and narratives

as public opinion was changed.

(Between 2010 and 2018, 98.7% of Shell's investments were in oil and gas)

(It's way pass time we called their bluff.)

One of their first strategies after they realized the magnitude of climate change was…

denial.

To deny as much as they could,

especially by emphasizing uncertainty,

manipulating science,

and swaying politicians.

For example,

before the Kyoto negotiations in 1997,

which were meant to commit states to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,

they made a strong move.

Mobil,

before it merged with Exxon,

ran advertorials - ads disguised as editorials -

that questioned whether the climate crisis was real

or human-made.

In short, the general narrative, repeated over many years,

goes like this:

If climate change is real,

we are not sure what’s causing it,

but maybe it isn’t real at all, so

either way, it’s not our fault.

Or maybe it is sort of real,

but it will destroy the economy if we act like it is,

so we should pretend it isn’t!

Anyway, if it is real,

it’s not the industry’s fault,

it’s your fault!

You,

the consumer,

ask for fossil fuels,

the companies are just providing it to you!

And more so,

the fossil fuel industry is partnering with universities,

always trying to find the best solution for everyone!

Because we are part of the solution!

And let’s not forget,

you are criticizing the coal, oil, and gas companies

from your fossil-fuel-powered little abode,

and almost everything you own is probably also thanks to us

in some way!

So, really,

you are the hypocrite!

Well, well.

I guess they got you,

and me,

and all of us!

We shall just get back to driving our petroleum-fed cars

and eating industrially produced food from far-far away

packed in plastic which is also made of oil

while waiting for

the next megaflood.

It’s not like there’s any alternative.

And anyway, they’re not evil, they probably didn’t know better!

Right?!

Nope.

They knew.

Mobil and Exxon, for example, engaged in climate science research quite early,

with an internal 1979 study claiming

“dramatic world climate changes”

before 2050.

Actually, many years before that,

at the centennial of the American oil industry,

they were warned that a big increase in carbon dioxide

could raise sea levels so much to submerge New York!

But alas.

Big oil will be big oil.

It won’t step down willingly.

If coal mines are on the brink of closing in the Western world,

if oil demand is set to slow in the near future,

then it is time for the third fossil fuel to take up the stage:

natural gas.

As part of fossil fuel solutionism, the industry is saying:

hey, we hear you.

You want clean energy.

We have it,

it’s natural gas!

It’s natural!

It’s clean!

It’s low-carbon,

it promotes energy security,

and it will bring jobs.

It’s the perfect bridge fuel!

No, wait…

it’s

the fuel of the future!

2. Natural gas, the bridge to no future

As the science of anthropogenic climate change became harder to dispute,

the deployed tactic was to delay

action.

Delay

as much as possible,

keep investing in fossil infrastructure,

and pretend it’s the right thing to do:

for the economy, for the nation, for the workers.

This is how the discourse around natural gas is constructed,

now that it has become too hard to argue that coal or oil can be clean.

Emphasizing that gas is just half as polluting as coal when burned,

the fossil industry managed to cherry-pick, again, the most convenient information.

Yes,

that’s true.

But let’s not forget that natural gas is, actually,

methane!

The second most abundant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere,

having a heating capacity of up to 86 times more than CO2

in a twenty-year lifespan.

That’s your next twenty years we’re talking about.

Because natural gas is almost entirely methane,

people are arguing that it shouldn’t even be called “natural”,

as that suggests some sort of innocent quality to it,

in a constructed cultural idea that what’s natural must be good.

Calling it “fossil gas”

or “methane gas” is simply more accurate.

The infrastructure for its extraction, production, and transport

is anything but “natural” in that traditional sense,

as it requires processing plants, storage units,

thousands of kilometers of pipelines,

and liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals,

where gas is liquefied for maritime transportation and then

regasified when it arrives at the destination.

So efficient, right?!

Well, they might say,

look, our pipelines are “the envy of the world”,

they are secure and reliable, transporting “earth’s cleanest traditional fuel”!

And they certainly don’t leak methane into the atmosphere!

Except… they do.

It’s very hard to even calculate how much, but people try.

For example, a recent study shows that even when leak rates are as low as 0.2%,

life-cycle emissions from gas could be on par with coal.

Suddenly

this “bridge fuel”

doesn’t sound so sturdy,

does it?

And the problem is,

gas leaks much more than initially estimated.

It varies depending on a number of factors,

with scientists even finding a 10% leak rate

in one of the highest emitting, oil-focused regions of the US.

And that’s not the only place where it’s getting into our air and up into the sky,

it happens along the whole infrastructure and then…

in cities, too.

As the problem is dangerously underestimated,

citizen scientists in Massachusetts organized to monitor methane levels in their neighborhood,

discovering over 14,000 active leaks.

That’s just in a ‘business as usual’ scenario,

with inevitable leaks along the infrastructure.

But then

it gets worse

there’s super-emitters.

Leaks so great they become equivalent to one-third of a country such as,

let’s say, Denmark’s annual emissions.

That’s exactly what happened in 2022 with the Nord Stream pipeline in the Baltic Sea,

which was used to carry methane gas from Russia to European countries.

Underwater explosions considered military sabotage

led to a leak that set the record for the single largest methane discharge.

Relying on gas as a key element of energy, then, not only worsens climate change

but manufactures social and environmental vulnerabilities.

So much goes for energy security,

if it requires increasing militarization to ‘protect it’...

YOUR LIES

ARE LEAKING

What did the seals and the fishes hurt by the shockwave have to do with any of this?

How will the hearing-impaired porpoises survive those contaminated waters?

And what about the rest of us,

human and non-human,

whose environment is being destroyed a little each day

by these industry giants,

compounded by militarization?

Big, dramatic events make the news more easily,

attracting attention and maybe even action.

But the terrifying increase in greenhouse gasses since the Industrial Revolution

is creating

another sort of violence,

slow

and unseen.

3. Seeing violence over time

There are tragic events,

like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill,

which people remember.

The months-long spill could be seen

from space,

ribbons of oil browning the ocean.

Dolphins kept dying for years, having stillborn babies.

Turtles were stranded.

Coral communities were suffering.

There are extreme weather events, floods, wildfires,

and heatwaves made so much worse

by climate change

that they kill hundreds of people

and who knows how many nonhuman animals.

Then there is the annual increase in temperature,

in some places, it’s just a little each year,

you can almost ignore it.

There’s the lengthened pollen season, which worsens allergies in children and adults.

There are more frequent droughts, impacting the production of food.

A lot is happening everywhere and it’s all

getting

worse.

Fast enough to be terrible,

slow enough for us to still somehow unsee it.

Climate change is a threat every day for everyone,

impacting disabled and marginalized people even more,

affecting mental health,

as well as access to clean water, nutrition and shelter.

What the fossil fuel industry is doing is called

slow violence,

described by Rob Nixon as “a violence that occurs gradually and out of sight,

a violence of delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and space,

an attritional violence that is typically not viewed as violence at all”.

This violence

is mundane,

seeping through the air, the water, the land,

just a drop,

and another,

and another,

until it accumulates.

People who live near oil and gas rigs are much more exposed to health risks,

with an increased incidence of respiratory problems and cancer.

Those whose lives happen to be around hydraulic fracking,

which is an unconventional technique of extracting oil and gas,

have their physical and mental health impacted in many ways,

frequently suffering from nausea, sleep and skin disorders,

and premature birth.

And it doesn’t get any better the further you go,

as gas and oil need to be transported to be used.

This is where the pipelines come in.

Their construction has contaminated wetlands and drinking water sources,

destroyed communities and farmlands, ruined soil and landscapes,

violated indigenous treaties,

and damaged the habitats of non-human species.

Once they’re in place, the risks continue,

there are routine explosions along them,

often injuring and even killing workers.

So if it can’t make the production or distribution of gas look any good,

the industry will turn to another tactic:

they will make cooking with gas seem like the best option,

the proper choice of a chef.

As it turns out, people don’t care if their homes are heated with gas or something else,

but they do care about how they cook.

So the natural gas industry promised that cooking with gas is cleaner, cheaper, and faster!

Which, currently, compared to electric induction stoves, it just isn’t.

But that idea creates an opening to install gas infrastructure,

which will mostly be used for water and home heating afterward,

and will be locked in for years.

And, like they usually do, they invested money into, wait for it,

not just the ads of the past, but on the social influencers of the present

to sell it.

Unfortunately, new research posits that gas stoves can exceed

indoor and outdoor guideline levels of nitrogen dioxide,

increasing the risk of asthma in children

and even affecting brain development.

There’s no limit to how this industry will spin the narrative in their favor.

They even trained their employees to advocate for it

by telling emotionally touching stories.

Imagine working at a company that warns you about

the “new brand of environmental activism”

so that you can advocate for the expansion of their profits

while they poison the very air you breathe.

That’s not an exaggeration,

according to a recent study, about 1 in 5 deaths globally, every year,

can be attributed to fossil fuel air pollution.

And that’s just air pollution, not counting their contribution to climate chaos.

FOSSIL FUELS

ARE KILLING US

it's about time, for a break.

just wondering…

wouldn’t it be great

if we could

step off the Earth

for a little while

and rest in the void?

or even better,

stay on the Earth

and push

the fossil fuel

industry

in the void.

Stay on the Earth

and push them in the void.

Nurture the Earth

and push them in the void.

Fight for the Earth

and have them disappear,

Keep close to the ground

and have your friends near

4. Methane gas, a case study

Many of us already know about carbon dioxide,

the heat-trapping gas whose presence in the atmosphere

has risen dramatically since the Industrial Revolution.

But what about methane?

It’s also a greenhouse gas

and it’s the second-largest contributor to climate warming.

It traps more heat than CO2, but has a shorter lifespan in the atmosphere,

almost acting as an accelerator

- or maybe a decelerator -

of climate disaster,

depending on how society moves next.

Just like carbon dioxide, methane is released from natural sources and human activities,

the latter accounting for more than half of today’s emissions.

Globally, the largest anthropic sources of methane are,

by order of magnitude,

animal agriculture,

oil and gas,

landfills and waste,

coal mining,

and lastly, rice cultivation.

Because methane contributes to almost a third of net warming

and because it’s stronger in short timescales,

tackling it is key to prevent going over the 1.5 Celsius goal.

That’s why the Global Methane Pledge was launched at COP26,

which requires countries who sign it to reduce emissions by 2030.

But even that is not enough,

as it ignores the impact of agricultural methane so much

that meat lobbyists celebrated after the climate change conference!

And anyway, how could the pledge ever be reached,

if the fossil fuel industry will keep ramping up production?

Because that's what's in store if we buy the lie and consider “natural gas” a bridge fuel.

The industry wants to sell it as a sort of aid to renewable technologies,

a soft shoulder of support until they can grow up

and take the challenge of powering the world.

How kind of them, isn’t it?

except

of course,

it isn’t

As any new fossil fuel infrastructure takes an enormous amount of money and time

that we just don’t have.

And after it’s put in motion it gets much harder to dismantle.

So if you find yourself at the family dinner

where there’s always someone who won’t consider climate impacts seriously,

tell them about the economic risks.

Investments in gas infrastructure can cause stranded assets,

which devalue prematurely and bring losses.

That’s a long-winded way of saying:

they aren’t worth it.

Let’s go back to Neptun Deep, a pretty name for a terrible thing.

The biggest gas exploitation project in our region.

Pushing our emotional buttons, one of its ads underlines

that the project is made “to offer Romanians jobs here, in the country”,

knowing full well about the many personal impacts of years-long migration to Western Europe for work.

Romania is the country with most citizens living abroad within the European Union.

Many parents, especially women who provide care work,

undergo psychological stress from leaving their children at home.

But the ad’s claims don’t stop there,

its motto for “a stronger Romania

is almost echoing the 2019 presidential campaign slogan

“for a normal Romania”, one-upping it.

The fossil fuel industry will do more for you than the entire government!

It continues saying that this strength will be made

“with energy from the Black Sea”

because home-made climate destruction is just better than the imported kind, you know!

And the Black Sea is so kind,

just full of free-floating energy waiting to share it with all of us…

as if there’s no drilling involved…

no destruction of its inhabitants' ecosystems…

no risk of explosions or leaks that might

kill the lives it harbors…

It’s just flowing, you know.

Natural gas, it's so natural it can even pass through natural reserves.

Neptun Deep’s development began in 2023

and is scheduled to start producing in 2027.

It needs a 300km connection pipeline

to the main gas transmission corridor

known as BRUA

(Bulgaria - Romania - Hungary - Austria),

which is only partly finished.

Its completed phase already trespasses eight protected natural areas.

The connection pipeline will plow through

eleven.

Special laws were drafted just for these projects to pass,

otherwise, the environmental impact would have made them unviable.

Even so,

the fight isn’t lost.

Because it takes so long for it to become functional,

the project might fail economically.

Moreover, environmental groups like Bankwatch and Greenpeace worked to show

that its estimated emissions are incompatible with Romania’s climate pledges.

How can they commit to The Global Methane Pledge, for example,

while building new fossil fuel infrastructure?!

by gaslighting us

Collectives like Gastivists show us that

“gas is a dirty lie”,

emphasizing its relations to colonialism

and its worsening of geopolitical conflicts.

By only changing the energy source and not the energy system,

the fossil fuel industry aims to maintain its economic, cultural, and political stronghold on society.

But a decentralized, renewable energy future isn’t just a dream,

it is already happening.

Renewables are becoming more and more cost-effective,

with solar and wind being cheaper than methane gas in some regions.

With all it has against it,

the fossil fuel industry seems like it’s one step from becoming

a fossil.

Once you see it,

you can’t unsee it.

5. The last of the fossil fuels

Let’s go back to that first ad,

“For a Romania worth dreaming and making plans in.”

If we make it true,

and international,

what would that look like?

For a world worth dreaming and making plans in.

Well,

it would mean no new oil or gas projects

anywhere.

Not in the overdeveloped North, not anywhere.

Otherwise, we’re pushed past 1.5 Celsius global heating above pre-industrial times.

As environmental justice activists and land defenders emphasize,

no one has the right to destroy the Earth.

And “no one has the right to fossil fuels”,

they don’t even bring in the wealth they promise,

as climate justice activists point out that new gas projects in Africa are becoming

“the latest example” of a resource curse.

Enough decades have gone by since we’ve been buying this industry’s lies.

It’s not safe jobs they’re providing,

but underpaid employment in a dying sector.

It’s not just energy they’re selling,

but damage and suffering on endless fronts.

“Natural gas” shouldn’t be considered a bridge fuel,

but the last of its kind.

The industry likes to spin narratives in its favor,

but so can we.

We’re even better storytellers because there’s more of us than there is of them.

There are people harmed and angered by their practices,

people who’ve had enough.

When we look at fossil fuel infrastructure, we can see it’s a thing of the past,

a mistake too far gone, and a lesson learned.

Methane gas will only lead us to destruction,

unless we keep it in the ground.

The future energy system can’t be made with the face of the old one:

it should be guided by people over profit,

decolonization over expansion,

environmental protection over growth.

This won’t be a walk in the park,

but we must do it, if we care about parks, trees, birds, humans

or anyone on Earth, at all.

And we can fight for structural change

while incorporating lifestyle changes in our daily lives as well,

no one is off the hook.

A global shifting away from fossil fuels, as well as meat and dairy,

is essential for preventing environmental collapse.

if you won’t do it,

who will?

As we deal with the discomfort and difficulties of transforming our entire society,

we can remember how much we gain by giving up fossil fuels:

not only cleaner water, soil, and air,

but healthier lives for everyone, human and non-human;

and also…

a glimmer of possibility

that future earthlings could have it

pretty good,

rather than terribly bad.

Don’t you love that,

for all of us?

[Man-made] carbon dioxide

bye

goodbye

see you by the ocean tide

[Man-made] nitrous oxide

bye

goodbye

see you by the soil side

[Man-made] methane gas

goodbye

goodbye

see you by the wetland plain

Fossil fuel industry

it’s the end of your reign

Bye-bye

oil rigs and gas pipelines

bye-bye

coal mines

Bye-bye

extractive policies

bye-bye

corporate monopolies

Bye-bye

racial capitalism

bye-bye

alt-right fascism

Bye-bye

fossil fuel industry

you’re

dead

to me.