Fossil Fuel Cash Is Fracking Democrats’ Climate Support

When President Joe Biden announced in January that he was temporarily halting approvals of new liquefied natural gas exports and processing terminals, Emma Guevara welcomed the news. 

A resident of Brownsville, Texas — a historically poor city and fossil-fuel hotspot on the Gulf of Mexico — Guevara is concerned about two multibillion-dollar proposed liquid natural gas terminals for the area. Beyond the projects’ potential impacts on nearby ecosystems, air, and water quality, Guevara is worried about how carbon emissions from the projects would impact the planet — and her home.

“We’re on the coast,” said Guevara, a local Sierra Club organizer. “And we’re a really marginalized community that can barely handle regular natural disasters, let alone what we’re looking at in the next 10 years.”

But Biden’s pause on such fossil fuel projects isn’t just being opposed by Republicans — it’s also facing pushback from some Democrats, including Guevara’s own Democratic Congressman, Vicente Gonzalez.