and churches have been purposefully destroyed. But there is another potentially catastrophic fallout from the war that is less talked about: In the past year, there has been a massive increase in exports of methane gas, with U.S. fossil fuel companies signing nearly three times the number of long-term contracts in 2022 than in the previous two years combined.
“Fossil fuel executives are exploiting the Russian invasion of Ukraine to justify contracts that commit the United States to keep exporting LNG [liquid natural gas] into the 2040s,” says aout this week from the U.S.-based nonprofit groups Friends of the Earth, BailoutWatch, and Public Citizen. The contracts require the U.S. to build environmentally damaging export terminals. They also are a way to prop up the fossil fuel industry.
The authors allege that the contracts are “a permanent ‘solution’ for the short- term problem of European gas market volatility.”The fossil fuel industry finalized 45 long-term deals to send U.S.-produced LNG overseas in the past year, up from 14 in 2021 and three in 2020.
Why are countries letting the war play out? The negative impact on people doesn’t seem to be enough for them to act.