Julie Dermansky

On my latest flight surveying fossil fuel industry sites in southwest Louisiana at the end of September, I photographed liquified natural gas (LNG) export facilities, signs of drought, fire-scarred stretches of marsh, and a salt dome site at risk of collapsing.

I live in South Louisiana on the front lines of the climate crisis and cover the fossil fuel industry and impacts related to the warming planet, so facing gaslighting is a regular occurrence for me.

Though the administration claims it will establish safeguards, currently there are no rules to compel state oil and gas regulators to use the federal funds in a way that prioritizes plugging the inactive and supposedly ownerless wells that are emitting the most methane, or even any methane at all.

For Edna Ibarra, it was the realization that with every breath her 11-year-old son was breathing in a little more of an industrial carcinogen that drove her to get involved in the fight against air pollution in Laredo, Texas.

The organizers of the D.C. protests have yet to announce their next moves following the five-day action, but the Indigenous activists who were in the streets vowed to do whatever it takes to protect the planet for the next seven generations.

Yesterday, an unusually broad coalition of environmental groups, numbering more than 550, called on the incoming Biden-Harris administration to address plastic pollution alongside fossil fuels.