Sixty-seven climate crisis protest actions were organized around the world by the group Stop the Money Pipeline on Feb. 26, calling for insurance companies to end their coverage of liquefied natural gas, or LNG, export terminals.
The US Gulf Coast, especially southwest Louisiana, is already home to several LNG export facilities, and more are planned. Between the gas that is fracked to supply the terminals, the process of cooling down the gas to a liquid state for export, and then the warming of the liquid back to a gas for consumption in other countries, LNG is by far the most destructive fossil fuel in terms of climate impact. LNG emissions are also highly toxic.
Hartford, Connecticut was once, and perhaps is still the insurance capital of the world. Protesters gathered outside the offices of The Hartford insurance company on Feb. 26, and rallied with two leaders of the fight against LNG projects from southwest Louisiana, Roishetta Ozane and James Hiatt, founder of the group For a Better Bayou. They traveled to Connecticut hoping to arrange a meeting with The Hartford’s CEO, Christopher Swift, but both were denied entrance. Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus was at the protest and presents an excerpt of Hiatt’s talk at the rally.
[Web producers’ note: The audio version of this interview was edited to fit broadcasting time constraints.]
JAMES HIATT: We’re at The Hartford specifically because they already insure Cameron LNG, a facility that was built with taxpayer money, built because it was for import at the time, in 2007. But then it turns out that we have all this gas that we frack and tear up the land in West Texas and that’s what they started doing in 2007, and so The Hartford has been playing a part in this Cameron LNG for years, for over a decade now, right? They’ve been underwriting these fossil fuels that have been in our communities. The leukemia rates for children who live near around frack sites are two to three times higher.
We know this, and for some reason we continue down this pathway that has afflicted communities for decades. Our collective dependency on fossil fuels has led us into this climate change crisis. And it is also the reason we have environmental justice communities where people die of cancer, unnecessary suffering inflicted on mostly Black and brown and low-income communities and have for decades, all around this country, not just in southwest Louisiana. We have a lot there.
My father retired from an oil refinery; my grandfather worked pipelines until he retired; I worked at a refinery for over ten years. Companies like The Hartford, Cameron LNG, Tellurian, Lake Charles LNG – all of these companies tell us that it is clean and it’s green. What they don’t tell you is that all of the gas is coming from fracked sites and continuing our reliance on fossil fuels that causes premature death and suffering and has for decades.
We were afflicted in 2020 by two hurricanes six weeks apart, followed by Winter Storm Uri in February 2021, followed by just a random Monday in May that flooded our town worse than any of that. You cannot insure and continue insuring the climate chaos – the insurance rates in south Louisiana are $16,000 a year for a $150,000 house. That doesn’t make any sense! You cannot afford to pay for your house insurance, but somehow companies like The Hartford can afford to insure the exact cause of the climate crisis that is driving up home insurance prices like that?
We have so many people here in this country that know our collective dependency on fossil fuels is what has driven us to this point. And we do know that it doesn’t matter what it looks like – if it’s coal, if it’s oil, if it’s gas – if it’s carbon that was buried underground and we’re adding it to the atmosphere, that is driving the climate chaos, that is causing suffering around the world, not just in southwest Louisiana, more and more communities. And we are at the tipping point, where we know better, and we have got to get companies like The Hartford to be ethical and to stop insuring the thing that is causing climate chaos! You can stop insuring fossil fuels today – today!
And maybe my children and the future generations that come behind us, will not have to endure the mass suffering that you are insuring will happen by continuing to insure fossil fuel dependency. We know better, we know that fossil fuel dependence will drive us past a livable planet. There will be mass suffering if we do not do something different. And we know that, and for some reason – greed, and “I gotta get mine, maybe you can get yours later,” and American exceptionalism that somehow we’re gonna out-engineer this thing that we’ve caused by continuing to double down on the exact extraction of fossil fuels and dependency on it. There’s no reason The Hartford needs to insure those companies or any companies that are tied to fossil fuel dependency. We are at the moment when they should be insuring renewables and helping to move into the future so we do have an opportunity for our descendants to have a livable planet.
For more information, visit For A Better Bayou at betterbayou.net and follow For A Better Bayou on Facebook @ABetterBayou.
