Natural gas bans have disproportionately impacted low-income and minority.
“The Energy Poverty Awareness Center, opposed climate legislation in Maryland, is connected to a group partially funded by oil and gas companies…
The Washington post by By Maxine Joselow, todayThe Dawn of the Combustible Revolution…
The Los Angeles fires evoke the nineteenth-century conflagrations that devastated our cities and indicate an even more flammable future.
The New Yorker TodayThe Owner of Non-Man and Other Tales… Second edition, revised and expanded…
Workart by Germán & Co is fully owned.Help us make a dream come true…
From a young age we listen to the instructions of the elderly in the sense that we must be able to choose our path in life. It's a nice metaphor.
There are those who, complying with this, prepare themselves to travel the highways of life, provide themselves with fast engines and soft seats. Others, simpler, choose secondary roads where the speed does not produce so much vertigo and the tolls are cheaper. Many have to join forces and travel the kilometers in collective buses that force the touches and strident music. And there are too many who have no other option than to walk along the humble paths crossing puddles or boulders and threatened by wild beasts or insects. This is the vineyard of the Lord, and everyone can make use of their free will. Say.
Reading the stories of Germán Toro Ghio one discovers that there are also those who chose all paths. And they also added the alternatives of lifts, elevators (and descenders), cliffs, flying devices and perhaps how many more.
With its eight stories, The Owners of No Man's Land takes us to a world so real that, unfortunately, we tend to forget it. From the first story, he (Germán) rides the maelstrom of a roller coaster in which he mixes the discomforts of a Moscow hotel with the adventures in the Nicaraguan jungle. He is a de facto witness to the invasion of the USA army in Panama and his cousin of millenary stubbornness at the same time, without us being able to deduce which of the two experiences was more dangerous. He celebrates supposed birthdays in the company of an aphonic Fidel Castro (what a contradiction!) in a city of Havana corroded by sea salt or political blunders. He walks through one of the most unusual borders in the world, the one that divides the island of Hispaniola. He witnesses the sun sheltering us with unusual loves, in this case, his friend "Pepe" who, on a streak of good fortune, attracts them to a stale gypsy princess and a one-eyed gypsy king in the nights of Madrid and prologues his luck in the world of love to an island called Grinda in the Stockholm archipelago where Alexander's honey captivates.
Germán also takes us to a café in Paris where Ernest Hemingway is in existential conversations about life, accompanied by the sweet notes of a Santa Teresa rum, which invades the soul with harmony and helps the journalist and writer try to persuade some young gang members to change the course of their lives, in this world of violence, organ trafficking, and arms. He evokes the spirit of the Nicaraguan poet and priest Ernesto Cardenal, particularly in his mesmerising "Ode to Marilyn Monroe". This remarkable work invites him to explore the labyrinth of the mind's afflictions, guided by the brushstrokes of legendary artists such as Sorolla, Munch, Botero, and Modigliani. Alongside this artistic journey, we encounter the candid whispers of Truman Capote in his poignant "Unanswered Prayers", which lays bare the frailties of our contemporary society, political systems, and monarchies. Ultimately, Germán leads us to a heartwarming conclusion with the charming figure of "il Nono", a grandfatherly character we all wish we could have known.
The book is magnified by experiences that have taken place outside the battlefields, far from palaces and ambitions. In other words, the principle of freedom of expression is paramount, even when individuals may endure defamation's repercussions. With these stories, Germán Toro Ghio allows us to taste something of everything he keeps in his cupboard, and I hope he will continue to cook and deliver in successive books.
*Juan Forch, Puerto Octay, Chile
*Film director, writer, and political scientist is renowned for the 1990 "NO" campaign. / https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/movies/oscar-nominated-no-stirring-debate-in-chile.html————————————————————————————————————————————————————
O gods, women, and men with the souls of gods and goodwill, we request your solidarity and support for launching the second revised and extended edition of "The Owner of Non-Man Lan and Other Tales" in November 2025. We have already contacted a senior editor at Penguin Random House in London to help us create a remarkable and distinctive book handcrafted to serve as an exceptional corporate gift.
Thanks in advance...
Today…
This group says natural gas bans hurt minorities. It has gas industry ties.
The Energy Poverty Awareness Center, which fought climate legislation in Maryland, has ties to a group that is partly funded by oil and gas companies.
The Washington post by By Maxine Joselow, todayThe new combustible age.
The Los Angeles fires hark to the nineteenth-century blazes that ravaged our cities—and point toward an even more flammable future.
The New Yorker, Daniel Immerwahr, January 14, 2025
You can't possibly deny me...
Have a wonderful day filled with good health, happiness, and love…
In December 2023, Energy Central recognized outstanding contributors within the Energy & Sustainability Network during the 'Top Voices' event. The recipients of this honor were highlighted in six articles, showcasing the acknowledgment from the community. The platform facilitates professionals in disseminating their work, engaging with peers, and collaborating with industry influencers. Congratulations are extended to the 2023 Top Voices: David Hunt, Germán Toro Ghio, Schalk Cloete, and Dan Yurman for their exemplary demonstration of expertise. - Matt Chester, Energy Central
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You can't possibly deny me...
Have a wonderful day filled with good health, happiness, and love…
Natural Gas Terminal AES ANDRES, located in the Dominican Republic. Image provided by AES Dominicana.
Andrés Gluski, President and CEO of AES, articulated this perspective during the World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland, in January 2023, stating, "I am confident we will need natural gas for the next 20 years." He further emphasized, "We can start blending it with green hydrogen today."
Workart by Germán & Co is fully owned.
This group says natural gas bans hurt minorities. It has gas industry ties.
The Energy Poverty Awareness Center, which fought climate legislation in Maryland, has ties to a group that is partly funded by oil and gas companies.
The Washington post by By Maxine Joselow, todayWhen Maryland state lawmakers proposed a major climate bill last year, they faced opposition from a surprising figure: ex-NFL player Gary Baxter.
The former Baltimore Ravens cornerback argued that the measure, which would have banned the use of natural gas furnaces and water heaters in new buildings statewide, would raise energy costs for Black households. “Affordable energy is vital for communities of color,” Baxter wrote in testimony on behalf of the Energy Poverty Awareness Center (EnPAC), an advocacy group he leads.
What Baxter didn’t mention is that his advocacy group has ties to the natural gas industry, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post. Consumer Energy Alliance, a Houston-based organization that is partly funded by gas utilities and other fossil fuel companies, helped launch EnPAC and shape its initial agenda.
Consumer Energy Alliance has also supported the National Hispanic Energy Council, which has asserted that gas projects help lower energy bills for Hispanic households, according to the documents. The materials were obtained via a public records request by the Energy and Policy Institute, an investigative research organization that says it works “to expose attacks on renewable energy and counter misinformation by fossil fuel and utility interests.”
The findings show how the fossil fuel industry has relied on advocacy groups to persuade policymakers nationwide that its products benefit communities of color. Critics say these efforts come despite the fact that Black, Hispanic and Asian Americans are disproportionately exposed to deadly air pollution caused by the burning of fossil fuels, which also is driving climate change.
“The documents reveal how oil, gas and utility companies — through their membership in Consumer Energy Alliance — cynically claim to represent the interests of structurally disadvantaged communities,” said Itai Vardi, a research and communications manager at the Energy and Policy Institute. “But in reality they use these front groups as a way to obscure the harms this industry causes these communities through increasing pollution and exacerbating climate change, which hits disadvantaged people the hardest.”
Asked for comment, CEA spokesman Bryson Hull confirmed that his group helped launch EnPAC but said it was a “normal practice.”
“CEA was introduced to EnPAC representatives in 2022, and, recognizing the need for energy policy discussions in Black communities, offered to assist getting the organization off the ground,” Hull said in an email. “CEA did provide sponsorship support for a reception in Annapolis in early 2024. CEA and EnPAC have not worked together in almost eight months.”
He added: “This is literally a dog bites man story, and a blatant attempt to generate a headline about something that happens every day in advocacy.”
Democratic-leaning states have advanced more-aggressive climate policies for years, including recent efforts to cut off gas supplies to new buildings as a way to speed the transition to clean electricity. The gas industry has responded by hiring Democrats and other advocates who are better-positioned to appeal to liberal voters. Skirmishes on the state level will play an outsize role in shaping the nation’s future energy trajectory once President-elect Donald Trump is back in the White House, where he has pledged to reverse many of President Joe Biden’s policies aimed at shifting the country away from oil, gas and coal.
The recent fight in Maryland exemplifies the push and pull over how quickly the transition to clean energy should happen.
After a knee injury ended his six-season NFL career in 2008, Baxter returned to his hometown of Tyler, Texas, where he owned several fast-food restaurants, and then founded EnPAC in February 2022. But the group didn’t officially launch until January 2024, when CEA began publicizing its efforts, the documents show.
“FYI … the African American org officially launched last week. More to come. Thoughts/Ideas welcome,” David Holt, CEA’s president, wrote in an email that month to CEA’s board of directors.
CEA helped arrange EnPAC’s early focus on Maryland that month, organizing a reception with Baxter at an Annapolis hotel and inviting key state lawmakers, according to an internal memo.
“Gary spoke at length with Delegate Regina Boyce at the reception,” the memo says, referring to the vice chair of the House Environment and Transportation Committee. “She’s the most important House Member for our cause.”
CEA also sent a press release about EnPAC’s launch “to local media and to trade media inside The Beltway,” the memo says. The release listed CEA’s director of media and public relations as the press contact.
A few months later, CEA held a board meeting at a restaurant in downtown Washington where the agenda items included “NHEC & EnPAC Reports — Expanding outreach to Minorities,” according to the documents.
The National Hispanic Energy Council has disclosed its ties to CEA, saying on its website that it “will work in coordination with Consumer Energy Alliance, a leading energy and environmental advocate.” In contrast, EnPAC doesn’t mention CEA on its website or in other public materials.
Asked for comment, Baxter said in an email that while he welcomes working with fossil fuel firms, they have not dictated his group’s agenda.
“EnPAC is a standalone independent organization founded by me and is NOT a front for any fossil fuel companies,” Baxter said. “With that being said, EnPAC looks forward to working with more fossil fuel companies and any green energy companies that can show reliable and affordable energy to the American people, especially the minority communities.”
CEA does not publicize its funding sources. But the majority of its dues-paying members are oil companies, gas utilities and other firms that profit from fossil fuels, according to its public membership list. They include oil giant ExxonMobil and Maryland gas provider Chesapeake Utilities Corp.
CEA also shares most of its staff and revenue with the Houston-based public relations firm HBW Resources, whose clients include oil and gas interests, according to tax filings and lobbying disclosure forms. In addition to leading CEA, Holt serves as managing partner of HBW Resources.
“Consumer Energy Alliance is exactly what it says it is — an alliance that advocates for reliable, affordable and cleaner policies, using all forms of energy,” Holt said in an email. “If we can provide our energy policy expertise to other groups, we will jump at every opportunity to broaden the conversation we’re having.”
EnPAC’s connection to CEA isn’t its only tie to the fossil fuel industry. Airika Brunson, the vice president of EnPAC, is an official at American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, a trade group for oil refiners. Lance Shepherd, a board member of EnPAC, works at pipeline company Enable Midstream Partners.
The connection between energy companies and advocacy groups for minority communities dates back nearly two decades. From 2005 to 2015, Exxon contributed more than $800,000 to the National Black Chamber of Commerce, which waged a battle against a landmark 2009 climate bill and President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan on the grounds that they would harm minorities by slowing job growth.
More recently, a group called Western States and Tribal Nations has argued that fossil fuel projects in Baja California would help Indigenous communities there. The group is run by HBW Resources, and its main financial backers are county governments and fossil fuel companies, including a gas utility building a facility in Baja.
Fight over the future of gas…
In states across the country, climate activists have pushed to ban fossil fuel use in the buildings sector, which accounts for roughly a third of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
In Maryland, which has set a goal of net-zero emissions by 2045, the Better Buildings Act ultimately did not pass either chamber of the state legislature last year. If enacted, it would have required all new buildings and major renovations in the state to meet their heating needs without the use of fossil fuels.
In practice, the bill would have prevented new homes from being built with gas furnaces and gas water heaters. These homes would have needed to use greener alternatives such as electric heat pumps and electric water heaters.
The measure would not have affected the state’s nearly 2.6 million existing housing units. It also would not have restricted other appliances such as gas stoves, which have recently emerged as a flash point in the nation’s culture wars.
In his testimony sent to state lawmakers, however, Baxter wrote that the bill could force Black households in Baltimore to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a host of new green technologies.
“While I am not from Baltimore, I spent a significant number of formative years in the city and have paid witness to the struggles of the Black community,” Baxter wrote. “... Requiring the replacement of just four major gas appliances like water heaters, furnaces, stoves, and dryers could top out at more than $26,884 for a Baltimore household.”
Baxter added that Black families spend a significantly larger portion of their income on energy costs than White families do. The bill, he concluded, would raise costs for “communities that can least afford it.”
Experts and advocates who spoke to The Post said Baxter’s claims were misleading because the bill wouldn’t affect existing homes or appliances such as stoves. They also noted that in most cases, it is cheaper to heat a home in Maryland with heat pumps than with gas furnaces. That is because heat pumps are much more efficient than gas furnaces, producing about three times as much energy as they consume. (Baxter didn’t respond to follow-up requests for comment on the experts’ statements.)
“If lower-income households in Maryland are able to switch to heat pump technology, they will benefit from lower energy bills based on my simulations,” said Yueming Qiu, a professor at the University of Maryland who studies consumer adoption of climate-friendly technologies.
At the same time, experts said, Baxter’s testimony touched on some real trade-offs inherent in the nation’s energy transition. Research does show that African Americans bear a higher energy burden because they are more likely to be lower-income and to live in older, less energy-efficient homes.
Studies also show that minority households are less likely to adopt heat pumps and other green technologies, in part because of the higher up-front costs. But these costs can be offset by generous rebates from the federal government and many states, including Maryland, Qiu said.
Richard Painter, who served as the chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, called it “ethically problematic” that Baxter didn’t mention his ties to the gas industry in his testimony. But he said Baxter’s conduct probably didn’t violate the state’s ethics law, which doesn’t mandate such disclosures.
Chesapeake Utilities, a CEA member, also submitted testimony opposing the legislation and raising similar cost concerns.
“In essence, Chesapeake received indirect lobbying services from CEA — in this case via Gary Baxter’s EnPAC — in exchange for its membership in CEA,” Vardi said. “This is what makes CEA so misleading and a clear front for the fossil fuel industry: It does lobbying that serves its members without having to register as a lobbyist.”
A Chesapeake Utilities spokesman did not address questions about CEA when asked, saying that while the utility supports the “journey to a lower-carbon future,” the bill could have imposed “extraordinary costs” on consumers and businesses.
In 2023, New York became the first state to pass a law banning all gas use in most new buildings. California has also updated its building code to encourage electrification. Maryland Del. Terri L. Hill (D-Howard), who supported the Better Buildings Act, said that given the climate policy’s progress in other states, “I expect that it will come back” in Maryland.
Workart by Germán & Co is fully owned.
The New Combustible Age
The Los Angeles fires hark to the nineteenth-century blazes that ravaged our cities—and point toward an even more flammable future.
The New Yorker, Daniel Immerwahr, January 14, 2025Chicago, where I live, is a city of striking architectural uniformity. Rows of sturdy two- and three-story flats stand at attention on countless streets. Their fronts come in different colors and have idiosyncratic decorative flourishes. But approach from behind, via the alleys, and you’ll see that they’re usually made of the same stuff: Chicago Common bricks. From that vantage, whole monochromatic blocks can look as if they’ve been designed by a single deranged architect, compulsively making the same unassuming building, over and over.
There is a reason for this. In October, 1871, the Great Chicago Fire, as it became known, killed hundreds and consumed more than seventeen thousand buildings, many of them wooden. Going by current estimates, the Los Angeles fires have destroyed more than twelve thousand buildings. In 1874, another conflagration scorched Chicago’s downtown, turning forty-seven acres to ash. The city’s stylistic unity comes, in part, from the fact that so many of its homes were constructed in the period after the fires. Those bricks, required by Chicago’s post-fire building codes, shout “Never again.”
Although Chicago’s great fire was particularly horrifying, many U.S. cities have a lingering civic memory of the time when it all burned down. San Francisco has a phoenix on its flag. So do Atlanta; Lawrence, Kansas; and Portland, Maine. Detroit’s flag features a distraught woman standing in front of a city ablaze, along with the paired mottos “Speramus Meliora” (“We hope for better things”) and “Resurget Cineribus” (“It shall rise from the ashes”).
Such was life in a wooden country. North America’s immense forests made for cheap timber, and the young United States was consequently wracked by repeated conflagrations. A year after Chicago’s 1871 fire came one in Boston. Then, eight months later, Portland, Oregon. The year 1889 alone saw devastating blazes that each burned hundreds of structures in Bakersfield, Seattle, and Spokane.
The Los Angeles fires are a nightmarish glimpse of a more combustible age. They’re hard to process because it had until recently seemed that the age of infernos was over. By the twentieth century, new technologies (light bulbs, radiators, gas heat) meant that fires didn’t start as often. Safer materials and stricter zoning meant they didn’t spread as far. More hydrants and beefed-up fire departments meant that they didn’t last as long. New York City’s worst nineteenth-century fire, in 1835, destroyed some six hundred buildings. Its most notorious twentieth-century fire, at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, in 1911, took more than a hundred lives but was limited to three stories of a ten-story building. The structure still stands, now part of N.Y.U.’s campus.
Fire has been humanity’s constant companion; our bodies evolved around it, and no recorded society has lacked it. Yet the twentieth century did much to remove fire from view. A historically astonishing, though often unremarked, feature of modernity is how relatively flameproof it has been. Our ancestors once lit large pyres and worshipped fire gods. Today, it is perfectly possible to go months without seeing flames rise higher than they do on a stovetop burner. (The Angelenos who are now watching whole neighborhoods—their neighborhoods—burn down may have never before seen a single building aflame.)
Modernity’s victory wasn’t so much in extinguishing fire, however, as containing it. More than three-quarters of energy consumed today comes from burning oil, coal, or natural gas. This happens not in the open but in boilers and combustion chambers. Like a misbehaving child, fire has been sent to its room. Out of sight, it has been going about its work of wresting carbon atoms free and streaming them skyward.
Those concealed flames, we now understand, are more dangerous than the spectacular infernos that once incinerated nineteenth-century cities. Global warming has desiccated California, which was never known for its copious water supply. When you add to this decades of misguided fire-control tactics that sought to suppress all fires rather than let combustible biomass regularly burn down, you have conditions where the slightest touch can kindle a megafire. In 2018, during a dry spell, a rancher in Mendocino County used a claw hammer to drive a concrete stake into the ground. The sparks hit dry grass and set off a blaze that, in combination with another, burned more than six hundred square miles across four counties and lasted a hundred and sixty-one days.
That 2018 fire burned largely uninhabited land. The most fire-prone homes in California lie in the exurban fringe that geographers call the “wildland-urban interface.” This has long been a dangerous place to build, and scenic Malibu has been particularly vulnerable. (In the nineteen-nineties, the historian Mike Davis, fed up with the hand-wringing over protecting luxury enclaves, laid out “the case for letting Malibu burn.”) But we’re now facing wildfires so furious that they march past the city’s edge onto its grid, toward downtown.
Three years ago, after an out-of-control grass fire in Colorado rampaged through Boulder County and burned more than a thousand structures, the journalist David Wallace-Wells prophesied “the return of the urban firestorm.” Los Angeles, which has had only 0.02 inches of rain since September, is now experiencing the worst fires any U.S. city has seen in more than a hundred years. The twentieth century’s quenching of fire now looks less like a historic victory than a temporary respite. We tried to bottle fire up, but it is spilling out.
After the eighteen-seventies, Chicagoans rebuilt their city in safer materials. Los Angeles won’t be able to protect itself so easily. When fires grow large enough, as California’s drought-powered megafires have, everything becomes fuel. Better housing stock can mitigate dangers, but the underlying problem, global warming, is systemic. Fireproofing California will take more than brick. ♦