In the Rio Grande Valley along the U.S.-Mexico border, residents are battling to preserve some of the last pristine wetlands on the Texas coast. They had won some victories against businesses building terminals to ship millions of tons of liquefied natural gas (LNG), an atmosphere-heating fossil fuel, to Europe and Asia from Brownsville.
A scrappy group of activists whose families have lived in the area for centuries delayed construction as locals urged regulators to reject the terminals. Following legal action brought by the Sierra Club and other South Texas groups, a federal agency reassessed the potential environmental impacts of the projects. And the activists, through a sophisticated strategy of teaming up with European allies, persuaded key financial backers to withdraw support.
