When the environmental group Greenpeace lost a nearly $670 million verdict this month over its role in oil pipeline protests, a quarter-billion dollars of the damages were awarded not for the actual demonstrations, but for defaming the pipeline’s owner. The costly verdict has raised alarm among activist organizations as well as some First Amendment experts, who said the lawsuit and damage awards could deter free speech far beyond the environmental movement. The verdict “will send a chill down the spine of any nonprofit who wants to get involved in any political protest,” said David D. Cole, a professor at Georgetown Law and former national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “If you’re the Sierra Club, or the N.A.A.C.P., or the N.R.A., or an anti-abortion group, you’re going to be very worried.” The lawsuit, filed by Energy Transfer in 2019, accused Greenpeace of masterminding an “unlawful and violent scheme” to harm the company’s finances, employees and infrastructure and to block the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Greenpeace countered that it had promoted peaceful protest and had played only a minor role in the demonstrations, which were led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe over concerns about its ancestral land and water supply. A key part of Energy Transfer’s case relied on defamation claims. For example, the jury found that Greenpeace defamed the company by saying it had “damaged at least 380 sacred and cultural sites” during pipeline work, the first of nine statements found defamatory. Greenpeace called Energy Transfer’s lawsuit an attempt to muzzle the company’s critics. “This case should alarm everyone, no matter their political inclinations,” said Sushma Raman, interim executive director of Greenpeace USA. “We should all be concerned about the future of the First Amendment.” Greenpeace has said it will appeal to the Supreme Court in North Dakota, the state where the trial was held. Free-speech issues are widely expected to figure prominently in that filing. But Greenpeace was not the only party invoking the First Amendment. Upon leaving the courtroom, the lead lawyer for Energy Transfer, Trey Cox of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, called the verdict “a powerful affirmation” of the First Amendment. “Peaceful protest is an inherent American right,” he said. “However, violent and destructive protest is unlawful and unacceptable.” Vicki Granado, a spokeswoman for Energy Transfer, described the verdict as “a win for all law-abiding Americans who understand the difference between the right to free speech and breaking the law.” The clashing comments shine a light on a central tension in the debate: Where do you draw the line between peaceful protest and unlawful activity? “If people are engaged in non-expressive conduct, like vandalism, like impeding roadways such that cars and passers-by can’t use those roadways, the First Amendment is not going to protect that,” said JT Morris, a senior supervising attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a nonprofit that defends free speech across the ideological spectrum. “But peaceful protest, criticism of companies on matters of public concern, those are all protected.” The verdict landed in the midst of a larger debate over the limits of free speech. President Trump has accused news outlets of defaming him, and he has been found liable for defamation himself. His administration has targeted law firms he perceives as enemies, as well as international students deemed too critical of Israel or of U.S. foreign policy. Conservatives have accused social media platforms of suppressing free speech and have vowed to stop what they call online censorship. “There’s nothing in this particular political climate that’s shocking anymore,” said Jack Weinberg, who in the 1960s was a prominent free-speech activist and later worked for Greenpeace. (He’s also known for the phrase “Don’t trust anyone over 30,” although that’s not exactly how he said it.) “But it’s wrong,” he said of the verdict, “and it will have profound consequences.” The First Amendment protects free speech and the right to protest, and a landmark 1964 Supreme Court decision, New York Times v. Sullivan, strengthened those protections. To prevail in a defamation suit, a public figure must prove that the statement was false and was made with “actual malice,” meaning knowledge that the statement was false, or reckless disregard for its veracity. Carl W. Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, said that ruling intentionally raised the bar to win a defamation suit. “It’s extreme,” he said. “It’s meant to be.” Eugene Volokh, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University, pointed to the history of that famous case. It concerned a 1960 ad in The Times that described police actions against civil rights demonstrators in Alabama as “an unprecedented wave of terror.” A police official sued the paper and won. But the Supreme Court overturned the verdict. The court ruled that protecting such speech was necessary, even if it contained errors, in order to ensure robust public debate. In a Greenpeace appeal, Mr. Volokh said, the evidence demonstrating whether Greenpeace’s statements were true or false would be crucial in evaluating the verdict, as would the question of whether Greenpeace’s statements were constitutionally protected expressions of opinion. Other issues that loom: What was permitted to be entered into evidence in the first place, and whether the instructions to the jury were sufficient. Then, he said, if the statements are found to be clearly false, is there enough evidence to show that Greenpeace engaged in “reckless falsehood, acts of so-called actual malice?” Any award for defamation chills free speech, Mr. Volokh added, whether against Greenpeace or against the Infowars host Alex Jones, who was found liable for more than $1 billion over his false statements about the murder of children at the Sandy Hook school shooting. In the Greenpeace case, the nine statements found by the jury to be defamatory referred to Energy Transfer and its subsidiary Dakota Access. One statement said that Dakota Access personnel had “deliberately desecrated burial grounds.” Another said that protesters had been met with “extreme violence, such as the use of water cannons, pepper spray, concussion grenades, Tasers, LRADs (Long Range Acoustic Devices) and dogs, from local and national law enforcement, and Energy Transfer partners and their private security.” Other statements were more general: “For months, the Standing Rock Sioux have been resisting the construction of a pipeline through their tribal land and waters that would carry oil from North Dakota’s fracking fields to Illinois.” The protests unfolded over months, from mid-2016 to early 2017, attracting tens of thousands of people from around the world, and were widely documented by news crews and on social media. Janet Alkire, chairwoman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, argued that Greenpeace’s statements were true and not defamatory. “Energy Transfer’s false and self-serving narrative that Greenpeace manipulated Standing Rock into protesting DAPL is patronizing and disrespectful to our people,” she said in a statement, using an abbreviation for the Dakota Access Pipeline. She said that “scenes of guard dogs menacing tribal members” were publicly available “on the news and on the internet.” Videos of the incidents in question weren’t shown at the trial. Everett Jack Jr. of the firm Davis, Wright Tremaine, the main lawyer for Greenpeace, declined to discuss why. The 1,172-mile pipeline, priced at $3.7 billion when announced, has been operating since 2017. It carries crude oil from North Dakota to Illinois. During the trial, some arguments hinged on whether the pipeline crossed Standing Rock’s land, or how to define tribal land. The pipeline is just outside the borders of the reservation but crosses what the tribe calls unceded land that it had never agreed to give up. There was also debate about whether tribal burial grounds were harmed during construction. Experts working for the tribe found that was the case, but experts brought in by Energy Transfer did not. Even if a statement was false, Mr. Cole said, a defendant cannot be held liable if they had a basis for believing it. He also predicted that the penalty would likely be reduced on appeal if not overturned. Martin Garbus, a veteran First Amendment lawyer, led a delegation of lawyers to North Dakota to observe the trial. The lawyers have said that the jury was biased against the defendants and that the trial should have been moved to another county. He expressed concern that an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court could be used to overturn Times v. Sullivan. He noted that Justice Clarence Thomas has called for the Supreme Court to reconsider that case. But Mr. Cole, Mr. Tobias and other experts said they did not expect the court to reconsider Times v. Sullivan. Greenpeace has said previously that the size of the damages could force the organization to shut down its U.S. operations. The lawsuit named three Greenpeace entities, but it centered on the actions of Greenpeace Inc., based in Washington, which organizes campaigns and protests in the United States and was found liable for more than $400 million. A second organization, Greenpeace Fund, a fund-raising arm, was found liable for about $130 million. A third group, Greenpeace International, based in Amsterdam, was found liable for the same amount. That group said its only involvement was signing a letter, along with several hundred other signatories, calling on banks to halt loans for the pipeline. Earlier this year, Greenpeace International filed a countersuit in the Netherlands against Energy Transfer. That lawsuit was brought under a European Union directive designed to fight what are known as SLAPP suits, or strategic lawsuits against public participation — legal actions designed to stifle critics. (State law in North Dakota, where Energy Transfer brought its case against Greenpeace, doesn’t have anti-SLAPP provisions.) The next hearing in the Netherlands case is in July.

The silent season is drawing to a close. All winter, there was little birdsong to lift my heart. The occasional caw of a crow, the chickadee-dee-dee of a chickadee, the big song of the little Carolina wren that now stays on our Pennsylvania farm all winter. But no courtship call of great horned owls, no wood thrush or Baltimore oriole. Still, I rejoiced in the music that remained. I just heard the first notes of our first returning songbird, though, a red-winged blackbird, and the snowdrops have begun to poke out of the ground. The other day, I moved last fall’s potted tulips and hyacinth from the unheated side of the barn to the warmth of the garden room to force their blooms. But the vegetable garden is an icy mud puddle and the flower beds, still mulched with shredded leaves, show little signs of life. Boxwood is covered in burlap and snow fence is draped around trees and shrubs to prevent deer from devouring them. Those deer, which have changed from the color of milk chocolate to dark, break through our makeshift deterrents anyway and eat the yew, euonymus, arborvitae, and this winter, even the holly. Squirrels race around adding to their larders, but the chipmunks are nowhere to be seen yet. They’re in their dens I suppose, as are the opossum, raccoons and the bears, too. Once I longed for a greenhouse, but now I, too, wish to hibernate in winter, to take time off from sowing, potting and nurturing. To walk in snowy woods and observe animal tracks, study ice patterns on the pond, to be one with the season. I want to read by the fire and peruse garden catalogs, imagining what next year’s garden will be like, expecting, as all gardeners do, that next year will be better than the last. As Vita Sackville-West wrote in her poem “The Garden”: The gardener dreams his special own alloy Of possible and the impossible. But what is possible anymore? As I reflect on last year’s abysmal season, I wonder how I will adapt to the changes I witness. A year ago, winter was so warm that shrubs hardly died back and, last spring, dripped with foliage, a welcome sight but not normal. Spring was so hot I missed that lovely, cool, window for transplanting. I didn’t know when to plant early season, cold-hardy vegetables, certainly not in 85 degrees, or when to set out tender plants. “After danger of frost,” is common wisdom, but when is that now? My Plant Hardiness Zone shifted recently because the average coldest temperature in my area is now three degrees higher than it was in 2012. But even that new guidance didn’t help me. Mid-May felt like mid-June. Then, we had hail on May 29. I planted poppies in April anyway (they like cool weather) but the seeds were washed away by floods, which can now stretch here from April through October. Between June and November, we had a drought. The grass was brown. Dogwood and tulip poplar lost their leaves in July. My vegetable garden resembled a cracked riverbed, the soil so hard that weeding was nearly impossible. Editors’ Picks Is There a Least Bad Alcohol? Everybody Knew His Name: ‘Norm!’ Timothée Chalamet Is Living a Knicks Fan’s Dream Streams ran dry, so for the first time in 36 years I saw deer wade into the pond to drink. Little food was available for them, so they sauntered up to our garage and ate the deer-resistant lavender. On my walks in the forest, I was struck by that lack of undergrowth, particularly a huge patch of Canadian Wood Nettle, a North America native that is a host plant for Red Admiral and Eastern Comma butterflies. Chanterelles never fruited in their usual spots. I worried that our spring would run dry. Pennsylvania saw record wildfires in fall. Two lilacs, which normally appear in spring, bloomed in October, and in late November I was still harvesting what little I did manage to grow. All this reminds me of a radio program called “Piano Puzzler” that my husband and I listen to on Saturday mornings. The composer Bruce Adolphe rewrites a familiar tune in the style of a classical composer. He changes the tune’s tempo, harmony or mode and contestants try to name the tune and composer. Imagine “Hey Jude” in the style of Brahms. Somewhere in my brain the tune sounds familiar, yet something is off, the music is disorienting. Occasionally, I guess correctly. Often, not. Gardening in climate change is the same: confusing, with a lot of guessing. What’s a home gardener to do? “The only predictable thing is that it is going to be unpredictable.” said Sonja Skelly, director of education at Cornell Botanic Gardens in Ithaca, N.Y. “It’s been crazy up here, too.” Last spring was hot in Ithaca as well, so the vegetable gardener started planting two weeks before the May 31 frost-free date. Then came extreme temperature fluctuations, but the plants set out earlier did better because they got established. Those planted on the target date were stunted and had a poor growing season. “A good lesson,” Dr. Skelly said. Row covers, which allow gardeners to get plants in earlier and grow them later in the season, are “going to be really important in climates like ours,” she said. Cover crops like millet, sorghum, and black-eyed peas have been successful at the botanic gardens. They improve water retention, decrease weeds, reduce erosion and limit negative microorganisms in soil. The birds love them, Dr. Skelly said. She recommended planting together what the Haudenosaunee people call the three sisters: corn, beans and squash. This system produces a better per-hectare yield than any monoculture cropping system, she said. Drip irrigation is another solution, Dr. Skelly said. “It adds moisture where it’s needed, at the roots,” she said. Water is released slowly, stays put, and doesn’t run off like hand watering or using sprinklers. “Observe, take notes, ask questions, seek out answers,” Dr. Skelly advised. “What are the neighbors seeing?” Learn by going to local botanic gardens, public gardens and nature centers, which have been working on this problem for a while now. “Keep the cycle of information flowing, talking with friends and family and neighbors as a way to help us figure it out. That’s so important,” she said. Dr. Skelly believes it’s crucial for home gardeners to really understand their plants. “Maybe climate change will be the way to know our gardens far better,” she said. “We have to.” I’ve long depended on experts to teach me how to garden responsibly. To help, not harm, the environment. I plant a diverse range of plants, including natives for pollinators, and have learned to celebrate native weeds like fleabane. I practice companion planting. I don’t spray pesticides or insecticides and, instead of synthetic fertilizers, use compost or make my own out of comfrey or stinging nettle. I wish I could buy plants in something other than plastic. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT But the more I ponder gardening in the time of climate change, the more I believe we home gardeners are going to have to figure out many solutions for ourselves. So much of gardening is trial and error and erratic weather patterns mean we’ll have to experiment even more, to do our own studies. In essence, we must become citizen-scientists of our own vegetable patches and flower beds. Cornell Botanic Gardens has a climate change demonstration garden, but, really, we all do. None of us has been through this before. And in the end, we’re all in this together, navigating a strange new world of digging in soil and growing things, each trying as we might to contribute to a new way of gardening in a changing world.

Fresh out of law school in 2022, Rachel Rothschild wrote a memo laying out the legal justification for a new strategy to fight climate change: States could force oil and gas companies to pay for the damage caused by extreme floods and wildfires that are made worse by the use of their products. Ms. Rothschild’s work was foundational. It provided the basis for the nation’s first “climate superfund” laws, which were passed in New York and Vermont last year and could be adopted by as many as six more states as soon as this year. If implemented, they could cost oil companies billions of dollars. Her work made Ms. Rothschild a target. She is one of a number of lawyers, law professors and judges who have been the focus of a campaign to discredit them led by a conservative group with ties to the fossil fuel industry and the Trump administration. Shortly after the passage of the Vermont law last June, the group sued the University of Michigan, where Ms. Rothschild now teaches, after the university refused its request for Ms. Rothschild’s emails related to “climate superfunds.” As a public institution, the university is subject to the state’s public records law. The group, called Government Accountability and Oversight, has also sought to have Ms. Rothschild undergo a deposition. The university, which has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, maintains Ms. Rothschild’s communications are not subject to public records requests because they were written on her private email account. Still, the university told Ms. Rothschild that she must comply with the request for a deposition. Experts said the actions against Ms. Rothschild seemed designed to discourage her or others from similar work. “Legal actions and public records requests may be used in a manner that can intimidate or silence scholars, and when that happens, it threatens not only the targeted individuals but also the progress of knowledge and informed debate,” Kyle Logue, the interim dean of the University of Michigan Law School, said in a statement. The actions regarding Ms. Rothschild appear to be part of a campaign by the fossil fuel industry to quash new legal tools for holding companies accountable for climate pollution. As President Trump moves to end federal efforts to fight climate change, the new state-level “polluter-pays” laws and lawsuits are seen as the next frontier in the battle over global warming. Executives from nearly two dozen oil and gas companies raised their concerns about the climate superfund laws at a meeting last week with President Trump at the White House. They want the Justice Department to file briefs in support of their litigation against the state laws, said two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the private meeting. The campaign is being waged by a group that has largely been funded by the foundation created by Joseph Craft III, chief executive of the nation’s third largest coal company and an ally of and campaign donor to President Trump. Ms. Rothschild’s initial memo — now making its way through statehouses — laid out the case for states to use the model of the 1980 Superfund law, which requires polluters to pay to clean abandoned toxic waste sites, and apply it to the climate damage caused by emissions from the burning of oil, gas and coal. Lawmakers in California, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island and Connecticut are now considering climate superfund legislation. In addition, more than 30 lawsuits have been filed by states and municipalities aimed at forcing oil and gas companies to pay for repairs or adaptations linked to damage from climate change. Many of those cases, some of which could end up before the Supreme Court, argue that the companies knew for years about the dangers of climate change linked to their products but concealed that information. The approach is similar to those of past lawsuits that led to landmark settlements with the tobacco industry and opioid manufacturers. The fossil fuel industry counters that climate change is a global problem and that individual state laws are an unconstitutional attempt to assert control over the nation’s energy system. “These extraordinary, unprecedented laws impose massive retroactive penalties going back decades for lawful, out-of-state conduct that was regulated by Congress,” said Daryl Joseffer, executive vice president and chief counsel for the litigation arm of the United States Chamber of Commerce, which has sued both New York and Vermont to overturn the climate superfund laws. Twenty-two other states, led by their Republican attorneys general, are challenging the New York law in federal court. Ryan Meyers, senior vice president and general counsel at the American Petroleum Institute, an industry group that is also fighting to overturn the climate superfund laws in New York and Vermont, said they were part of “a coordinated campaign against an industry that is vital to everyday life and serves as the engine of America’s economy.” A key player in the campaign to stop the effort to hold fossil fuel companies financially accountable for damages is Christopher Horner, a lawyer and conservative activist who served on the transition team for the Environmental Protection Agency during Mr. Trump’s first term. For years, Mr. Horner has used public records laws to unearth emails of climate scientists and disseminate them in ways that aim to undermine their work. “Chris Horner is the nation’s most prolific user of FOIA and its state equivalents to go after anyone fighting climate change who works for a public entity,” said Michael Gerrard, an expert in climate law at Columbia University. In 2011, the board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science complained that Mr. Horner was making “unreasonable, excessive Freedom of Information Act requests for personal information and voluminous data that are then used to harass and intimidate scientists.” When President Barack Obama tried to pass a climate law, allies of Mr. Horner worked to spread the emails of climate scientists, gathered by Mr. Horner, to Republicans in Congress. In a 2017 interview with The New York Times, Mr. Horner said that had helped kill the bill. Now, Mr. Horner and his allies are focused on the architects behind the “polluter pays” laws. Mr. Horner did not respond to several requests for comment. From 2018 to 2021, Mr. Horner served as a board member for Government Accountability and Oversight, the group that filed suit against Ms. Rothschild. As recently as January, Mr. Horner wrote an article for The Washington Reporter, a conservative media website, in which he said he represented the Government Accountability and Oversight group in federal and state open records matters. According to public records, a major donor to the group is a nonprofit foundation formed by Mr. Craft, the chief executive of Alliance Resource Partners, the country’s third largest coal company. The Joseph Craft III Foundation contributed $300,000 a year to the Government Accountability and Oversight group from 2020 to 2023, for a total of $1.2 million, according to its public tax filings. That appears to make it a major funder of the group’s activities: During those years, G.A.O.’s total annual revenue averaged $576,172. Mr. Craft and his wife, Kelly, who served as ambassador to the United Nations in the first Trump administration, have given nearly $3 million to Mr. Trump’s presidential campaigns, the Republican Party and a Republican super PAC. The Craft foundation and Alliance Resource Partners did not respond to requests for comment. Matthew Hardin, who serves on the board of Government Accountability and Oversight, wrote in a statement, “Like all nonprofits, G.A.O. relies on contributions from donors to fulfill its independent, charitable mission of seeking transparency in public institutions and educating the public.” The group’s interest in Ms. Rothschild appears focused on her communications with Lee Wasserman, the director of the Rockefeller Family Fund, a philanthropy that has supported efforts to sue oil companies over what it calls climate deception. It was Mr. Wasserman who first wondered if lawmakers could combine the old Superfund law with new penalties for climate polluters. Mr. Wasserman brought the idea to the Institute for Policy Integrity, a nonprofit research organization that is housed in New York University’s law school, where Ms. Rothschild was then working as a fellow. She researched whether the idea could stand up legally. The Rockefeller Family Fund donated $50,000 to the Institute for Policy Integrity to fund her research, which led New York and Vermont lawmakers to propose legislation. When it comes to climate and environmental matters, states often rely on academics for legal advice because many private law firms represent fossil fuel companies, which can create a conflict of interest. After writing her memo, Ms. Rothschild joined the faculty at the University of Michigan, where she continued to work on climate superfund legislation in her free time, briefing lawmakers and testifying before legislative committees. “I’m proud of the fact that I do a lot of pro bono work in areas where I have particular expertise, and I was glad I could help states like Vermont and New York draft these laws,” she said in a statement. Ms. Rothschild’s pro bono work was “critical” to passage of the law in New York, said Justin Flagg, director of environmental policy for Liz Krueger, a Democratic New York state senator who sponsored the legislation. “This was something that had not yet been tested in court,” he added. “So we really hung our hat on her analysis.” Environmental law professors at other public universities have been targets of similar campaigns. During the Biden administration, Mr. Horner used the state public records law to obtain the emails of Ann Carlson, who teaches at the University of California, Los Angeles. Ms. Carlson, who had consulted on climate damage lawsuits, was nominated by President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to run a federal agency that writes rules aimed at reducing climate-warming tailpipe pollution — a position requiring Senate confirmation. Government Accountability and Oversight gave Ms. Carlson’s emails to Fox News, which published stories about her on its website including one titled, “Biden nominee coordinated dark money climate nuisance lawsuits involving Leonardo DiCaprio.” Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, used the emails to fight Ms. Carlson’s confirmation, at one point calling her an “ethically challenged, environmental zealot.” He introduced an amendment on the Senate floor to strip the salary from her position. While the amendment failed, she ultimately withdrew her nomination, although she did end up serving in the role in an acting capacity. “It was ruthless, relentless and baseless,” Ms. Carlson said of the experience of having her emails used against her. “This is a tactic designed to dissuade people from working on important climate policies.” The campaign has extended to at least one judge. In 2023, Mark Recktenwald, the chief justice of the Hawaii Supreme Court, wrote a unanimous decision that the local government in Honolulu could move forward with a climate liability lawsuit against major oil companies. Justice Recktenwald gave a remote presentation to the Environmental Law Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group that runs seminars on environmental litigation. Conservative media outlets including as The Daily Caller and Fox News ran stories noting that a member of the institute’s board had worked at a law firm that defended the climate law in the Honolulu case. The stories did not mention that oil executives also serve on the institute’s board. Justice Recktenwald had also asked both parties in the Honolulu lawsuit for any concerns about his plans to speak at the seminar, and neither side had objected. But in virtually every story, a group called Energy Policy Advocates, which has named Mr. Horner as its lawyer, charged that Justice Recktenwald’s participation showed improper bias. Justice Recktenwald declined to comment. The effort to devalue the legal scholars involved in the climate cases reflects the potential impact of the new laws and litigation, experts said. “These new state laws and this avalanche of lawsuits are threatening the survival of these fossil fuel companies,” said Patrick Parenteau, an emeritus professor at the Vermont Law and Graduate School.

The Biden administration required coal- and oil-burning power plants to greatly reduce emissions of toxic chemicals including mercury, which can harm babies’ brains and cause heart disease in adults. Now, the Trump administration is offering companies an extraordinary out: Send an email, and they might be given permission by President Trump to bypass the new restrictions, as well as other major clean-air rules. The Environmental Protection Agency this week said an obscure section of the Clean Air Act enables the president to temporarily exempt industrial facilities from new rules if the technology required to meet those rules isn’t available, and if it’s in the interest of national security. In its notice to companies, the agency provided a template for companies to use to get approvals, including what to write in the email’s subject line. Then “the president will make a decision on the merits,” said the notice, issued by the E.P.A. on Monday. Joseph Goffman, former executive director of Harvard Law School’s Environmental and Energy Law Program who served as E.P.A. assistant administrator for air pollution under President Joseph R. Biden Jr., said he feared the President Trump was “setting up a rubber stamp process” that would allow companies to avoid a long list of rules on air pollution. Normally, the agency would lay down more specific criteria for exemptions to a rule, he said. He also said that Congress had clearly intended for Clean Air Act exemptions to come with conditions that would ensure at least some pollution limits. “Because none of that is present, it strongly suggests that the decisions will be at best ad hoc,” Mr. Goffman said. “That’s in defiance of Congress’s intent, in defiance of the public health needs of the communities that are affected, and in defiance of the E.P.A.’s past practices.” Molly Vaseliou, a spokeswoman for the E.P.A., pushed back against that view, saying nowhere in the law was there an explicit requirement for such conditions. “This type of ‘legal analysis’ seems consistent with people who were responsible” for interpretations of laws the Supreme Court has struck down, she said in an email. The latest move is part of an effort led by the E.P.A.’s administrator, Lee Zeldin, to steer the agency away from its original role of environmental protection and regulation. He has described its mission as lowering the cost of purchasing cars, heating homes and running businesses, and encouraging what he has referred to previously as American energy dominance. Under Mr. Zeldin, the E.P.A. has said it plans to slash jobs, eliminate its scientific research arm, ensure enforcement actions don’t interfere with energy production, and reduce the agency’s overall budget by 65 percent. The latest policy allows for companies to apply for exemptions of up to two years, the maximum allowed under the Clean Air Act, from numerous new restrictions on emissions of toxic chemicals like mercury and arsenic. Another is ethylene oxide, a colorless gas that is widely used to sterilize medical devices and is also a carcinogen. Mr. Zeldin, a former member of Congress from New York, has also said he would allow coal-burning power plants to apply for exemptions from a new rule that requires them to address the health risks of coal ash, a toxic substance created by burning coal to produce electricity. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The agency has said it intends to ultimately rewrite many of these same rules, an arduous process that is expected to take time. So the E.P.A. appears to be pursuing “a two-step process where it says it’s going to take the next few years to roll back the rules,” but in the meantime avoid companies having to meet any of them, said James Pew, director of clean air practice at the environmental group Earthjustice. “It’s hard to imagine how these exemptions could be lawful,” Mr. Pew said. For all of the new rules, for example, the Biden administration had already identified alternative technology that was available and affordable. The idea that the ability to pollute was in the national interest was also hard to buy, he said. As of Thursday, it was unclear whether the agency had started to receive exemption applications, whether any had been granted, and if or how they would be disclosed. Companies must apply for exemptions by the end of the month, the E.P.A. said. “We appreciate the Trump E.P.A.’s willingness to consider exemptions for manufacturers that are negatively impacted by these regulations,” Alexa Lopez, a spokeswoman for the National Association of Manufacturers, an industry group, said in a statement. “The NAM stands ready to work with the administration to provide durable solutions that both protect the environment and preserve the ability of manufacturers to compete on the global stage.”

A gleaming new data center sits less than half a mile from the electric substation where a fire plunged Heathrow Airport into darkness last week. The data center’s own power was also cut that day. But no one who relied on it would have noticed, thanks to a bank of batteries and backup generators designed to kick in instantly. Meanwhile it took officials at Europe’s busiest airport close to 18 hours to bring its terminals and runways back into operation, causing global travel delays and underscoring the vulnerability of Britain’s infrastructure. It is a striking contrast that energy experts say can be explained largely by one word: Money. “The data center industry is relatively young. They are more attuned to the cost of a catastrophic failure,” said Simon Gallagher, the managing director at UK Networks Services, which advises clients on the resilience of their electricity networks. He said most of the world’s airports — including Heathrow — have not been willing to make the big investments necessary to build total backup systems. Even at an airport the size of Heathrow, which officials have described as equivalent in power use to a small city, it is possible to create backup systems robust enough to maintain normal operations during a catastrophic power failure, Mr. Gallagher and other engineering experts said. But it could cost as much as $100 million and would likely take years to put in place. So far, most airports have chosen not to make the investment. “It comes down to a cost-benefit analysis,” Mr. Gallagher said. “At the minute, there seems to be an assumption that it would cost too much.” The Airport Heathrow officials were quick to point out after Friday’s incident that the airport has backup power in place for its most critical systems: runway lights and the tower’s traffic control safety systems. If a plane had needed to land that day, it could have done so safely. But the airport had no way to power the rest of the sprawling and complicated facility: the vast terminals, filled with shops and restaurants, moving walkways and escalators. Cut from the grid, there was no power to move bags to the claim area, or for ticket counters or bathrooms. First opened at the end of World War II, Heathrow has been expanded and updated over the decades. The result has been a patchwork of older and newer electrical cables and systems carrying an ever-increasing demand for power. “The grid is old,” said Najmedin Meshkati, an engineering professor at the University of Southern California. “For aviation, for the grid and for other safety critical systems, the older that they get the more important maintenance becomes.” What Heathrow does not have are backup generators that could supply the 40 megawatts of power required at peak times to maintain normal operations. Instead, on Friday, engineers at the airport had to manually reconfigure switches at another substation to temporarily reroute available power to Heathrow. That took hours, and because the airport’s systems had been sitting without power, it took even more time to boot them back up, followed by rounds of testing. The Substation The airport’s primary power source is the Hyde North substation about a mile away, owned and operated by National Grid Electricity Transmission, the private power company responsible for the area. Two of the substation’s transformers were taken offline by the fire. The cause is still under investigation, but the police said Tuesday they had found “no evidence” of suspicious activity. John Pettigrew, the chief executive of National Grid, told The Financial Times that there was “no lack of capacity” in the area after the fire. Energy experts said that is correct: The places where there is an actual lack of power tend to be developing countries and war zones. The challenge, though, was making use of the area’s ample power once Heathrow’s connection to Hyde North was severed. Thomas Woldbye, the chief executive of the airport, told the BBC that he was proud of the employees who worked through Friday to switch their systems to use power from two nearby substations. But he said that Heathrow would now assess whether to install “a different level of resilience if we cannot trust that the grid around us is working the way it should.” Heathrow did not respond to requests for comment for this story. The Data Center The airport’s leaders might want to examine their corporate neighbor just to the north. The Union Park data facility, run by Ark Data Centres, is a six-minute walk from the Hyde North substation. Inside, computers run 24 hours a day, powering the cloud services and artificial intelligence that are at the heart of modern banking, commerce, research and government operations. Huw Owen, the company’s chief executive, said its electrical supply was interrupted when the fire broke out. But sophisticated sensors detected the loss of power and instantly shifted to batteries that operate much like an uninterruptible power supply system for a personal computer. That gave the facility’s generators time to spin up, and they soon took over. “It’s a well-rehearsed, well-known process,” Mr. Owen said in an interview. “It’s this mind-set that resilience and keeping everything powered is absolutely front and center of our world.” Mr. Owen said the company installed the costly generator backup system despite expectations it might never be needed. A permitting application prepared for the company in December described the possibility of a power outage as “extremely rare.” “It would require a catastrophic regional failure on the grid, or at the supplying power station, and would likely impact not only the site but the surrounding London area,” the summary notes. “As a result, the grid connection is considered to be highly reliable as demonstrated in the grid reliability letter provided with the application (calculated as 99.999605%).” The Decision Prime Minister Keir Starmer told the BBC after the fire, “I don’t want to see an airport as important as Heathrow going down in the way it did on Friday.” But how to avoid it in the future? The challenge in making electrical upgrades to places like Heathrow is determining how to pay for it when high energy costs are straining consumer budgets. In the past, airport investment has often been passed on to customers in the form of higher ticket prices on airlines. Mr. Gallagher, the consultant on electrical network resilience, noted that new airports in places like Dubai were built with the kind of backups that could keep terminals open. And a few older airports, like Schiphol in Amsterdam, have upgraded their facilities with large generators. But if Heathrow’s management wants to follow suit, experts say, they will need to accept that it requires a large investment to prevent a crisis that may not happen again for many years. “It’s a hell of a lot easier to build it from Day 1 than it is to try and retrofit stuff,” Mr. Owen said of Heathrow and other old airports. “They are as capable of instigating resilience at those sites as I am, but they’re now going to have to retrofit, whereas I built it from Day 1.”

President Trump issued an executive order on Monday to crack down on countries that buy Venezuelan oil by imposing tariffs on the goods those nations send into the United States, claiming that Venezuela has “purposefully and deceitfully” sent criminals and murderers into America. In the order, the president said the government of Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan leader, and the Tren de Aragua gang, a transnational criminal organization, posed a threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States. On or after April 2, a tariff of 25 percent may be imposed on all goods imported into the United States from any country that imports Venezuelan oil, either directly or indirectly through third parties, the order said. The order said the secretaries of state, Treasury, commerce and homeland security, as well as the trade representative, would determine at their discretion what tariffs to impose. The tariffs would expire one year after the last date the Venezuelan oil was imported, or earlier if Trump officials so chose, it said. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT This unconventional use of tariffs could further disrupt the global oil trade as buyers of Venezuelan oil seek alternatives. The United States and China have been the top buyers of Venezuelan oil in recent months, according to Rystad Energy, a research and consulting firm. India and Spain also buy a small amount of crude from the South American country. But in the case of China, Venezuela’s oil makes up such a small portion of the country’s imports that the threat of higher tariffs will probably cause China to look elsewhere for oil, said Jorge León, a Rystad Energy analyst. American purchases of Venezuelan oil are poised to wind down after the Trump administration said it would revoke a license that allowed Chevron to produce oil there. The Trump administration on Monday gave Chevron, the second largest U.S. oil company, another two months to produce oil in Venezuela and sell it to the United States. The administration had earlier ordered Chevron to wind down its operations by April 3. The U.S. and Venezuelan governments have been sparring over Mr. Trump’s plans to deport migrants from the United States. Venezuela announced on Saturday that it had reached an agreement with the Trump administration to resume accepting deportation flights of migrants who were in the United States illegally. “Venezuela has been very hostile to the United States and the Freedoms which we espouse,” the president wrote. Mr. Trump is planning to impose other new tariffs globally on April 2, when he will introduce what he is calling “reciprocal tariffs.” He has said the United States will raise the tariffs it charges on other countries to match their levies, while also taking into consideration other behaviors that affect trade, like taxes and currency manipulation. The president has taken to calling this “liberation day,” a term he repeated on Monday. Mr. Trump called the new levies he threatened on buyers of Venezuelan oil “secondary tariffs,” a label that echoed “secondary sanctions,” which are penalties imposed on other countries or parties that trade with nations under sanctions. Some trade and sanctions experts said existing secondary sanctions associated with countries such as Russia and Iran already were not well enforced, and questioned whether the United States would have the capacity to pull off new tariff-based penalties. “Given the limited enforcement of existing secondary sanctions, where we have a precedent, I’m not sure how realistic effective deployment of this strategy is,” said Daniel Tannebaum, a partner at the consulting firm Oliver Wyman and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank. But other experts said the strategy could help the United States to avoid the type of financial sanctions on foreign banks that could threaten financial stability. Using tariffs could help the United States to be seen as taking tough action without incurring those risks, they said. With typical secondary sanctions, individuals or companies cannot buy oil or other products under sanctions from a blacklisted country. Otherwise, businesses could be subjected to U.S. sanctions themselves, facing fines or being cut off from the U.S. financial system. But Mr. Trump and his advisers have said they think such sanctions can threaten the pre-eminence of the dollar if they are overused, by encouraging other countries to find alternative currencies. They have talked about using tariffs instead. In his confirmation hearing in January, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said tariffs, in addition to raising revenue and rerouting supply chains, could provide an alternative to traditional financial sanctions. Mr. Trump “believes that we’ve probably gotten over our skis a bit on sanctions and that sanctions may be driving countries out of the use of the U.S. dollar,” Mr. Bessent said. Tariffs could be used instead, he said.

Increased federal spending in recent years has helped to improve U.S. ports, roads, parks, public transit and levees, according to a report released on Tuesday by the American Society of Civil Engineers. But that progress could stagnate if those investments, some of which were put on hold after President Trump took office in January, aren’t sustained. Overall, the group gave the nation’s infrastructure a C grade, a mediocre rating but the best the country has received since the group’s first report card in 1998. Most infrastructure, including aviation, waterways and schools, earned a C or D grade; ports and rail did better. The group also projected a $3.7 trillion infrastructure funding shortfall over the next decade. “The report card demonstrates the crucial need for the new administration and Congress to continue sustained investment in infrastructure,” Darren Olson, the chairman of the society’s committee on America’s infrastructure, said on a call with reporters. “Better infrastructure is an efficient investment of taxpayer dollars that results in a stronger economy and prioritizes American jobs.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The report, which is now released every four years, has long noted that the United States spends too little on infrastructure. But that started to change in 2021, the group said, thanks to the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which authorized $1.2 trillion in funding under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. That investment is showing results, with grades having improved since the last report, in 2021, for nearly half the 18 categories that the group tracks. But in January, Mr. Trump froze much of the funding under that law and another aimed at addressing climate change, pending a review by his agencies. That halted a variety of programs, including those intended to help schools, farmers and small businesses. The engineering group expressed optimism that the federal spending would ultimately continue because it benefited most Americans and enjoyed bipartisan support. “The investment levels that we saw under the last administration have really started to move the needle, and we’re looking forward to advancing that conversation as we move into this administration,” said Kristina Swallow, a former president of the group. The nation’s ports received the highest grade of any form of infrastructure, a B, indicating that they are generally safe, reliable and in good condition. Rail received a B–, a decline from its B in 2021. Editors’ Picks Is There a Least Bad Alcohol? Everybody Knew His Name: ‘Norm!’ Timothée Chalamet Is Living a Knicks Fan’s Dream Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Bridges, broadband, drinking water systems, hazardous waste treatment, inland waterways, public parks and solid waste received grades of C+, C or C–, reserved for infrastructure that is in mediocre condition and needs attention. Dams, levees, roads, schools and infrastructure for aviation, energy, storm water, transit and wastewater received grades of D+ or D, indicating that they are in poor condition. Some aviation infrastructure is widely considered outdated, and the Federal Aviation Administration has faced a shortage of air traffic controllers for years. Energy was the only category besides rail that received a declining grade, to D+. The group said power plants and other sources of electricity had failed to keep up with rising demand from electric vehicles and artificial intelligence. “Each data center uses the same amount of energy needed to power 80,000 homes,” said Otto Lynch, an engineer who led the energy chapter of the report. “Our generation capacity has remained stagnant as new sources are merely replacing sources like coal that have been retired in recent years.”

A refinery in New Mexico that the federal government has accused of some of the worst air pollution in the country. A chemical plant in Louisiana being investigated for leaking gas from storage tanks. Idaho ranchers accused of polluting wetlands. Under President Biden, the Environmental Protection Agency took a tough approach on environmental enforcement by investigating companies for pollution, hazardous waste and other violations. The Trump administration, on the other hand, has said it wants to shift the E.P.A.’s mission from protecting the air, water and land to one that seeks to “lower the cost of buying a car, heating a home and running a business.” As a result, the future of long-running investigations like these suddenly looks precarious. A new E.P.A. memo lays out the latest changes. E.P.A. enforcement actions will no longer “shut down any stage of energy production,” the March 12 memo says, unless there’s an imminent health threat. It also curtails a drive started by President Biden to address the disproportionately high levels of pollution facing poor communities nationwide. “No consideration,” the memo says, “may be given to whether those affected by potential violations constitute minority or low-income populations.” Those changes, said Lee Zeldin, the E.P.A. administrator, would “allow the agency to better focus on its core mission and powering the Great American Comeback.” David Uhlmann, who led enforcement at the agency under the Biden administration, said the memo amounted to the agency announcing that “if companies, especially in the oil and gas sector, break the law, this E.P.A. does not intend to hold them accountable.” That would “put communities across the United States in harm’s way,” he said, particularly poorer or minority areas that often suffer the worst pollution. Molly Vaseliou, a spokesperson for the E.P.A., said she could not comment on ongoing investigations or cases. The Department of Justice, which has faced its own staff and budget cuts, declined to comment. Conservatives have argued that E.P.A. regulations have hurt economic growth and investment. “Bold deregulatory action at E.P.A. will unleash American energy and reduce costs for American families,” said Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform, the anti-tax organization, in a statement. “The government’s expensive web of overregulation is being unwoven.” To be sure, enforcement cases brought by the Biden administration are still winding their way through courts. On Wednesday, the Japanese truck manufacturer Hino Motors pleaded guilty to submitting false emissions-testing data in violation of the Clean Air Act and agreed to pay more than $1.6 billion in fines stemming from a probe first opened by California in 2019. At the same time, a wider reframing of the purpose of the E.P.A. is underway. The agency was created a half-century ago, during the Republican presidential administration of Richard M. Nixon, with a mandate to protect the environment and public health. Last week, the Trump administration said it would repeal dozens of the nation’s most significant environmental regulations, including limits on pollution from tailpipes and smokestacks, and protections for wetlands. In a video posted to X, the social media site, Mr. Zeldin said his agency’s mission was now to “lower the cost of buying a car, heating a home and running a business.” Project 2025, a blueprint for overhauling the federal government that was produced by the Heritage Foundation and written by many who are serving in the Trump administration, goes further, seeking to eliminate the E.P.A. office that carries out enforcement and compliance work. Mr. Zeldin has also said he intends to cut the agency’s spending by 65 percent and eliminate its scientific research arm. Some on-site inspections, which form a vital part of enforcement investigations, are already being delayed or suspended, according to two people who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are unauthorized to speak publicly. Investigations related to air pollution were particularly vulnerable, they said. There has already been one significant reversal. This month the Trump administration dropped a federal lawsuit against Denka Performance Elastomer, a chemical manufacturer accused of releasing high levels of a likely carcinogen from its Louisiana plant. The Biden administration filed the lawsuit after regulators determined that emissions of chloroprene, used to make synthetic rubber, were contributing to health concerns in a region along the Mississippi River with some of the highest cancer risk in the United States. “I honestly wonder if the malefactors are going to give us more burning rivers,” said William K. Reilly, E.P.A. administrator under President George H.W. Bush, speaking to reporters this month. He was referring to a fire on the polluted Cuyahoga River in Ohio in the late 1960s that helped galvanize environmental awareness. And while the E.P.A. said it remained committed to addressing imminent health threats, the risks from pollution tend to play out over longer periods of time, in the form of increased rates of cancer, birth defects or long-term respiratory and cardiac harm, said Ann E. Carlson, a professor of environmental law at the UCLA School of Law. “The memorandum is essentially a wink, wink to coal and oil interests that they can pollute with what may be close to impunity,” she said. That would be a stark reversal after the Biden administration had worked to build up the agency’s enforcement work. In 2024, the E.P.A. concluded 1,851 civil cases and collected $1.7 billion in administrative and judicial penalties, both the highest levels since 2017. That same year, 121 criminal defendants were charged. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The agency had also prioritized policing greenhouse gas emissions, toxic “forever chemicals” known as PFAS, as well as the disposal of coal ash, the toxic material left over from burning coal. The new Trump E.P.A. will pull back both from a focus on coal ash disposal, and from emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from oil and gas facilities, the recent memo said. Other Biden-era enforcement settlements are waiting to be finalized, including one involving the decades-old HF Sinclair refinery in Artesia, N.M., accused of causing some of the worst concentrations of cancer-causing benzene in the country. The E.P.A., together with the Department of Justice and the state of New Mexico, proposed a $35 million settlement in the final days of the Biden administration as part of an effort to protect people living in Artesia, a city of 13,000 people with a long history of pollution. HF Sinclair, which processes about 100,000 barrels of crude oil a day in Artesia, was also required to invest in fixes at the refinery that would reduce emissions of hazardous air pollutants. So far, the Trump administration has not moved to finalize that settlement. In a statement, the Texas-based operator said it had already invested in fixes and monitoring to address the allegations. The New Mexico Department of Environmental Quality said it supported moving forward with the settlement “as expeditiously as possible,” adding that, “due to the change in administration at the federal level, timing is unclear.” Investigations just getting started face even greater uncertainties, because the agency has leeway not to follow up on violations. In March 2023, E.P.A. officials discovered leaks and other alleged violations of pollution laws during an inspection at a refinery and chemicals plant operated in Norco, La., by Shell, the Dutch oil and gas giant. According to a notice later issued by the E.P.A., and obtained by the Environmental Integrity Project, a watchdog group, one chemical storage tank was found with “severe pitting across the entire fixed roof, as well as cracks/openings with detectable emissions.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The E.P.A. has declined to say whether investigations were continuing. Shell declined to comment. Some cases may be shaped by wider changes. In 2021, E.P.A. inspectors found signs that a cattle ranch in Bruneau, Idaho, had disrupted protected wetlands by constructing road crossings and by mining sand and gravel from a local river. The agency sued, alleging violations of the Clean Water Act, in particular a bitterly contested rule adopted by the Obama administration known as “waters of the United States,” which extended existing federal protections to smaller bodies of water such as rivers, waterways and wetlands. A federal judge dismissed the original case after a 2023 Supreme Court ruling curtailed the federal government’s authority to regulate smaller bodies of water. President Biden’s E.P.A. filed an amended lawsuit in September. Last week, the E.P.A. said it would rewrite the rule to lower permitting costs for developers. Ivan London, an attorney with the Mountain States Legal Foundation who is helping to defend the ranchers in the case, said that he expected his clients’ arguments to prevail regardless of the E.P.A.’s new rule-making. The ranchers argue that the E.P.A. has no authority to regulate the wetlands in question. Still, the current Trump administration would certainly side more with the defendants, and that could affect the case, he said. “I’ve been surprised before, and I’m sure I’ll be surprised again,” he said.

Oil and gas executives met with President Trump at the White House on Wednesday, seeking to influence him on issues ranging from deregulation to tariffs. Some executives in the industry, which spent more than $75 million to help elect Mr. Trump, are increasingly frustrated with his agenda. Tariffs are making essential materials like steel pipe more expensive while also rattling consumer confidence. Oil prices have fallen around 14 percent since just before Mr. Trump took office, to about $67 a barrel. Peter Navarro, a senior White House aide, has talked about the benefits of oil that sells for just $50 a barrel. At such prices, companies operating in wide swaths of the American oil patch would lose money drilling new wells. Oil prices did not come up during Wednesday’s meeting, Trump administration officials said. “There’s nothing we could say in that room that would change that one iota, and so it wasn’t really a topic of discussion,” Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, told reporters. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Instead, according to Mr. Burgum, executives focused on issues such as making it easier to secure permits for energy projects. “We’ve got to be able to build, baby, build so that we’ve actually got the infrastructure to drive our economy forward,” he said. Energy companies are pushing Mr. Trump and Congress to ease permitting rules to make it easier to build transmission lines, pipelines and other infrastructure. Many companies want to make it more difficult for states to block proposed projects and for environmentalists and others to tie them up in court. “If you want more energy in the United States and you want more investment in the United States, we’ve got to be able to build things again. I’ve heard that repeatedly,” Chris Wright, the new U.S. energy secretary, said last week, summarizing feedback from executives he met at the CERAWeek by S&P Global conference in Houston. “My answer is: Give me specifics. What permit? What was the thing?” Tariffs U.S. refineries buy oil from Canada and Mexico, transform it into fuels like gasoline, then export those more valuable products. These trade ties were formed over decades and would be difficult and expensive to untangle. Mr. Trump announced 25 percent tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico with a lower, 10 percent rate for Canadian energy products. But this month he delayed those tariffs on most goods, including energy imported under a North American trade agreement Mr. Trump negotiated during his first term. That reprieve is set to end in early April. The 25 percent tariff on imported steel that took effect this month is also a big concern for executives. The metal is used in everything from pipelines to wells, and it is getting more expensive because of the tariff. Some executives remain hopeful that they will able to secure exemptions, though Mr. Trump has rebuffed that idea. Mr. Wright told reporters on Wednesday that discussions about tariffs were ongoing. Natural Gas Exports Earlier on Wednesday, the Energy Department awarded conditional approval to a large natural-gas export project on the Gulf Coast, known as CP2 LNG. This is an area where oil and gas companies and the Trump administration are aligned: Both want to sell more natural gas abroad. Former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. paused permitting in January 2024 to study how the projects would affect climate change, among other concerns. Natural gas is mostly made up of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that can leak from wells, pipelines and other infrastructure. Burning natural gas also produces carbon dioxide, another greenhouse gas, though far less than burning coal. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The Biden administration ultimately found that a big increase in U.S. exports could cause global greenhouse gas emissions to rise modestly and create pollution in communities near export terminals. A separate study released this month by S&P Global found that greater U.S. exports would help keep a lid on global emissions because the gas would displace other, dirtier sources of energy. The developer of CP2, Venture Global, had been waiting more than three years for the Energy Department’s approval. The department said on Wednesday that it was granting approval because the project would help the U.S. economy and contribute to the energy security of the country and its allies. Tax Credits Some oil and gas companies want to preserve tax credits for producing hydrogen and renewable fuels, as well as capturing and storing carbon dioxide, the leading cause of climate change. Vicki Hollub, chief executive of Occidental Petroleum, a large U.S. oil company that has been building a carbon capture plant in West Texas, is pushing to maintain federal incentives for removing the greenhouse gas from the air. That tax credit is known as 45Q based on its place in the tax code. “To accelerate the technology at the pace that the U.S. needs it to accelerate to start having a positive impact on our energy independence, we need 45Q to happen and to stay in place,” Ms. Hollub said at CERAWeek. Clean energy tax credits were not discussed at Wednesday’s meeting, Mr. Burgum said.

A North Dakota jury on Wednesday awarded damages totaling more than $660 million to the Texas-based pipeline company Energy Transfer, which had sued Greenpeace over its role in protests nearly a decade ago against the Dakota Access Pipeline. The verdict was a major blow to the environmental organization. Greenpeace had said that Energy Transfer’s claimed damages, in the range of $300 million, would be enough to put the group out of business in the United States. The jury on Wednesday awarded far more than that. Greenpeace said it would appeal. The group has maintained that it played only a minor part in demonstrations led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. It has portrayed the lawsuit as an attempt to stifle oil-industry critics. The nine-person jury in the Morton County courthouse in Mandan, N.D., about 45 minutes north of where the protests took place, returned the verdict after roughly two days of deliberations. It took about a half-hour simply to read out the long list of questions posed to the jurors, such as whether they found that Greenpeace had committed trespass, defamation and conspiracy, among other violations, and how much money they would award for each offense. Afterward, outside the courthouse in Mandan, both sides invoked the right to free speech, but in very different ways. “We should all be concerned about the attacks on our First Amendment, and lawsuits like this that really threaten our rights to peaceful protest and free speech,” said Deepa Padmanabha, a senior legal adviser for Greenpeace USA. Just moments before, Trey Cox of the firm Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, the lead lawyer for Energy Transfer, had called the verdict “a powerful affirmation" of the First Amendment. “Peaceful protest is an inherent American right,” he said. “However, violent and destructive protest is unlawful and unacceptable.” Earlier in the week, during closing arguments on Monday, Energy Transfer’s co-founder and board chairman, Kelcy Warren, an ally and donor to President Trump, had the last word for the plaintiffs when his lawyers played a recording of comments he made in a video deposition for the jurors. “We’ve got to stand up for ourselves,” Mr. Warren said, arguing that protesters had created “a total false narrative” about his company. “It was time to fight back.” Energy Transfer is one of the largest pipeline companies in the country. The protests over its construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline drew national attention and thousands of people to monthslong encampments in 2016 and 2017. The demonstrators gathered on and around the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, arguing that the pipeline cut through sacred land and could endanger the local water supply. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe sued to stop the project, and members of other tribes, environmentalists and celebrities were among the many who flocked to the rural area, including two figures who are now members of Mr. Trump’s cabinet: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard. But the protests erupted into acts of vandalism and violence at times, alienating people in the surrounding community in the Bismarck-Mandan area. Greenpeace has long argued that the lawsuit was a threat to First Amendment rights, brought by a deep-pocketed plaintiff and carrying dangerous implications for organizations that speak out about a broad range of issues. Greenpeace has called the lawsuit a strategic lawsuit against public participation, or SLAPP suit, the term for cases meant to hinder free speech by raising the risk of expensive legal battles. Many states have laws that make it difficult to pursue such cases, though not North Dakota. Mr. Cox laced into Greenpeace during closing arguments on Monday. The company accused Greenpeace of funding and supporting attacks and protests that delayed the pipeline’s construction, raised costs and harmed Energy Transfer’s reputation. Jurors, Mr. Cox said, would have the “privilege” of telling the group that its actions were “unacceptable to the American way.” He laid out costs incurred that tallied up to about $340 million and asked for punitive damages on top of that. “Greenpeace took a small, disorganized, local issue and exploited it to shut down the Dakota Access Pipeline and promote its own selfish agenda,” he said. “They thought they’d never get caught.” The 1,172-mile underground pipeline has been operating since 2017 but is awaiting final permits for a small section where it crosses federal territory underneath Lake Oahe on the Missouri River, near Standing Rock. The tribe is still trying to shut down the pipeline in a different lawsuit. Lawyers for Greenpeace called the case against the group a “ridiculous” attempt to pin blame on it for everything that happened during months of raucous protests, including federal-government delays in issuing permits. Three Greenpeace entities were named in the lawsuit: Greenpeace Inc., Greenpeace Fund and Greenpeace International. Greenpeace Inc. is the arm of the group that organizes public campaigns and protests. It is based in Washington, as is Greenpeace Fund, which raises money and awards grants. The third entity named in the lawsuit, Greenpeace International, based in Amsterdam, is the coordinating body for 25 independent Greenpeace groups around the world. It was principally the actions of Greenpeace Inc. that were at the heart of the trial, which began Feb. 24. They included training people in protest tactics, dispatching its “rolling sunlight” solar-panel truck to provide power, and offering funds and other supplies. Greenpeace International maintained that its only involvement was signing a letter to banks expressing opposition to the pipeline, a document that was signed by hundreds and that had been drafted by a Dutch organization. Greenpeace Fund said it had no involvement. On Wednesday, the jurors found Greenpeace Inc. liable for the vast majority of the damages awarded, which came to more than $660 million, according to representatives for both Greenpeace and Energy Transfer. The damages cover dozens of figures that were read out in court for each defendant on each claim. Separately, Greenpeace International this year had countersued Energy Transfer in the Netherlands, invoking a new European Union directive against SLAPP suits as well as Dutch law. During closing arguments on Monday in North Dakota, Everett Jack Jr. of the firm Davis Wright Tremaine, the lead lawyer for the Greenpeace Inc., was a study in contrast with Mr. Cox. Both men wore dark suits and red ties to make their final arguments before the jury. But their demeanors were polar opposites. Mr. Cox was energetic, indignant, even wheeling out a cart stacked with boxes of evidence during his rebuttal to argue that he had proved his case. Mr. Jack was calm and measured, recounting the chronology of how the protests developed to make the case that they had swelled well before Greenpeace got involved. Given the months of disruptions caused locally by the protests, the jury pool in the area was widely expected to favor Energy Transfer. Among the observers in the courtroom were a group of lawyers calling themselves the Trial Monitoring Committee who criticized the court for denying a Greenpeace petition to move the trial to the bigger city of Fargo, which was not as affected by the protests. The group included Martin Garbus, a prominent First Amendment lawyer, and Steven Donziger, who is well-known for his yearslong legal battle with Chevron over pollution in Ecuador. After the verdict, Mr. Garbus called it “the worst First Amendment case decision I have ever seen” and expressed concern that an appeal that reached the Supreme Court could be used to overturn decades of precedent around free-speech protections. The group also took issue with the number of jurors with ties to the oil industry or who had expressed negative views of protests during jury selection. But Suja A. Thomas, a law professor at the University of Illinois and an expert on juries, said the precedent in North Dakota courts was not to use “blanket disqualifications of jurors just because they might have some kind of interest,” whether it’s financial or based on experience or opinion. Rather, the judge has to determine whether each individual juror can be impartial. “There can be interest; they have to determine whether the interest is significant enough such that the person cannot be fair,” Ms. Thomas said. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Natali Segovia is the executive director of Water Protector Legal Collective, an Indigenous-led legal and advocacy nonprofit group that grew out of the Standing Rock protests. Ms. Segovia, who is also a member of the trial monitoring group, said her organization was involved with about 800 criminal cases that resulted from the protests. The vast majority have been dismissed, she said. What had gotten lost during the Greenpeace trial, she said, was the concern about water that had spurred so much protest. She said she saw a larger dynamic at play. “At its core, it’s a proxy war against Indigenous sovereignty using an international environmental organization,” she said.