Michael Bloomberg is taking up plastic producers. The billionaire introduced Wednesday that he’ll launch a $85 million marketing campaign to battle in opposition to the growth of the petrochemical business.

The marketing campaign, known as Beyond Petrochemicals, will deal with three areas of the nation—Louisiana, Texas and the Ohio River Valley—which have been significantly hit lately by new petrochemical crops and deliberate expansions. The cash will go to assist teams battle in opposition to greater than 120 initiatives throughout these three areas, in addition to advocating for stricter guidelines and rules across the business, the marketing campaign mentioned in a press release.

“Communities around the country are standing up to confront the petrochemical industry and defend their right to clean air and water,” Bloomberg mentioned within the launch. “This campaign will help ensure more local victories, support laws that protect communities from harm, and reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are fueling the climate crisis.”

The petrochemical business, which primarily depends on oil and gasoline as its feedstock to make plastics and different merchandise, has grow to be a brand new frontier for fossil gasoline corporations trying to discover new markets for his or her merchandise. The world’s explosion of plastic use is predicted to drive half of all demand for fossil fuels by 2050. The petrochemical business has been significantly aggressive in increasing its presence in communities of coloration and lower-income communities, who discover themselves on the entrance traces of the air pollution and waste that include these services.

“It’s good news for the Gulf,” Anne Rolfes, the manager director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, an group that works to guard fenceline communities from the oil, gasoline, and chemical industries, informed Earther in an e mail. “While we have managed to stop projects and defend ourselves, the Bloomberg money will add crucial support to strengthen and grow our work. We need it now more than ever, as our Governor, Congressional delegation and local elected officials do all they can to prop up the fossil fuel industry. It’s past time to transition, and Bloomberg support to the Gulf will help us achieve that goal.”

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The largely grassroots marketing campaign in opposition to the petrochemical business in these areas has seen some welcome successes in latest weeks. Just final week, a Louisiana choose vacated air permits for an enormous proposed plastics plant owned by petrochemical large Formosa Plastics, additional stalling development of the big venture—which might be one of many largest plastics crops on the planet and would launch tons of poisonous air pollution every year on the primarily Black group close by. And earlier this month, the deadline handed for a proposed methanol facility in Louisiana, which might have been the most important within the nation, to submit additional development plans for review to state environmental companies; the proposed plant was the goal of lawsuits and activism from varied grassroots organizations, together with the Bucket Brigade.

Bloomberg’s cash looms giant within the local weather group, and his funding can sign a shift in consideration to a brand new subject from mainstream activists. In 2011, the billionaire launched the profitable Beyond Coal marketing campaign with the Sierra Club, which as of 2020 had efficiently helped retire 60% of the U.S.’s remaining coal plants. (Some activists have identified that almost all of the crops the marketing campaign focused switched to natural gas, making a reliance on a special fossil gasoline somewhat than a clear transition altogether.) In 2019, Bloomberg Philanthropies launched a larger campaign known as Beyond Carbon, aimed to “drive the transition away from coal and gas and toward clean energy alternatives.”

$85 million is plenty of money, for positive, although Bloomberg is without doubt one of the richest folks on the planet, worth some $76.8 billion. This focus again on environmental causes comes after a failed 2020 presidential marketing campaign, through which Bloomberg spent greater than $1 billion on just 100 days of campaigning and failed to capture energy from climate activists on the left. If Bloomberg goes to spend cash prefer it’s nothing, it’s good that he’s redirecting it towards halting Big Oil’s hand.