It begins with a promise. "Energy dominance," the government calls it. Another word for the subjugation of entire landscapes – and the people who live there. In southern Louisiana, where the air smells of salt and houses cast barely any shadow because the sun has become too brutal, communities are fighting for survival. Not just against the storm. But against what the storm leaves behind – an industry that costs you your breath – literally.
On May 23, 2025, the U.S. government under President Donald Trump issued a new permit for CP2, which will become the largest LNG export terminal in the United States. Methane, frozen and packaged for the global market, is being turned into a commodity here – backed by insurers like Chubb, Liberty Mutual, and Swiss Re. And by the silence of those who believe their hands stay clean as long as they sign the contracts but don’t open the valves. But the communities are fighting back. Leading the way is Roishetta Ozane, mother of six children, climate activist, survivor of hurricanes, explosions, and political indifference. She says, “If you insure CP2, you’re insuring the death of my children.” In Lake Charles, her hometown, asthma cases are rising. Her son suffers from epileptic seizures – she believes triggered by the constant air pollution from petrochemical plants that tower over the city like cathedrals of a toxic religion.
The places where these projects are built are now called "sacrifice zones." It’s a term used by the United Nations. They are zones of systemic abandonment – not of consumption, but of justice. Almost exclusively Black, Latinx, and Indigenous communities, sold a future that was never meant for them. This is where new fossil fuel infrastructures are being built, while the foundations of people’s lives erode – fishing, water, air, dignity. A recent report by Rainforest Action Network reveals which insurers are making these terminals possible – Chubb, AIG, Allianz, Munich Re, Tokio Marine. The names are known. And Ozane knows the people behind them. She brings her children to meetings in New York. “They know my name,” she says. And yet: CP2 is moving ahead. 54 coal-fired power plants – that’s how much emissions it will produce every year. 54.
What’s happening here isn’t a footnote to the energy transition. It’s its antithesis. The fossil fuel industry calls LNG a “bridge fuel.” But the bridge doesn’t lead to tomorrow – it leads back to a past where destruction was equated with growth. The methane exports bring billions to the coast – but not to those who live there. A Greenpeace report broke it down: the planned facilities in Louisiana alone will cause 149 premature deaths and over two billion dollars in health costs every year. Who pays for that? The ones who were never asked. While insurers like Chubb make a show of pulling out of projects in Africa or Texas, they stay silent on CP2. Perhaps because the resistance here seems too quiet. Perhaps because they assume everything’s already lost on the Gulf Coast. But Roishetta Ozane defies that logic. With every protest, every relief effort of her Vessel Project, a movement grows that isn’t just about resistance. It aims to build alternatives – new economic cycles, local food systems, a return to fishing, to air, to dignity.
“A victory,” says Ozane, “would be if my seven-year-old son could play outside without coming back in saying he can’t breathe.” It’s a sentence that says everything. About politics. About the environment. About the right to live. And about the crime that occurs when that right is systematically insured – for money, against protest, against humanity. At a time when insurance companies deny people protection against storm damage because climate change has become too expensive, those same companies insure new facilities that accelerate it. That’s not irony. That’s a crime – in real time, on official letterhead.
The Gulf Coast is burning – not just meteorologically. It burns as a moral warning. And maybe, if the names of the responsible parties are repeated often enough – Chubb, Greenberg, Allianz, AIG – then one day people will look back and remember – that someone spoke out. And that this act of defiance had names. Roishetta Ozane. Her children. And an entire region that can no longer stay silent because it can no longer breathe.
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