On one hand, I don’t want to alarm you, because trumped-up alarmism is a very bad practice, and you can get all you want of that by opening pretty much any news website during COP26. But on the other hand, this is beer we are talking about. Beer. A magical golden elixir that got much of humanity through COVID (please drink responsibly (more or less)).
A significant chunk of middle-American beer supply is at risk because of a controversy over a 65-mile natural gas pipeline. Anheuser-Busch makes a lot of beer in the St. Louis region, and that beer production depends on the natural gas that comes through the pipeline, which went into service in 2019.
An activist environmental organization, Environmental Defense Fund, has a team of lawyers that diligently looks to bring down hydrocarbon infrastructure the way a beaver brings down a tree – methodically and relentlessly. That team is trying to have the natural gas pipeline shut down, mostly because they don’t like it. Like mean girls in high school, except fuel-snubbing instead of social snubbing. The EDF may well succeed here – per the attached story, “A federal appeals court in June vacated a regulator’s approval of the pipeline, saying the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission did not sufficiently analyze whether it was needed.” The EDF “downplayed concerns of natural gas shortages”, and that was their argument – that the pipeline was not needed.
Well, it sounds like their tune might be a little off key. Pipeline operator Spire has warned that 400,000 customers could be left without heating fuel this winter. What is this, Russia? And did I mention the beer?
Try cutting off both heat and beer to a modern American city and see what happens. We might just find out soon enough.
