Join the Big Oil Resistance 

If you missed the March 21 LA Times editorial "We're cementing climate denial with every fossil fuel project," it's worth a read.

Some highlights:

"Global energy-related carbon emissions reached a record high last year, and another UN climate conference in Egypt last fall ended without an agreement to phase out fossil fuels."

"We may feel powerless to stop it. But we are not without power to alter this course by making different decisions every day that, when added up, can reduce the severity of global warming we will live with for decades to come. From local government to heads of state, officials at all levels should exercise whatever authority they have to dismantle the dangerous machinery of fossil fuels and replace it quickly with clean, renewable energy."

"In California, the permitting of new oil drilling continues unabated after petroleum companies spent $20 million to get a referendum to overturn a state law banning new wells near homes and schools."

One week later, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a gas price gouging law, establishing an independent watchdog to stop oil companies from engaging in the referenced activity.

"With this legislation," he said, "we're ending the oil industry's days of operating in the shadows. California took on Big Oil and won. We're not only protecting families, we're also loosening the vice grip Big Oil has had on our politics for the last 100 years. Any success we can have on a clean energy transition depends on the erosion of Big Oil's political power."

I have recently mentioned in this space some of the ways that Big Oil has been exercising that grip, such as the aforementioned overturning of a state law banning new wells near homes and schools, Exxon's attempt to resurrect the oil line that caused the Refugio Beach oil spill and escape liability for any future disasters, and multiple attempts by legislators to enact laws to protect our coast from off-shore drilling, all of which have drowned in a sea of oil lobbyists.

Because Sacramento remains engulfed in that raging sea of oil money, $20 million of which bought the suspension of the law that would have kept new wells away from neighborhoods, the California Geologic Energy Management Division—CalGEM—has run amuck. Since 2019, CalGEM has approved a staggering 13,725 permits for oil and gas drilling in the state. This year, because the suspension of the law that banned new wells within 3,200 feet of neighborhoods may last only two years, oil field operators are intent on getting while the getting is good, and CalGEM has obliged with 800 drilling permits since the start of the year, with 300 of those located within the space where those health and safety buffers would be if that law had been allowed to stand.

Gov. Newsom could do several things that would solve the problem. He could remove the oil industry's revolving door at CalGEM (its former director issued those 13,275 permits fresh from his gig at Chevron) and instead appoint a director who is not intent on eviscerating the governor's climate policies. He could put those neighborhood buffers into effect on his own authority while we await the November 2024 ballot referendum that Big Oil bought. And he could put a halt to the issuance of any new oil drilling permits in the state, period.

That last one is the big one. And when he takes that action, thanks to his timely price-gouging bill, the oil companies will be deprived of their inevitable next trick: hiking gas prices to $8 or $10 a gallon to show who's in charge.

But, in fact, we are in charge. And to make that point, Last Chance Alliance—a coalition representing 900-plus community, environmental, and public health organizations worldwide—is hitting the road for a Big Oil Resistance Tour, from San Diego to Sacramento.

The Central Coast stop on the tour will be on April 30 in Santa Barbara, at the Community Environmental Council's Earth Day Festival in Alameda Park. Speakers from local climate and environmental justice organizations will be followed by breakout conversations to dive deeper into how we can move California beyond fossil fuels once and for all by ending neighborhood drilling and halting all new fossil fuel permits.

Florencia Ramirez, host of the podcast How to Eat Less Water, will present two environmental justice leaders with the Earth Day Environmental Heroes Award on the main stage. The day will conclude with a panel conversation between community and environmental justice leaders including Marcus Lopez Sr. (American Indian Airwaves), Ana Rosa Rizo-Centino (Central Coast Climate Justice Network), Alyssa Jain (Sunrise Santa Barbara), Nalleli Cobo (People Not Pozos), and Cesar Aguirre (Central California Environmental Justice Network).

RSVP to the Action Network to attend. Δ

Andrew Christie is the director of the Santa Lucia Chapter of the Sierra Club. Respond with a letter to the editor emailed to [email protected].