Why this matters
Last year, the Trump administration announced plans to open up California’s coast, as well as areas off the coast of Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico, to off-shore oil and gas drilling. Opposition from California environmental and political leaders is mounting.
Two oil rigs sharply silhouetted by a golden sun plunging into the Pacific Ocean – that’s the image on a new billboard in Clairemont marking the launch of a new campaign to oppose offshore drilling along California’s coast.
“Enjoy your new sunset,” the sign reads.
In response to escalating pressure from the federal government amid rising gas prices due to the war the U.S. and Israel launched in Iran, a coalition of California environmental groups, legislators and local leaders gathered in a parking lot below the sign on Friday afternoon to tell San Diegans about the costs and impacts of offshore drilling.
The campaign launched by Wildcoast and the Sierra Club’s San Diego chapter with support from by U.S. Rep. Mike Levin, California state Sen. Catherine Blakespear and San Diego City Councilmember Joe LaCava, cautions that President Donald Trump’s call to open new operations after four decades could cause “severe economic, environmental and public health consequences.”
“The Trump administration has made it very clear that they are going to drill anywhere and everywhere they feel that they can, and that really doesn’t exclude any part of California,” U.S. Rep. Levin told inewsource.
Last year, the Trump administration announced plans to open up California’s coast, as well as areas off the coast of Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico, to off-shore oil and gas drilling. Then, last month, U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright directed Sable Offshore Corp. to restore extraction operations of the Santa Ynez Unit near Santa Barbara. A Santa Barbara County Superior Court judge recently ruled that an executive order does not nullify state oil operation regulations, but the company is challenging it.
In 1969, following a blowout on an offshore platform, more than 4 million gallons of oil spilled into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Santa Barbara. A report in The New York Times called it an “ecological ‘shot heard around the world.’”
The spill was a catalyst for the founding of Earth Day in 1970 and the congressional passage of of the Clean Water Act in 1972. Today, the Trump administration is overhauling federal protections on water and has rolled back the Obama era endangerment finding used to regulate emissions produced by fossil fuel powered vehicles.
Upon entering his second term in office, President Trump also declared a national energy emergency, promoting more fossil fuel production.
When Wright ordered the reopening of the Santa Ynez Unit under the Defense Production Act, he said in a press release that the order “will strengthen America’s oil supply and restore a pipeline system vital to our national security and defense, ensuring that West Coast military installations have the reliable energy critical to military readiness.”
Rep. Levin said the amount of offshore oil California could produce would be a small fraction of what is needed to address a global supply problem.
“It’s such a small amount of oil that would be generated, it’s simply just not worth the potential for environmental catastrophe,” Levin said.
Some estimates say that offshore drilling in California could produce an estimated 20,000 more barrels of oil a day. International Energy Agency Executive Director Fatih Birol has said that nearly 13 million barrels of oil a day are currently not passing through the Strait of Hormuz.
Serge Dedina, executive director of Wildcoast, said in a press release that drilling is a threat to critical resources for Californians.
“California’s coastline is one of the state’s most valuable natural and economic assets, supporting billions in economic activity and millions of visitors annually,” Dedina said.
The environmental groups say that studies suggest tourism in Southern California alone could lose up to $3.9 billion a year if an oil spill leads to contamination, closures and reduced coastal access. They also say spills could disrupt California ports, costing up to $25 billion and threatening national supply chains, and would also threaten endangered wildlife like whales, sea lions and sea turtles along the coast.
Levin has introduced the Southern Californian Coast and Ocean Protection Act to ban new oil drilling off the state’s coastline.
“No ambiguity, no loopholes, a permanent line in the sand,” Levin said at the press conference.
“There is no reason for us to jeopardize California’s entire coast to double down on dirty fossil fuel production,” Sen. Blakespear added. “California is moving in the opposite direction, leading the world toward a clean energy future.”
“Our natural environment, beaches, waters are irrevocably intertwined with the soul of our region,” Councilmember Joe LaCava said.
That’s why, LaCava said, this new environmental campaign is a vital move to inform San Diegans of what would be under threat, including, ironically, what the Trump administration has been using as a central reason to open the coast to drilling – to bolster military operations.
“Let’s not forget about the military component and what an oil spill or a disaster could do to their work and their readiness,” LaCava said.
