Governor, Mayors Stand Up to Trump on Climate Change Refinery Approval Tells Different Story
By Paul Rosenberg, Senior Editor
California appeared as a world leader fighting climate, as Donald Trump defaulted on America’s role. Gov. Jerry Brown signed California onto the U.S. Climate Alliance, along with New York and Washington and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti was the lead signatory on a declaration from 187 cities. But they’re missing in action. The Tesoro refinery merger is opening the way for a massive influx of dirty crude into the state, directly contradicting their stated goals.
“We don’t want other leaders and other countries laughing at us anymore. And they won’t be. They won’t be. I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.”
That was the heart of Donald Trump’s petty, resentful, fact-free speech on June 1 as he announced he was withdrawing the United States from the Paris Climate
Accords, an entirely voluntary agreement, the terms of which he could simply have modified without any renegotiation.
Trump’s fears of being laughed at were well-founded, it turned out.
“Fact: Hillary Clinton received 80 percent of the vote in Pittsburgh,” Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto tweeted in response. “Pittsburgh stands with the world & will follow Paris Agreement. As the Mayor of Pittsburgh, I can assure you that we will follow the guidelines of the Paris Agreement for our people, our economy & future.”
Peduto’s sentiments were widely echoed by hundreds of state and local political leaders, including California Gov. Jerry Brown, and mayors Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles and Robert Garcia of Long Beach, along with mayors of 32 other California cities.
But the very next day, a strikingly different reality unfolded at the monthly board meeting of the South Coast Air Quality Management District in Diamond Bar. About 50 Wilmington residents and allies unexpectedly shut down the meeting in protest of SCAQMD’s recent approval of the environmental impact report, or EIR, that assessed the merger of the Tesoro refinery — an approval completely at odds with California’s green, clean energy, low-carbon image.
The Tesoro project would dramatically boost processing of dirty crude — Canadian tar sands and highly volatile Bakken crude — among the worst possible fuel sources from a global warming perspective. It would trigger related impacts “up and down the Pacific Coast,” according to Jack Eidt of SoCal350.org, a coalition of more than 100 groups affiliated with the international climate change organization 350.org.
“Both these crudes are very volatile and dangerous to transport,” Eidt said. “So, this is a crude oil invasion that should be looked on as a comprehensive and secondary impact” of the Tesoro project, including its impacts all along the supply chain, from where the crude is first extracted.
This is precisely the sort of comprehensive perspective that politicians like Gov. Jerry Brown have adopted in criticizing Trump, but somehow it goes missing closer to home. So, protesters came to decry the decision by Executive Officer Wayne Nastri and the board’s failure to get involved in the process.
“You washed your hands!” the group chanted as community organizer Alicia Rivera, with Communities for a Better Environment, concluded her remarks. “You washed your hands! You put all the power in one person’s hands!”
“They already rubber-stamped the decision, without evaluating the impact of that dirty crude,” Rivera told Random Lengths News afterwards. “That’s why I said we believe that they evade responsibility on this significant issue by putting all the power on the executive officer. They should have a public hearing: they should be the ones deciding, not the executive officer, that’s why we started chanting.”
The protesters aren’t alone in finding fault. Both mayors Garcetti and Garcia had requested a more thorough review in recent letters but were ignored. The City of Carson more directly opposed the project and has filed a notice of intent to challenge the EIR in court.
The SCAQMD itself had agreed to look into the impact of dirty crude under former Executive Officer Barry Wallerstein after an earlier round of protests in 2010. “He reluctantly said that they would conduct a study, but they never did,” she said.
This long and frustrating history has left community members and activists with little recourse, Eidt explained. When 5,000 to 10,000 people came out to the Climate Action March, which partly protested Tesoro precisely because of how it represented the more abstract global climate change issue in its most down-to-earth form. They were still completely ignored by the SCAQMD; there was nothing else to do.
“They feel OK to disrupt the health and safety of the port area, as well as further the goals of big oil,” he said. “So, we’re going to disrupt the way that they do business. There’s no other alternative. We can’t appeal this thing.”
What happened next was completely unexpected.
“After a while I was surprised that the guards are not coming to put us out,” Rivera said.
The chanting continued in different forms.
“Shame on you! Shame on you! Shame on you!” the group chanted as the board members eventually left. The webcast of the meeting was abruptly discontinued, then removed.
“We did a Freedom of Information Act request to make sure they didn’t destroy it,” Eidt said.
Not only was the board swept from view, the protesters were left unhindered rather than being expelled or arrested, as they had expected. So they stayed and talked with staffers and guards.
“We wanted the guards to realize that if they were parents with children who can’t breathe, would they like people like us to be there,” Rivera said. “And they were nodding their head in agreement, so we were not arrested.”
At the same time, the board continued their meeting, unbeknownst to the public.
“Had [SC]AQMD announced that they were continuing their ‘public’ meeting in the back room, then at least one or more representatives of the protesters would have attended and would not have interrupted the meeting,” said Caney Arnold, a Harbor City Neighborhood Council member who took part in the protest. “Since it wasn’t publicly announced, that was a violation of the Brown Act.”
The protesters’ arguments were echoed in Garcetti’s letter, sent this past December.
“The potential increase in air and water pollution, upstream greenhouse gases and international safety hazards related to the use of Bakken crude require a broader environmental analysis through your recirculation process,” Garcetti wrote. He also cited Wilmington’s status “as a ‘disadvantaged community’ under our Clean Up Green Up policy (and as) a key environmental justice benchmark in the city’s Sustainability Plan.”
But it remains to be seen if Los Angeles will follow up with any action, as Carson has begun to do, although even Carson may not actually go to court.
“The filing deadline is June 12,” Carson’s attorney Sunny Soltani told Random Lengths. “The city is considering its options…. Tesoro is diligently negotiating with the city to try to address the city’s concerns.”
Brown has been seen as even more of a disappointment.
“California really is a tale of two states,” Suma Peesapati, president of CBE’s board told Random Lengths. “This is so representative of the two faces of California, where we have Jerry Brown and representatives from state government independently going to these climate talks in Paris, and representing California as independent from the country. And at the same time, all over the state these refineries are being retooled to bring in dirtier crude, and we’re fighting coal exports from California, even though California doesn’t produce coal.
“It’s part of this really schizophrenic state that we live in when it comes to the environment. But in terms of disproportionate impact, on communities of color, that’s nothing new. It’s the same old same old.… there is a higher sensitivity to environmental justice issues at the state level, the legislature and the executive branch in particular. That being said there’s still a long way to go.”
In a conference call hosted by the World Resources Institute, Brown called Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Accords misguided.
“I would even say this is an insane move by this president,” he said. “And, in fact, Trump may well create the exact opposite of what he intended. And that is an aroused citizenry in America and aroused nations of the world who will not tolerate this kind of deviant behavior from the highest office in the land.”
But Tesoro’s refinery brings the global question down to earth in a way that calls such sweeping claims into question.
“We’re looking forward to having a different governor, because he is not environmentally friendly,” Eidt said. “All these different types of extreme drilling procedures that he doesn’t want to go near touching, (which have proliferated throughout the state). He could be worse, as we see what’s happening with the president. But he’s not nearly good enough for what is necessary.”