In their zeal for oil, Fresno County supervisors disregard climate change and pollution
You’ve gotta hand it to the Fresno County Board of Supervisors. They seldom pass up a chance to show us how separated they are from the reality of climate change.
Or perhaps the reality is they’re so deep in the pockets of polluting industries, the ones that help make the San Joaquin Valley one of the most unhealthy places on Earth to breathe, that they can’t help themselves.
What other plausible explanations are there for the county supes’ latest stunt? A unanimously approved resolution calling for more domestic oil production, including right here in Fresno County, followed by a press conference in which they doubled down on their terrible idea.
Which, of course, wasn’t entirely their own. Tuesday’s ceremony coincided with similar messaging by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (who just so happens to represent California’s top oil-producing county) and oil industry lobbyists. All seeking to use public outrage over sky-high gas prices to fuel their own interests.
“Today the Board of Supervisors not only sent the global message that we need to be energy independent here in the United States, but we need to use producers like we have in the Coalinga hills in our own backyard,” Supervisor Steve Brandau said.
Supervisor Buddy Mendes was more succinct: “We should be exploring fracking in the whole west side of Fresno County.”
The argument that California should ramp up oil production in order to seek energy independence and combat high gas prices is riddled with fallacies and virtual impossibilities.
Let’s start with the latter category. Whether the five Fresno County supervisors (three Republicans and two Democrats, seemingly at odds with their own party) like it or not, Gov. Gavin Newsom is unlikely to sign any of the permits sitting on his desk that allow for new oil drilling.
If anything, California is going the opposite direction — away from its dependence on fossil fuels. Since taking office, Newsom has issued executive orders banning all new hydraulic fracturing permits (aka “fracking”) starting in 2024, halting sales of new gas-powered cars by 2035 and phasing out all in-state oil production by 2045.
Yes, Newsom will be out of office decades before most of those dates arrive. But does anyone see the trend reversing? If anything, the state’s next generations of leaders, impacted by climate change to an even greater extent, will be more stringent in their beliefs.
‘A drop in the global oil market’
Another hole in the county supervisors’ logic is the false assumption California can somehow drive down the price of gas simply by producing more oil. That simply isn’t true.
Oil prices are set by global forces, and no matter how many additional wells are tapped in Kern County or the hills outside Coalinga, the increase would only represent “a drop in the global oil market,” according to UC Berkeley energy economist Severin Borenstein.
“The idea that ratcheting up production in California would change the price of gasoline isn’t plausible,” Borenstein told The Sacramento Bee.
Whether the pain most of us are feeling at the pump is best relieved by suspending the state’s gas tax, as Republican lawmakers are calling for, or through Newsom’s plan to issue state-sponsored debit cards, is a separate argument.
But increasing local oil production? That “solution” would only serve to benefit the industries that do the producing. While heaping an extra environmental burden on all Valley residents, and especially those who live within breathing distance.
Does it make more sense now why the Fresno County Board of Supervisors recently nixed a $175,000 state grant to study how disadvantaged communities in rural areas are affected by climate change?
If the county supes had their way, and more oil was locally produced, such communities would be even further impacted. The last thing they want is to arm a bunch of academics with statistical proof.
Air quality standard still not met
Increased oil production in Fresno County also completely flies in the face of the EPA’s recent rejection of the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District’s attainment plan for fine particulates known as PM 2.5s, the ones linked to a myriad of deleterious health effects.
The San Joaquin Valley remains the only air basin in the country that has failed to meet federal air quality standards set in 1997, and air district officials feeling the pressure to get in compliance sound like they’re at wit’s end.
This may be my personal hunch, but adding a bunch of new greenhouse-gas producing oil derricks and refineries to the mix doesn’t sound like a path forward. Or at least not a healthy one.
The reaction from Mendes, the dairy farmer who also serves on the air district board, was priceless. By Mendes’ reasoning, the San Joaquin Valley was “a smoky, mosquito-infested hell” long before industrialized agriculture and oil production showed up. So might as well keep up the tradition.
The rest of the climate change deniers, skeptics and shoulder-shruggers (pick whichever label applies) who make up the Fresno County Board of Supervisors adhere to the same flawed thinking.
I only wish their resolution and press conference had taken place later in this week of record-setting temperatures in Fresno. Would’ve been fun to watch them disregard global warming while sweating in their suits.
