End Offshore Drilling in Long Beach
It was a beautiful day with little clouds in the sky on a bright afternoon in Long Beach, California. People ran along the bluff overlooking the Pacific, folks rode bicycles on the beach path, others rollerbladed by listening to music. Two women were enjoying lunch and staring out into the ocean. What lay before them was not a pristine glimmering biodiverse ecosystem, rather, four operating oil rigs within hundreds of feet off the shore. These oil rigs, old and outdated, have cleverly been disguised to resemble tropical island resorts with waving palm trees and tall eye-catching buildings. Folks go about their business with their lives, exercising, eating, breathing, adjacent to this extractive capitalism that compromises air quality, perpetuates fossil fuel reliance, and risks the next oil spill. The age of oil is over. It’s time for Long Beach to be a trailblazing city and immediately phase out offshore drilling.
Since the infamous Santa Barbara oil spill of 1969, where an estimated 3.5–4.2 million gallons spilled into the water, there have been 44 other large spills nationwide — each over 10,000 barrels (420,000) gallons. The most tragic of which happened in 2010, when the British Petroleum (BP) offshore drilling rig Deepwater Horizon spilled an unconscionable 4.9 million gallons into the Gulf of Mexico. This catastrophe killed 11 workers, injured 17, further endangered critical marine species near extinction and cost the local economy billions of dollars.
Oil spills are inevitable as we have witnessed since their inception. The most recent occurred off the coast of Huntington Beach. The spill sent 140,000 gallons into the Catalina channel, impacted the local economy, killed birds and fish and severely damaged local wetlands that will take decades to recover. This was not Huntington Beach’s first oil spill. The last one occurred in 1990, when 444,000 gallons gushed into the pacific, killing fish and 3,400 birds.
On any given day in Long Beach, whether one is walking their dog or doing yoga at Bluff Park, one can taste the oil on their tongue. A rising headache develops from the smell, causing nausea and lightheadedness. Just a few hundred feet from Long Beach’s coast lies the four fabricated islands known as the THUMS Islands or the Astronaut Islands. These islands aim to deceive the public and hide the ugly industrial realities of oil extraction by creating a “tropical illusion”, which was the intended goal of the project when it was first being constructed in the ’60s.
This reality begs the question, how can Long Beach claim to be a progressive city taking on climate when it allows four offshore oil drills to continue extracting oil in its harbor? Allowing these rigs to continue operating further depends on our reliance on fossil fuel, locking us further onto fossil fuel reliance for decades to come.
In order to circumvent catastrophic impacts from climate change, it is imperative to revolutionize our energy systems while transitioning off of fossil fuels immediately. The Intergovernmental Panel of climate change (IPCC) has stated we have 10–12 years to prevent global temperatures from rising above 1.5º C (2.7ºF). If we reach 1.5º C, we risk ‘climate breakdown’, or ‘runaway climate’ — the point in which the physical processes of the planet that keep balance can no longer offset greenhouse gas emissions. If Long Beach claims to be a progress climate-friendly city, isn’t it unethical to advocate and allow offshore drilling?
In addition to risking runaway climate, there are several other risks at hand. Offshore drilling threatens our local coastal economies, marine biodiversity and increases the probability of human health impacts in our communities. These risks, coupled with the climate crises and our short time scale, quite convincingly make the case that continuing offshore drilling is counterintuitive and jeopardizes the global community’s goal of keeping global warming from rising above 1.5 Cº.
The paths forward for the City of Long Beach are two-fold. First, the city needs to immediately look into the process of phasing our offshore drilling. Two, the city must continue to draft and implement plans to increase locality, increase walking ability, and increase multimodal transit. To push this agenda forward, the Otter Coalition (Opportunities Towards Transformative Environmental and Economic Resilience) has held two rallies and marches with over 35 people attending. This organization, started by myself and others, is currently coalition building and starting a petition to end offshore drilling in Long Beach. Folks who are interested in joining our coalition can find us on Instagram: @ottercoalition.
It is only a matter of time before the next tragedy. As Long Beach’s own Congressional Representative Alan Lowenthal has said, “where there is drilling there is spilling”. The time is now for Long Beach to be the progressive city it claims to be — end offshore drilling in Long Beach’s harbor and increase urban locality now. The two issues are inextricably linked. It’s time we challenge the fossil fuel industry greed and prioritize Mother Nature and public health.
