Planting the Seeds for a Fossil-Free Future
As we burrow into our homes and winter nests across the country, members of our Center for Biological Diversity climate team are taking time to rest, reconnect, and reflect on the eventful year that’s passed and all that lies ahead.
You’re an integral part of our extended family, and we’re so grateful for all the ways you joined us to keep up the pressure for climate action at the local, state, and national level. With your support we’ve accomplished so much in 2022.
It’s been another big year of hard fights to protect people and wildlife from the Grinches of the fossil fuel industry, including a certain craven coal-baron congressman. While we didn’t win every fight, we saw many years of work come to fruition with some historic victories.
After more than a century of nearly unregulated urban oil and gas drilling, the city of Los Angeles — once one of the largest oil-exporting regions in the world — passed a historic ordinance to phase out oil drilling over the next 20 years. This remarkable victory to protect our climate and thousands of Angelenos from pollution comes after a decade-long fight alongside our allies. Our lawyers and organizers are working hard to secure a similar ordinance in L.A. County, extending this win to unincorporated areas, including the Inglewood Oil Field.
Until another landmark victory this year, California was the only major oil-producing state without a health-and-safety buffer to protect local communities from oil and gas drilling. As a key leader in California’s Last Chance Alliance coalition, we helped win landmark state protections when Gov. Newsom signed a law ensuring that no new oil and gas wells can be drilled within 3,200 feet of homes, schools, hospitals, or other places people live, work, learn and play. Thanks to this monumental victory, California is set to enact the nation’s largest health-and-safety setback protections in the new year.
Big Oil bullies are, of course, spending millions to fight to these crucial protections with all kinds of dirty and undemocratic tricks. We are working to stop them and to ensure communities are protected from existing oil and gas wells, too. Gov. Newsom has the power to implement such protections right now, and we’ve been adding our voice to the growing calls for him to do just that.
After some prior tentative steps in the right direction, Newsom now looks readier than ever to go toe-to-toe with polluters. It’ll take collective work, but we’re determined to secure urgent neighborhood drilling protections, a price-gouging penalty for oil and gas companies, and ultimately a phaseout of the oil and gas extraction poisoning people and our planet.
We’re also working to see California’s progress extends to other oil-producing states like New Mexico, where we’ve just launched a new campaign. In 2022 we laid the groundwork for a whole new area of work with local partners to phase out oil and gas extraction and pollution in the Land of Enchantment.
At the national level, we haven’t seen the same success as in California, but it’s clear our movement is gaining power. Our wins at the federal level included both Biden implementing a major piece of our Climate President action plan and our stopping some of the truly horrifying fossil fuel giveaways proposed in Congress.
Just months after our landmark report outlined Biden’s climate emergency executive powers, the president exercised those key powers, announcing the use of the Defense Production Act to manufacture heat pumps and solar panels, speeding the transition to renewable energy.
The president fell short of declaring a climate emergency, as the Center and more than 1,200 groups in our movement have demanded. But even coming close to such a breakthrough spurred our toughest fight of the year against Sen. Joe Manchin and his fossil fuel cronies.
First Manchin handcuffed renewable energy projects to millions of acres of destructive new oil and gas leases on our public lands and waters in the Inflation Reduction Act. Then he tried three times to pass the “Dirty Deal,” a bill that would have gutted bedrock environmental laws, mandated new oil and gas projects, and approved the horrific Mountain Valley Pipeline in Appalachia. As recently as two weeks ago, the Center and allies had to stop Manchin from attaching his dirty side deal to must-pass legislation.
Thank you for joining us to make phone calls, send emails, and protest in the streets. We had our work cut out for us, and we were extremely disappointed to see Biden actively support Manchin’s dirty deal. Together we achieved a remarkable against-the-odds victory against Democratic leadership, three separate times. People power prevailed, and we proved that we can and do win when we come together.
We know the fight isn’t over. Oil companies still have far too much influence on our politics, and this won’t be the last time we have to defend communities and wildlife from fossil fuel greed. With just two years left in his term, President Biden needs to use every available tool to fight climate chaos and end the fossil fuel era. We’ve got big plans for 2023, and we’re determined that Biden take strong action to phase down and phase out oil and gas drilling on public lands and waters, stop approving new fossil fuel projects, declare a climate emergency, and end crude oil exports.
With your help we’ll be working hard to germinate these seeds of change and cultivate our ever-growing movement fighting to keep communities, wildlife, and wild places safe from the ravages of fossil fuels.
We have our work cut out for us in 2023, with the window to prevent irreversible climate damage rapidly closing, but we are up for the challenge with your support.
For now we’re celebrating how far we’ve come and resting up for the fights of the new year. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts for making all this progress possible, and we hope you’re finding rejuvenation and rest, too.
Happy New Year from all of us at the Climate Law Institute!
By the Climate Law Institute
Center for Biological Diversity
