We’re three LA teens living near oil wells & refineries. We’re calling cockamamie on Governor Brown’s climate leadership.

STAND-LA
STAND-LA
Aug 8, 2017 · 4 min read

By Edgar Cabrera, Nalleli Cobo-Uriarte, and Ana Santiago Vasquez

Edgar Cabrera, 14, speaks at community demonstration around the Allen Co drill site in Los Angeles.

While Sacramento celebrated passage of the cap and trade extension Tuesday morning, an oil drilling rig went up in South Los Angeles. Clouds of emissions puffed from smokestacks of the Tesoro oil refinery in Wilmington. Oil derricks in Baldwin Hills bobbed up and down. California just passed a “legislative unicorn” of environmental leadership — but it was business as usual for the oil industry and life as usual for our communities who suffer daily from oppressive air impacts.

Governor Brown has worked hard to cement California’s legacy as a global climate leader and Trump resistor, but here at home, our lives have not changed.

Almost 150,000 Angelenos, like us, live less than a half mile away from an oil well. Neighborhood drilling and refining hurts all of Los Angeles, but most aggressively affects communities of color like ours, Wilmington and South L.A. With oil wells next door to where we learn, play, and sleep, we have no choice but to suffer toxic pollution impacts: chronic headaches, nose bleeds, loss of sense of smell, asthma and even cancer.

We grew up thinking it was normal for friends or siblings to miss school because of asthma attacks. We carry inhalers and tissues for bloody noses. But now we know this is not normal; these are symptoms of having toxic industries as neighbors.

Our experiences show why local action to clean up our energy and phase out fossil fuels is so important. Recently, the Los Angeles City Council acknowledged the need to do more for our communities, and passed a motion to study health impacts of drilling near homes, schools, churches and hospitals. But where L.A. has taken one step forward, California took two steps back.

Nalleli Cobo-Uriarte, 16, has been fighting against neighborhood oil drilling since she was nine years old.

Under the so-called climate “leadership” of cap and trade, the oil industry is allowed to pollute even more in our neighborhoods. Sixty-one percent of the facilities emitting the highest levels of pollution like particulate matter and greenhouse gases reported increases in 2013–2014, compared to 2011–2012.

The cap and trade bill passed Monday is even worse for our communities than the existing program. It gives out free allowances through 2030, undermining California’s ability to meet necessary greenhouse targets. These allowances are worth up to $30 billion, maybe more, and the oil industry will get most of them.

Bottom line: cap and trade makes it cheaper for oil companies to pay out-of-state companies to cut their pollution, so that they can continue to pollute ours. Instead of cleaning up our climate and air, oil refineries are allowed to switch to cheaper, dirtier crude oil, increase production of fossil fuels that California doesn’t need, make a profit by exporting to other states and countries, and increase emissions in our California communities for decades.

In Governor Brown’s plea for cap and trade, he said this was for us, for future generations. But he didn’t mean us — the youth in Wilmington, South Los Angeles or other communities burdened with refineries and wells. The politicians excluded us and our advocates — allowing the oil industry to dictate policies behind closed doors. On that, we call cockamamie.

Governor Brown, this time, you are not a climate hero. The cap and trade package sacrifices the health of people of color and immigrant communities and our future climate, while increasing oil industry profits, and completely failing to face the need for a step-by-step transition to clean energy.

The Governor’s job is to create a safer and cleaner California for everyone — not sell out public health to Big Oil. He has one year left to do so.

From Los Angeles to Sacramento, we ask the Governor and the Democratic leadership to take responsibility and stand up for communities who need it most — those in the shadows of derricks and rigs, smokestacks and emissions clouds. Only then will California live up to its reputation as a global climate leader, and build a new reputation as a climate justice leader locally.


Edgar Cabrera (14, South Los Angeles), Nalleli Cobo-Uriarte (16, South Los Angeles), and Ana Santiago Vasquez (18, Wilmington) are high school students in Los Angeles who live a half-mile from oil wells. In 2015, they sued the City of Los Angeles for discriminatory permitting of oil drilling in black and brown communities, along with a group of young peers with the South Central Youth Leadership Coalition and Wilmington Youth for Environmental Justice.

standla

STAND-L.A. is an environmental justice coalition of community groups that seeks to end neighborhood drilling to protect the health and safety of Angelenos on the front lines of urban oil extraction.

STAND-LA

Written by

STAND-LA

STAND-L.A. is an environmental justice coalition that seeks to end urban oil drilling and protect the health and safety of ALL Angelenos.

standla

standla

STAND-L.A. is an environmental justice coalition of community groups that seeks to end neighborhood drilling to protect the health and safety of Angelenos on the front lines of urban oil extraction.

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