By Katie Davis
Earlier this year I pointed out a glaring omission in Santa Barbara County’s proposed Climate Action Plan: It gave big oil a free pass.
While Ventura and Los Angeles counties climate plans counted oil industry pollution and included measures to reduce it, Santa Barbara’s plan did not.
Over several months the Sierra Club and our allies mounted a vigorous campaign to convince Santa Barbara County to include oil and gas pollution in their Climate Action Plan. And it worked!
On August 27 we got a 3:2 vote by the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors in favor of passing an oil and gas
resolution in addition to the Climate Action Plan that calls for staff to return in six months with measurable ways to reduce oil and gas emissions as part of climate goals, recognizing the state goal to phase out oil and gas production, and removing wording that implied the county can't regulate oil and gas.
The problem was that Santa Barbara County’s 2030 Climate Action Plan challenged the community to cut our emissions in half but left out the one industry most responsible for climate pollution in the county and the world — the oil and gas industry.
The goal itself was appropriate. Reducing greenhouse gas pollution 50 percent by 2030 (below 2018 levels) is in line with what the global community agrees is necessary to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. The problem was in how the county was tallying pollution and measuring success at reaching the goal.
Using twisted logic, they were leaving out the biggest polluters and contributors to the problem — Exxon/Sable, Cat Canyon producers like HVI (previously Greka), and all other oil and gas facilities.
That made the exercise both untrue and unfair. It was untrue because we need a neutral tally of all community greenhouse gas pollution so that we can accurately see how we’re doing over time. And it was unfair because all the rest of us were challenged to reduce emissions, while the oil industry was left off the hook.
Nor was this a minor omission. If Exxon’s facilities, shut down since the 2015 Refugio oil spill, but once one of our largest polluters, were turned back on, pollution would soar, even as the county could claim to be meeting climate goals.
It won’t be easy to reduce pollution sufficiently, and it’s much harder if we leave out the most polluting industry.
A single oil operation could erase the work done to reduce carbon pollution by every other person, every home, every small business, every farm in the county. Even as we switch to electric tractors, ride our bikes to work, install solar on our schools, and purchase EVs and heat pumps, this one industry would have been getting a free pass — their pollution not even counted.
In contrast, Ventura and Los Angeles counties do count oil industry pollution and are taking action to reduce it. Los Angeles is working toward phasing out oil drilling and Ventura County requires the use of “electrically powered equipment from 100 percent renewable sources” for oil and gas exploration and production and prohibits trucking oil and venting or flaring of gas if feasible. Ventura’s regulations survived settlement with the oil industry.
So why did our climate plan exclude pollution from oil and gas facilities? To comply with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), the county must include measures to reduce sources of pollution they count. Rather than make this notoriously resistant industry play by the rules, they decided not to count oil industry pollution. However, CEQA requires we tally all pollution from all activities — not pick and choose and pretend that pollution is less than it really is.
Another rationale given by the county was that it lacks regulatory control over oil and gas facilities. However, the county has more control over the oil industry through its permitting authority than over other sources of pollution, such as our cars’ tailpipes. If the plan was restricted to what the county directly controls, there would be virtually nothing to count.
The coalition that asked the county to fix the dirty oil loophole included the Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Center, Community Environmental Council, CFROG, the Center for Biological Diversity, Food & Water Watch, CAUSE, the Coastal Chumash band, the Wishtoyo Chumash Foundation, SBCAN, the Clean Coalition, Los Padres ForestWatch, Citizens Climate Lobby, 350SB, UCSB Environmental Affairs Board and many others.
We asked the Board of Supervisors to amend the Climate Action Plan to include emissions from the fossil-fuel industry. To that end we submitted legal opinions, a 25-org sign-on letter, and our members and supporters sent in a flood of comment letters. We also held meetings with staff, supervisors and the county’s consultants.
The Climate Action Plan contains good measures that will ensure our transportation and buildings can be powered by renewable energy, that there is public charging for electric cars, more bike paths and affordable housing to reduce commute times. To the extent these reduce pollution from burning fossil fuels, it will contribute to California’s goals to address climate change, which is driving record heat, wildfires, and other impacts. It will also save lives lost to air pollution that contributes to asthma, respiratory illness, heart disease, and cancer.
According to scientists, the next few years are critical ones for climate action. Local Climate Action Plans should be real ones that meaningfully contribute to California’s goals, but that only works if we are transparent and honest about tallying emissions and don’t give the most polluting industries a free pass.
Our campaign ultimately succeeded in convincing our Board of Supervisors to ask staff to fix this. However, our work is not yet done. We need to return when the requested ordinance comes back, around February of 2025, to ensure the pollution reduction measures and goals for the fossil fuel industry that the Board requested from staff are meaningful and formally adopted as part of the County’s Climate Plan.
And we need to continue to fight the restart of Exxon’s shuttered facilities and other oil projects that would take us backwards.