Not just a local issue
BY MICHAEL JENCKS, LINDI DOUD, GREG MCMILLAN, PATRICK MCGIBNEY,
VICTORIA CARRANZA, PAT VEESART AND LINDA SEELEY
Santa Lucia Chapter of the Sierra Club Executive Committee
Letters, San Luis Obispo Tribune, January 1, 2015
Amber Johnson appears to be confused about what constitutes a special interest and a local issue in her Dec. 13 letter, “Support Phillips 66.” The Phillips 66 rail spur project is a bid by an oil company to increase its profits, which were $558 million for the third quarter of this year. That’s a “special interest.” The public interest is expressed in the recordbreaking number of public comments received from around the state, across the country and beyond, voicing concern over a plan to bring tar sands crude oil — one of the dirtiest and most polluting of all fossil fuels — from Canada to California, significantly increasing the number of demonstrably unsafe oil tanker cars passing through communities inhabited by millions of people on the way here. Millions more are rightly concerned about tar sands oil poisoning their water and air. They are keenly aware that this “local issue that will be reviewed and decided on by our local decision-makers” would have impacts far beyond our county line. We expect to see many more attempts like this to marginalize opposition as the oil company tries to push this project through.