- Ahead of next week’s Global Climate Action Summit, Amazon Watch’s Executive Director Leila Salazar-López argues that California Governor Jerry Brown can show true climate leadership by phasing out oil and gas production in the state.
- She notes that large volumes of crude oil from the Ecuadorian rainforest are processed in California, making the state complicit in the environmental problems plaguing indigenous communities in the Amazon and local communities living near refineries in the state.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Protecting tropical forests is key to mitigating climate change. When California Governor Jerry Brown convenes the Global Climate Action Summit next week, he should seize the opportunity to make an announcement that will help address one of the root causes of both deforestation and climate change: a phase out of oil and gas production in California.
Scientific consensus unequivocally demonstrates the need to accelerate a transition to a low-carbon economy – both in California and globally – in order to prevent the worst effects of climate change. To ensure this transition is both effective and doesn’t further afflict vulnerable communities, we need to stop expanding fossil fuel infrastructure around the world. As is, fossil fuel extraction is already harming people from California to the Amazon.
Areas in California with more oil and gas development – like Bakersfield in the Central Valley and in the LA area – have demonstrably higher community rates of asthma, preterm birth, birth defects, and acute illness complaints from residents.
Similarly, oil drilling in the western Amazon has resulted in devastating impacts on indigenous peoples and community health — including alarming cancer clusters — as well as rampant deforestation and frequent oil spills and waste water dumping. In Ecuador, California, and around the world, these burdens fall disproportionately on low-income communities and communities of color.
The expansion of oil drilling in the Amazon and the deforestation it implies is occurring in no small part due to demand from California. As documented by Amazon Watch, California refineries purchase about 50% of all oil exports from the western Amazon basin. Refineries in the state then process that crude oil, spewing out pollutants that endanger public health in our communities and exacerbate the climate crisis.
Continued oil extraction and deforestation in the Amazon has global ramifications. Tropical forests – particularly the immense Amazon rainforest – serve a key role in sequestering carbon and regulating global weather patterns. If they disappear, we will all experience the negative consequences. In fact, these repercussions will fall disproportionately on Californians: a Princeton University study concluded that a vanishing Amazon could cause up to a 50% reduction in rainfall in the Sierra Nevadas.
Fossil-fueled climate change will — and already is — affecting us, and California stands to be hard-hit by these future impacts. California’s fourth Climate Change Assessment found that temperatures are expected to rise by 5.6 to 8.8°F by the end of the 21st century, and within 50 years Californians can expect thousands more heat-related deaths annually. Sea level rise and fire intensity are also expected to increase.
As California Governor Jerry Brown prepares to welcome world leaders to San Francisco for the Global Climate Action Summit, he must acknowledge the fact that California is one of the country’s largest producers and processors of oil and gas. And he must reckon with the fact that if we continue to build out oil and gas infrastructure, climate change will accelerate and communities from California to the Amazon will suffer increasingly disastrous impacts as a result.
In the coming week, Governor Brown needs to issue concrete plans for a managed decline of fossil-fuel production in California. As the leader of the world’s fifth largest economy, this action would have a ripple effect.
Our communities and our climate cannot afford any less. And time is running out.
