Editorial: Oil drillers want to overturn California’s new health protections. Don’t let them get away with it.
By the way, since California voters passed Proposition 46 on November 6, the country’s largest oil and gas company, ConocoPhillips Inc., has spent $40 million on a political ad campaign targeting voters in the state, the Wall Street Journal reported:
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(Reuters) – California’s major oil and gas producers have poured up to $30 million into the coffers of a Washington political group focused on defeating U.S. President Donald Trump’s landmark policies on climate change and energy and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has accepted about $20,000 from the group over the past few months, according to campaign finance disclosures.
In filings with the Federal Election Commission, the oil industry watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington lists the Environmental Defense Center as its registered agent. The oil companies have also provided $9,500 to Americans for Prosperity, which is listed as a co-sponsor of EDF’s annual “Power to the Powerless” summit.
So, the oil industry is going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on an ad campaign opposing the Environmental Protection Agency’s rules that are supposed to prevent climate change, which is coming at the same time as record-breaking oil and gas drillers are pumping out more and more greenhouse gases, creating a devastating climate disaster, and creating even more pollution for decades and generations to come, and also trying to overturn the California state laws that would help California stop producing so much greenhouse gases.
“The oil industry sees California as the most important vote in the country on climate change. They don’t think Trump is going to lose there,” said John Walke, director of the Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies at Stanford University. “Our best hope is to convince Californians that these are not really climate rules, they’re really oil and gas rules.”
The environmental rules that Trump is
