British Petroleum (BP)

By David Tong, et. al. - Oil Change International, September 2020

As oil and gas companies claim to be part of the solution of the climate crisis, the reality couldn’t be more different. Our new discussion paper analyzes the current climate commitments of eight of the largest integrated oil and fossil gas companies, and reveals that none come close to aligning their actions with the urgent 1.5°C global warming limit as outlined by the Paris Agreement.

This discussion paper measures oil and gas company climate plans against ten minimum criteria, focusing on the ambition, integrity, and ability necessary to implement a just transition and achieve a 1.5°C aligned managed decline of oil and fossil gas. Focusing on the oil majors, BP, Chevron, Eni, Equinor, ExxonMobil, Repsol, Shell, and Total, we find that only one company has committed to cutting oil and gas production over the next decade, and even that pledge (BP’s stated commitment to cut production by 40% by 2030) excludes around a third of the oil and gas it invests in extracting via its major share in oil giant Rosneft. Below is a summary table of these criteria included in the discussion paper.

Read the text (PDF).

By John Kostyack, Karen Torrent, Laura Peterson, and Carly Fabian - National Whistleblower Center - July 2020

In the past several years, U.S. states, cities, counties and individuals concerned about climate change have filed important lawsuits against fossil fuel companies, asserting that the companies are responsible for climaterelated damage due to their carbon pollution. These cases confront “what might be the greatest scam in history,” in the words of historian Naomi Oreskes: the massive disinformation campaign designed to stall action on climate change by persuading decision makers and the public that it is not a problem to be taken seriously.

In this report, the National Whistleblower Center focuses on a related deception that, with a small handful of notable exceptions, is unaddressed in the climate change lawsuits filed to date: the dramatic understatement of risks posed by climate change to fossil fuel companies’ own financial condition and to the economy at large. We describe an important pathway to ensuring proper disclosures of climate risks: collaborative work by whistleblowers, prosecutors and regulators to enforce anti-fraud laws.

This report is a call to action for executives of fossil fuel companies and others with knowledge of improper accounting and disclosure practices, such as external auditors, to take the steps needed to obtain protected whistleblower status and work with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), other regulators and law enforcement officials to help expose and prosecute fraud. For the first time, legal strategies are provided for whistleblowers and others to expose and prosecute climate risk fraud in the fossil fuel industry. This is also the first report to use the methods of professional fraud investigators to identify fossil fuel industry financial disclosure practices that are likely to be fraudulent.

Climate risks—comprised of “transition risks,” the financial risks to some companies due to the world’s shift away from fossil fuels, and “physical risks,” those associated with climate change- related damage to property— uniquely threaten the finances of fossil fuel companies. Fossil fuel companies, fearful of losing access to investment capital and loans, are therefore highly motivated to conceal their exposure to these risks.

Concealment of climate risks is a matter of great public interest because when it is successful, it harms investors, the environment and the economy. Investors who provide capital to these companies suffer because they invest based on a false sense of the companies’ readiness for the transition to a low-carbon economy and for the physical shocks of climate change. This deception undercuts efforts to address climate change because it slows the shift of investments to businesses developing and deploying low-carbon technologies. It harms the economy by leaving financial institutions such as banks and insurers less prepared for the stresses of rapid asset deflation.

Read the report (PDF).

By Hamza Hamouchene - Transnational Institute, October 2019

Extractivism as a mode of accumulation and appropriation in North Africa was structured through colonialism in the 19th century to respond to the demands of the metropolitan centres. This accumulation and appropriation pattern is based on commodification of nature and privatisation of natural resources, which resulted in serious environmental depredation. Accumulation by dispossession has reaffirmed the role of Northern African countries as exporters of nature and suppliers of natural resources – such as oil and gas- and primary commodities heavily dependent on water and land, such as agricultural commodities. This role entrenches North Africa’s subordinate insertion into the global capitalist economy, maintaining relations of imperialist domination and neo-colonial hierarchies.

The neo-colonial character of North African extractivism reflects the international division of labour and the international division of nature. It is revealed in largescale oil and gas extraction in Algeria and Tunisia; phosphate mining in Tunisia and Morocco; precious ore mining - silver, gold, and manganese - in Morocco; and water-intensive agribusiness farming paired with tourism in Morocco and Tunisia. This plays an important role in the ecological crisis in North Africa, which finds its clear expression in acute environmental degradation, land exhaustion and loss of soil fertility, water poverty, overexploitation of natural resources, pollution and disease, as well as effects of global warming such as desertification, recurrent heat waves, droughts and rising sea levels.

Concurrent with this dynamic of dispossession of land and resources, new forms of dependency and domination are created. The (re)-primarisation of the economy (the deepened reliance on the export of primary commodities) is often accompanied by a loss of food sovereignty as a rentier system reinforces food dependency by relying on food imports, as in the case of Algeria; and/or as land, water and other resources are increasingly mobilised in the service of export-led cash crop agribusiness, as in Tunisia and Morocco. Extractivism finds itself mired in serious tensions, which generates protests and resistance. This paper documents some of these tensions and struggles by analysing activist grassroots work, including the participation in alternative regional conferences and ‘International Solidarity Caravans’ where representative of grassroots organisations, social movements and peasant communities met and travelled together to sites of socio-environmental injustices, providing a space to strategise together and offer effective solidarity to their respective struggles.

The rural working poor and the unemployed in Northern Africa are the most impacted by the multidimensional crisis. Comprising small-scale farmers, near-landless rural workers, fisherfolks and the unemployed, the movements emerging in the five case studies presented here are resisting the looting of their subsoil resources, the despoliation of their lands, pervasive environmental destruction and the loss of livelihoods. The paper asks the following questions: should we see these protests, uprisings and movements as mainly environmental, or are these fundamentally anti-systemic – anti-capitalist, antiimperialist, decolonial and counter-hegemonic protests? Are these circumstantial episodes of resistance, or do they rather represent the latest development in the historical trajectory of class struggle against the latest capitalist offensive in North Africa? The paper presents an assessment of the nature of these movements which grapple with tensions and contradictions that face them.

Read the report (PDF).

By Charles Digges - Bellona, September 25, 2017

Last week, the National Institutes of Health in the United States released a report that confirmed people living along the Gulf of Mexico who were very ill, but who for seven years have been told to keep quiet up about it, weren’t crazy after all.

Thousands of them had broken out in rashes. They had been coughing up blood, wheezing, experiencing migraines, and were tormented by burning eyes and memory loss. Others were surprised by heart aliments, kidney problems, liver damage, blood in their urine and discharge from their ears. Still others muddled through cognitive decline and anxiety attacks. Many went on to die.

Yet barely anyone in a position of authority was willing to believe they were sick at all. Often, even their own doctors told them that it was all in their heads.

What these people had in common was that they had been cleanup workers on the BP’s Macondo well disaster, which for 87 days in 2010 poured 4.9 million barrels oil into the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded that April 20 off the coast of Louisiana. It was the worst oil spill in US history.

Some 47,000 people responded to the blow out. Fishermen rushed their boats into the fray to coral the oil at sea. Others worked to siphon it off beaches in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. In other cases they burned it off the surface of the ocean in flames visible from space.

All of these workers toiled under a haze of chemicals dumped from the skies to bombard the ballooning slick and sink it to the bottom of the Gulf. In most cases, they didn’t have protective gear – BP and its contractors told them they didn’t need it.

The US Coast Guard and the Environmental Protection Agency backed that up – they, too, had been assured by BP and Corexit’s manufacturer, Nalco Environmental Solutions, that it was safe.

Last week, the National Institutes of Health finally told them, after a seven-year wait, that it wasn’t.

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, May 31, 2016

A supplement to Eco Unionist News:

Lead Stories:

• It Is Time to Phase Out 9 Unnecessary Oil and Gas Tax Breaks - By staff, Center for American Progress, May 26, 2016
• Planetary Crisis: We are not all in this together - By Ian Angus, Climate and Capitalism, May 25, 2016
• Interview: Shell Must be ‘Held Accountable to the Future Now’ Says Indigenous Delegate from the Gulf of Mexico - By Kyla Mandel, DeSmog UK, May 24, 2016; [related]: Gulf Coast Activist Crashes Shell Meeting to Decry Destruction of Her Home - By Deirdre Fulton, Common Dreams, May 24, 2016
• Oil profits, pipelines and the human cost of regulatory capture - By Bruce Campbell, Rabble.Ca, May 24, 2016
• Burned By Slow Government Response To A Polluter, Residents Mistrust Cleanup Efforts - By Larry Buhl, DeSmog Blog, May 22, 2016 

The Man Behind the Curtain:

• Coalition’s great big climate hoax turns to outright denial - By Giles Parkinson, REnew Economy, May 27, 2016; [related]: Australia scrubbed from UN climate change report after government intervention - By Michael Slezak, The Guardian, May 26, 2016; [and]: Australian Government censors UNESCO report on Great Barrier Reef #ReefGate - By Jeff Englart, Storify, May 27, 2016
• Koch Controversy at George Mason University: Student Abandons Economics Major - By Connor Gibson, DeSmog Blog, May 27, 2016
• Top Obama Energy Official Says Administration Rejects “Keep It In The Ground” As Climate Strategy - By Justin Mikulka, DeSmog Blog, May 26, 2016
• CO Oil and Gas Industry Raises $6 Million To Fight Ballot Measures - By Dan Boyce, Inside Energy, May 25, 2016
• Exxon "Chose to Mislead": Granddaughter of Former Exxon Climate Scientist - By Steve Horn, DeSmog Blog, May 25, 2016; [related]: Granddaughter of Exxon Scientist Confronts CEO over Oil Giant’s Decision to Fund Climate Lies - Anna Kalinsky interviewed by Nermeen Shaikh and Amy Goodman, Democracy Now, May 26, 2016
• All Vision and No Strategy? Shell Says No Thanks to a Better Life with a Healthy Planet - By Juliet Phillips, DeSmog UK, May 24, 2016
• Brazil minister ousted after secret tape reveals plot to topple President Rousseff - By Jonathan Watts, The Guardian, May 23, 2016; [related]: Wall Street’s New Man in Brazil: The Forces Behind Dilma Rousseff’s Impeachment - By José L. Flores, Counterpunch, May 26, 2016; [and]: The MST, Brazil's Biggest Social Movement, Promises to 'Intensify' Land Occupations in Fight Against Coup - By staff, Telesur, May 25, 2016; [and]: Brazil’s impeachment crisis is bad news for climate change - By André Guimarães and Stephan Schwartzman, Grist, May 27, 2016; [also]: This Confirms It was a Coup: Brazil Crisis Deepens as Evidence Mounts of Plot to Oust Dilma Rousseff - Maria Luisa Mendonça interviewed by Juan González and Amy Goodman, Democracy Now, May 27, 2016
• Climate denial arguments fail a blind test  - By Dana Nuccitelli, The Guardian, May 23, 2016
• Houston Chronicle Business Columnist Calls for Exxon Climate Denial Investigation, Slams Paxton, Cites DeSmog Research - By Brendan DeMelle, DeSmog Blog, May 23, 2016
• Let's give up the climate change charade: Exxon won't change its stripes - By Bill McKibben, The Guardian, May 20, 2016; [related]: Bill McKibben on Exxon, the Power of Divestment, and Being Targeted by Shadowy Right-Wing Group - Bill McKibben interviewed by Amy Goodman and Nermeen Shaikh, Democracy Now, May 26, 2016
• Momentum Builds in California to Hold Fossil Fuel Companies Accountable for Climate Science Misinformation - By Jason Barbose, Union of Concerned Scientists, May 18, 2016

Green is the New Red:

• Cove Point Defender Convicted of Making False Statement to Police - By Anne Meador, DCMedia Group, May 27, 2016
• In Honduras, USAID Was in Bed with Berta Cáceres’ Accused Killers - By Gloria Jimenez, Counterpunch, May 27, 2016; [related]: Obama Urged to Stop Funding Honduran Military as Questions Grow over US Role in Berta Cáceres’ Death - Annie Bird interviewed by Amy Goodman, Democracy Now, May 24, 2016

By Paul Stevens - Energy, Environment and Resources, May 5, 2016

The future of the major international oil companies (IOCs) – BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell and Total – is in doubt. The business model that sustained them during the 20th century is no longer fit for purpose. As a result, they are faced with the choice of managing a gentle decline by downsizing or risking a rapid collapse by trying to carry on business as usual.

Most commentary on the IOCs’ problems has focused on the recent fall in oil prices and the growing global commitment to tackle climate change. Important though these are, the source of their predicament is not confined to such recent developments over which they have no control. Their problems are more numerous, run deeper and go back further. The prognosis for the IOCs was already grim before governments became serious about climate change and the oil price collapsed.

Read the report (Link).

By Dan Bacher - IndyBay, July 27, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

The biggest, most explosive story in California environmental politics is the capture of the regulatory apparatus by the regulated, but you wouldn’t know it if you rely on the mainstream media for your information.

While corporate agribusiness, the timber industry, insurance companies, the pharmaceutical industry and other corporate interests spend many millions of dollars every year on lobbying and campaigning in California, Big Oil is the largest, most powerful corporate lobby in Sacramento.

No industry has done a better job of capturing the regulatory apparatus than Big Oil. The oil industry exerts inordinate influence over the regulators by using a small fraction of the billions of dollars in profits it makes every year to lobby state officials and fund political campaigns.

Big Oil spent an amazing $266 million influencing California politics from 2005 to 2014, according to an analysis of California Secretary of State data by StopFoolingCA.org, an online and social media public education and awareness campaign that highlights oil companies’ efforts to “mislead and confuse Californians.”

The industry spent $112 million of this money on lobbying and the other $154 million on political campaigns.

2014 was the biggest year-ever for Big Oil spending on lobbying and campaigns. The oil industry spent a combined total of 38,653,186 for lobbying and campaigns in 2014. That is a 129 percent increase from the 2013 total of $16,915,226!

The top lobbyists in the oil industry during this 10-year-period were:

• Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA): $50,111,867
• Chevron: $23,442,629
• BP: $6,788,261
• Shell: $4,536,112
• Occidental: $4,315,817

The Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA), an oil industry trade association that every year tops the list of spenders among the state’s lobbying groups, spent a record $8.9 million on lobbying in 2014, nearly double what it spent in the previous year. WSPA spent $4.67 million in 2013.

WSPA spent much of its lobbying money on stopping a fracking moratorium bill in the Legislature and trying to undermine California’s law to lower greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

The group also successfully opposed legislation by Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson to protect the Vandenberg State Marine Reserve and the Tranquillon Ridge from offshore oil drilling plans. In a bizarre scenario that could only take place in the "green" state of California, Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the President of WSPA and Chair of the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative Blue Ribbon Task Force to create questionable “marine protected areas” in Southern California, lobbied against marine protection in a "marine protected area" that she helped to create!

But for all of the millions WSPA and the oil companies spend every year on lobbying, they dumped even more money, $154 million, into political campaigns during the ten-year-period.

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, June 16, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Stories:

• In Wyoming it’s now illegal to collect data about pollution - By Will Potter, Green is the New Red, June 8, 2015
• Protesters Press Secluded G7 Leaders on Harmful Policies, from Crippling Austerity to Dirty Coal - Democracy Now Interview, June 8, 2015

Fracking the EPA:

• Here’s What Most Media Outlets Left Out of Their Reporting on EPA Fracking Study - By Denise Robbins, EcoWatch, June 9, 2015

Bread and Roses:

• Stop Seed Laws that Criminalise Farmers & Defend Local Seeds! - La Via Campesina, June 9, 2015
• People's Expo in Milan puts focus on farmers' rights not corporate concerns - By Rosie Scammell, The Guardian, June 8, 2015

An Injury to One is an Injury to All:

• Labor Department Audits MSHA - Appalachian Voices, June 15, 2015
• Coalition Briefing Drives Home Need for Chemical Safety Requirements - By Taylor Smith-Hams, Greenpeace Blogs, June 12, 2015
• Was Bush’s EPA More Committed to Chemical Plant Safety than Obama’s? - By Taylor Smith-Hams, Greenpeace Blogs, June 10, 2015
• Niagara County union head claims asbestos exposure - By Philip Gambini, Niagara Gazette, June 8, 2015
• South Africa: Frans Baleni kicked out! A heavy defeat for the COSATU and NUM right wing - By Ben Morken, Marxist.Com, June 8, 2015
• ILWU leaders join protest in Perth against Chevron projects - The ILWU Dispatcher, June 2, 2015
• What did Not Have to Be: The BC Sawmill Tragedies - By Carole Pearson, Our Times, Spring 2015

1267-Watch:

• California Nurses, Teachers Oppose Phillips 66 Oil Train Project - National Nurses United, June 15, 2015
• Educators Take Stand Against Central Coast Oil Train Project; Hazardous Crude Oil Trains Endanger California's Schools, Students - By Claudia Briggs (California Teachers' Association) and Valarie Love (Center for Biolaogical Diversity), Center for Biological Diversity, June 10, 2015
• Feds order trains to have more crew after fatal Amtrak derailment - By Bart Jansen, USA Today, June 9, 2015

Carbon Bubble:

• Coal miners First Arch, Peabody hit by lawsuits over retirement plans - By Cecilia Jamasmie, Mining.Com, June 15, 2015
• Oil layoffs reach 150,000, recruiting firm says - By Collin Eaton, FuelFix, June 12, 2015

Just Transition:

• Our Local Green Future - By Darwin BondGraham, East Bay Express, June 10, 2015
• The Real War on Coal: Big Oil vs. King Coal - By Nick Mullins, The Thoughtful Coal Miner, June 10, 2015
• The Transition Will Not Be Smooth Sailing - By Michel Bauwens, Shareable, June 8, 2015
• Will the climate justice movement "Seattle" the Paris talks? - By Brent Patterson, The Council of Canadians, June 7, 2015

Other News:

• Consultation and Accommodation: Turning the Tide on Bomb Trains - By Stephyn Quirke, Earth First! Newswire, June 15, 2015
• USW Urges Senate to Keep Domestic Crude Oil Export Ban In Place - United Steel Workers, June 10, 2015
• Steelworkers, Marathon Petroleum reach tentative deal for Texas City refinery - By LM Sixel, FuelFix, June 8, 2015
• Toledo Refinery Workers OK New Contract with BP-Husky; Vote Ends Labor Dispute, Part of National Strike That Began in February - By Patrick Gallagher, United Steel Workers, June 5, 2015
• Tens of Thousands March Against Global Elites Ahead of G7 - By Sarah Lazare, Common Dreams, June 4, 2015
• Food Is Free gives food for thought on green anarchy - By Andrew Masterson, Brisbane Times, May 24, 2015
• Ever heard of the Battle of Blair Mountain? Federal troops were called against 13,000 miners; Yep - By Brandon Weber, Upworthy, April 29, 2015

For more green news, please visit our news feeds section on ecology.iww.org; Twitter #IWWEUC; Hashtags: #greenunionism #greensyndicalism

By Gabriel Levy - People and Nature, June 7, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

A protest against Azerbaijan’s crackdown on political dissent will be staged in London this Friday, 12 June, as the first European Games open in Baku.

At least 33 human rights defenders, youth movement activists, bloggers, journalists and others have been jailed in the last year in Azerbaijan – where the UK-based oil group BP is the largest foreign investor.

Campaign groups and media have been shut down, and dissidents forced to leave the country, just as economic problems have brought large numbers of Azeris out to protest.

There has been a “major escalation of government repression, pressure and intimidation, directed at NGOs, civil society activists, journalists and human rights defenders”, a resolution of the European Parliament said in September last year. It highlighted:

• Some of Azerbaijan’s most prominent human rights defenders, including Leyla Yunus of the Institute of Peace and Democracy, and her husband the historian Arif Yunus, have been imprisoned on “apparently politically motivated charges”;
• “Eight activists of the non-governmental youth movement NIDA were convicted on [trumped up] charges of hooliganism, drug possession and possession of explosives” after a wave of demonstrations in 2013;
• The Oil Workers Rights Protection Organisation, the only independent group championing the labour rights of Azeri oil workers, has had its bank accounts frozen and faced other forms of harassment; and
• Many more journalists, human rights defenders and activists are facing trumped-up legal charges, and “dozens” of
  others have been imprisoned on charges such as “hooliganism, drug possession, tax evasion and even treason”.

Despite international criticism, the regime has stepped up repression as next week’s games have drawn nearer. Rasul Jafarov, who organised the “Sing for Democracy” protest when the Eurovision song contest was held in Baku, and then took forward that campaign with “Art for Democracy” was sentenced to six and a half years in jail on 16 April, the same day that BP held its annual shareholders’ meeting in London.

On Friday demonstrators in London will go to the corporate headquarters of BP. It’s an excellent choice: there can not be many economies so completely dominated by one foreign company as Azerbaijan’s is by BP.

By Dan Bacher - Daily Kos, May 25, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

The same region devastated by the Santa Barbara Oil Spill of 1969 is now the scene of a massive clean up of crude oil by the state and federal governments and volunteers. The international and national media have spread throughout the world the startling images of the oil soaked beaches, birds, fish and ecosystem in a deluge of TV, radio, newspaper and internet reports.

The oil spill resulted from the rupture of an oil pipeline owned by Plains Pipeline, a subsidiary of Plains All-American Pipeline, near Refugio State Beach in Santa Barbara County on Tuesday, May 19. A 24-inch wide, 11-mile long section carrying oil from offshore platforms and an Exxon Mobil processing plant onshore leaked as much as 105,000 gallons of crude oil. An estimated 21,000 gallons made into the ocean, devastating nine miles of coastal waters and beaches.    

The oil spill that began off Refugio State Beach was inevitable, when you consider the capture of the regulatory apparatus by the oil industry in California. Until people challenge the power of Big Oil in California and the industry's control over the state and federal regulatory agencies, we will see more of the Refugio-type of oil spill disasters in the future.

During the privately funded Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative process from 2004 to 2012, state officials and corporate "environmental" NGOs made sure that Big Oil and other corporate polluters weren't impacted by the creation of alleged "marine protected areas" along the California coast. The MLPA Initiative, a controversial "public-private partnership" between the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) and the Resources Legacy Fund Foundation (RLFF), was supposed to create a network of "marine protected areas" along the California coast.

In an article published widely in June 2010, I warned that the "marine protected areas" created under the MLPA Initiative don't protect the ocean from oil spills and pollution. (http://yubanet.com/...)

"These marine protected areas, as currently designed, don't protect against oil spills," said Sara Randall, then the program director of the Institute for Fishery Resources and Commercial Fishermen of America. "What's the point of developing marine protected areas if they don't protect the resources?"

MLPA Initiative advocates claimed that other state and federal laws and administrative actions "protect" the ocean from oil spills and new offshore oil drilling, so there was no need for specific bans or restrictions on oil industry activities in and near "marine protected areas."  

In violation of the provisions of the landmark Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) of 1999, the "marine protected areas" failed to protect the ocean from oil spills, oil drilling, pollution, military testing, corporate aquaculture, military testing and all human impacts on the ocean other than fishing and gathering.  

Of course, MLPA Initiative advocates neglected to address why Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the President of the Western States Petroleum Association in Sacramento, was allowed to CHAIR the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force for the South Coast and to sit on the task forces for the Central Coast, North Central Coast and North Coast, as well as on a NOAA federal marine protected areas panel. (http://www.dfg.ca.gov/...)

They dismissed any questioning of why a Big Oil lobbyist was allowed to oversee "marine protection" in California as "wild conspiracy theories."

To make matters even worse, the WSPA President's husband, James Boyd, served on the California Energy Commission from 2002 to 2012. From 2007 to 2012, he served as the Commission's Vice Chair, the second most powerful position on the Commission! (http://www.energy.ca.gov/...)  

However, as we can see from the current oil spill disaster off the coast of Santa Barbara, the state and federal regulatory agencies and the MLPA Initiative's so-called "marine protected areas" weren't able to prevent a big oil spill like the one now taking place from occurring - and the fishermen, Tribal members and grassroots environmentalists who criticized oil industry lobbyist oversight of the MLPA Initiative process were absolutely right about their fears that the new "Yosemites of the Sea" wouldn't protect the ocean.