[00:00:08] Speaker A: Good planets are hard to find out Temperate zones and tropic climbs and run through currents and thriving seas Winds blowing through breathing trees and strong ozone safe sunshine Good planets are hard to find.
[00:00:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:00:38] Speaker C: Hello, K SQUID listeners. It's every other Sunday again and you're listening to Sustainability Now, a bi weekly K Squid radio show focused on environment, sustainability and social justice in the Monterey Bay region, California and the world. I'm your host, Ronnie Lipschitz. The Trump administration remains hell bent on eliminating any and all environmental protection.
It's gutting the Endangered Species act and has installed a critic of climate science to be in charge of the next climate assessment. The administration has moved to open the California coast to oil drilling, even as it is also seeking to increase exploration and extraction across the state.
And not wanting to stay out of the action, the Supreme Court ruled recently that the makers of the herbicide Roundup do not have to warn users of cancer risks associated with its use, which is liable to affect the numerous suits that have been filed against Bayer, its manufacturer. The bad news just keeps on coming.
I have two guests today from the center for Biological Diversity. The first is Jason Reilander from the Climate Law Institute who will talk about the Roundup decision. The second is Holland Kretzman, also from the Climate Law Institute, and he's going to talk about the potential impacts of the new leasing and drilling policies on California.
Jason Rylander, welcome to Sustainability Now.
[00:02:03] Speaker B: Thanks for having me.
[00:02:05] Speaker C: I think the first questions are what is the center for Biological Diversity and what is the Climate Law Institute? You know, what do you do there and how did you get there?
[00:02:18] Speaker B: Sure. Well, the center for Biological Diversity is a national environmental conservation organization where. Membership organization, and we are dedicated to saving life on Earth.
Traditionally, we have focused our attention on endangered species protection and habitat conservation, but we also work in the fields of environmental health and habitat protection, public land protection.
And so we are very, very active in educating the public about environmental concerns, in litigating against the federal government when we need to, and in lobbying state and federal governments to enact proper environmental protections. I'm legal director for the Climate Law Institute and we focus on the impacts of climate change, on human health, on wildlife and on the environment generally. So we work to secure a future that is free of fossil fuels, to enact a sustainable and just transition to renewable energy, and to try to ensure that the conditions that we have all grown up in and enjoy, that preserve life on Earth, can continue for future generations.
[00:03:37] Speaker C: We're going to talk about the recent Supreme Court decision on Roundup. So I was wondering, do you do any actual litigation before, before the Supreme Court, for example, or just write briefs or what?
[00:03:50] Speaker B: Yeah, I do litigate in federal courts across the country and I've submitted quite a few briefs in front of the Supreme Court. I've never had a chance to argue there, but I have participated in quite a bit of Supreme Court litigation over the years.
[00:04:05] Speaker C: So we're going to talk about this about Roundup, which is not directly implicated in climate change, but is certainly an important issue. I imagine most of our listeners have heard of Roundup, but maybe you could explain what it is, how it's used, and why there's been so much litigation over it.
[00:04:25] Speaker B: Well, Roundup is the brand name herbicide product contains a broad spectrum chemical compound called glyphosate. It's one of the most widely used herbicides in the country.
Roughly 280 million pounds a year is used on over 300 million acres of US farmland.
It's been on the market for decades. And that doesn't even count all the urban and domestic uses of Roundup. You can walk into any home improvement store and buy a bottle and use it right now on your sidewalk. It is one of the most widely available herbicides out in the market and its uses increase dramatically in farmland because of the availability now of genetically modified crops that are specifically engineered to be resistant to Roundup so that you can apply the pesticide, kill everything else, but not the target crops, which usually include like corn, soybean or cotton. So it's incredibly popular product and it's used everywhere. The problem is that the World Health Organization, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, and various other scientific studies have looked at Roundup and have concluded that it may be carcinogenic to humans. And there's a lot of debate about this. EPA has concluded that there are no risks of concern to human health when it's used in accordance with its current label. And we'll talk about labeling in a minute. But there have been a tremendous amount of lawsuits filed over the last couple of decades based on studies and based on people's experiences that arguably link it to non Hodgkin's lymphoma, particularly in other forms of cancers. And there's been hundreds of millions of dollars in payouts to individuals who claim that they've been injured by this product. And so that is still playing out now when the Supreme Court litigation came kind of at the peak of some of this product liability litigation.
[00:06:23] Speaker C: Yeah, I read that there's something like 100,000 lawsuits in the United States Filed against Bayer, which bought Monsanto, which was the original producer, as a sort of general purpose herbicide. Is it applied with airplanes so that there's pesticide drift, or is it more closely applied? Most of the people, I presume, who have filed suit don't actually work directly with the stuff.
[00:06:50] Speaker B: Well, I think it varies a lot. You know, it can be applied in a whole different number of ways. I mean, you know, people are applying it with little spray bottles in their gardens, but on a more industrial scale. Yeah, it can be applied much more broadly than that. And people who work, particularly in the agricultural industry are among those who have the most exposure to the product. That's kind of a key thing with, with pesticides and herbicides is that the amount of exposure really does matter. And what can be safe at some do doses is not safe in other doses. It also assumes that people are taking adequate precautions with the product, which they may or may not be. And the label may or may not explain precisely what you need to do in order to remain, quote, unquote, safe from the toxic effects of, of a pesticide or an herbicide. EPA considers something safe. If it's a one in a million chance that you will get cancer from it, that's not safe, but it's a way of managing the risks against the alleged benefits of the product.
[00:07:54] Speaker C: Of all those lawsuits, do you happen to know how many were filed by people who claimed their problems arose from direct use of the herbicide compared to exposure on a large scale?
[00:08:09] Speaker B: There's been over 100,000 lawsuits filed, as you noted, against Bayer and Monsanto before that.
Different theories, different, different types of uses. So I am not familiar with, you know, each one of those and what's happened. I know that, you know, initially, you know, California jury handed down $289 million verdict seven years ago, and that prompted a lot of this. They have reached settlements now totaling more than $11 billion in payouts in a lot of those lawsuits. And there is still something like 61,000 active roundup lawsuits remaining pending and additional ones continue to be filed. Right before the Supreme Court litigation there, there was a proposal to settle the remaining lawsuits. And the, the amount that was talked about was $7.25 billion.
So quite a lot of people have claimed to be injured by this. And the companies have paid out, you know, 11 billion already and with the potential of another seven or $8 billion more. So this is a very significant issue and. And it remains to be seen after this court litigation. Exactly. You know, what will happen going forward.
[00:09:23] Speaker C: I Imagine the market for, for Roundup probably compensates for the size of the well.
[00:09:28] Speaker B: It gives you an idea of just how profitable it is to produce these, these pesticides that, that companies can pay out tens of billions of dollars and still make a ton of money off of the product.
[00:09:41] Speaker C: How are these herbicides reviewed before they reach the market?
What's the procedure there? And are they tested for carcinogenicity?
[00:09:50] Speaker B: The EPA reviews pesticides for use, and for decades now, there has been a law in place called the Federal Insecticide Rodenticide and Fungicide act, otherwise known as fifra. And during that review process, the EPA is required to review toxicology studies and review the basic hazard and precautionary statements to address impacts to people, to domestic animals and to the environment.
And then they create a label that goes on the pesticide that says essentially what the dosage is and how it is to be handled to prevent misuse or misbranding of the label. The problem is that EPA has never required any standardized pesticide label language to address chronic health harms or cancer risks. They'll tell you, for example, that something is harmful if swallowed, or acute risks of toxicity. But they say very, very little on the labels of what happens over years or decades due to cumulative exposure. And the other problem is that the labels that EPA approves are submitted by the companies themselves.
So EPA is relying on studies that are generally produced by the manufacturer. They can also consider independent peer reviewed studies, but the bulk of the application comes from the manufacturer. The label itself and the language on the label also comes from the manufacturer. And EPA has traditionally viewed its role under FIFRA as essentially being a service provider to the pesticide industry.
They see their job as approving pesticides and getting them to the market. And they will even approve pesticides under what's called a conditional registration before all the studies are done. I've litigated against EPA on pesticide issues and it can be extremely frustrating. I brought cases where we had clear evidence that endangered species were being harmed and EPA refused to change the label to require protections for endangered species, even though they were required to under the Endangered Species act, until we brought that case to court and made them so. There is a very flawed process here involved in doing pesticide registrations and approving these products to the market.
People assume that once EPA has approved something that it must be safe. That is not necessarily the case.
[00:12:19] Speaker C: I guess it's probably common in the case of production of chemicals of various sorts that the companies themselves provide the data about testing. Are they required to Test this stuff before they subject it to review by the epa, or is that something that's optional?
[00:12:38] Speaker B: Well, they are certainly required to provide studies that demonstrate the product's effectiveness and also the risks. But as you might expect, opinions can vary widely. And studies that are produced by a manufacturer with an intent to bring the product to market may have biases that independent studies may not. And it may also take time to understand just what the impacts are in a real world scenario. So science can change. A product can be approved based on the knowledge that it has at the time, that the EPA has at the time.
And over the course of years or decades, the science can evolve and we can begin to see some of the impacts. And that's in part, I think, what has also happened with this herbicide. Roundup has been available since the 1970s, but more and more studies are showing a link to non Hodgkin's lymphoma and other cancers. There was a significant study that was recently withdrawn that had been published in a peer reviewed journal after it came out during some of the product liability litigation, that that study had been funded by industry and had been in potentially doctored by industry employees.
So one of the leading studies that showed that that glyphosate was safe has been withdrawn from that journal. And so again, you're not going to reach necessarily scientific certainty on what level of use is going to cause cancer if you go out and put Roundup in your garden. You may not get cancer from having done that. But with long term exposure, studies are finding some links and the litigation is showing that there's enough there for the companies to pay out billions of dollars in damage claims.
[00:14:34] Speaker C: Well, in order to avoid jury decisions that would give even larger awards to plaintiffs. That must be the calculation. The potential liability in these cases must be quite, quite large, a bit larger than 17 billion or whatever the number is.
[00:14:53] Speaker B: Well, that's why the manufacturers went to the Supreme Court to try to get a decision that would shield them from future liability.
Now, initially, when they brought this case to the Supreme Court, the Biden administration urged the Supreme Court not to take it up. The Trump administration changed its position on that. Of course, the court did in fact take it up. And that led to the decision that we saw this summer, 7 to 2 decision that essentially shields companies from liability on what's called failure to warn claims, that is claims that are based upon the idea that the label did not warn them of the potential damages that they would suffer from the use of the product.
And again, this goes down to the fact that EPA approves the labels under the federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide act and those labels now, according to the Supreme Court, preempt any additional warnings that states may wish to impose on those products for sale in those states.
[00:15:59] Speaker C: So can you walk us through the case? I know it was filed by an individual. Yes, and maybe. And something about the history of failure to warn and why states have been passing these laws as opposed to the feds.
Sure.
[00:16:15] Speaker B: The case came about after a Missouri man won a $1.25 million verdict. He alleged that Roundup had caused his non Hodgkin's lymphoma, and the court had found that the federal pesticide laws that require the labeling didn't warn him of the potential risks of using this product. And then, ergo, he gets lymphoma. The court has come out and said that fit for preempts states from imposing additional warning labels beyond those that are approved by epa. And the whole idea about failure to warn is essentially if people don't understand that a product can harm them and they use the product and it does in fact harm them, they should have some common law tort remedy for damages.
Now, that's not the only kind of claim that is at issue in some of these cases.
Many of the plaintiffs are also alleging negligence in the end design defects. And so that is why, even though failure to warn claims have been eliminated, by and large by this decision, a lot of these cases may still survive and that potential for settling out the remaining 60,000 cases still exists. From what I understand from lawyers who do this kind of work, there's still some optimism that people who have alleged that they've been injured by this product will receive some additional compensation. And the companies may decide, notwithstanding the Supreme Court case, that it is cheaper and more effective to complete settlement of those cases.
[00:17:58] Speaker C: One thing about this particular case, right, is that it rests because it rests on failure to warn.
It sounds like the evidence making the argument that the lymphoma comes from using Roundup show up in the case. Or is this just about the merits of warning labels and the failure to warn?
[00:18:20] Speaker B: Well, I think a lot has come out over the course of this litigation, and there have been so many cases, and many of them have been consolidated. And lawyers and experts have probably spent countless hours in court presenting the arguments for and against why liability should attach. And I have not been following the ins and outs of all of these tort cases and the level of evidence that's necessarily required in order to prove it. Clearly, there's enough there that again, you know, billions of dollars have been paid out to people who have, have alleged that they've gotten cancer as a result of the use of these products.
So the industry clearly wants these cases to go away, and the Supreme Court has given them a tool to help that happen, at least with respect to failure to warn claims.
And, you know, the unfortunate thing is that, you know, it is difficult to prove liability in these types of cases.
And the current administration and the Supreme Court appears to be more concerned with protecting corporations from accountability than with public health and the environment.
[00:19:32] Speaker C: So this is another case of the feds cracking down on the right of states to do, to do things, basically.
[00:19:40] Speaker B: Well, yeah, I think it's another example of the Supreme Court and the federal government putting corporate interests over the interests of people on the planet.
Whether it's the pesticide industry or the fossil fuel industry.
Big companies are making billions of dollars with little to no accountability for public health and environmental damage. We have a system right now that is designed of, by and for big business and working people, wildlife and the environment are suffering as a result.
[00:20:10] Speaker C: And yet the only recourse at this point, aside from trying to convince Congress otherwise, are the courts.
[00:20:17] Speaker B: The courts remain the last resort and sometimes the best resort for holding government and corporations accountable.
But a lot of this really could be improved if Congress were to take another look at the Federal Insecticide Fungicide Rodenticide act and strengthen consumer protections, strengthen the levels of scientific evidence that's required in order to approve pesticides and herbicides and denticides, and also ensure that these, these labels that are put on these products go through significant review.
Congress cannot.
Congress could go ahead as well and allow states to impose additional warnings, but that will require an act of Congress at this point.
[00:21:11] Speaker C: One last question, I think, and that is, since this, this case went to the Supreme Court, can I, can we presume that an appeals court ruled in favor of the. The litigant or was, was the procedure or did they go, you know, from one place to the Supreme Court directly or what?
[00:21:31] Speaker B: Oh, if you're talking about the, for example, versus Journal, the case that just went up to the Supreme Court. Yeah, that, that got to the Supreme Court after the Missouri Court of Appeals had held that FIFRA did not preempt state failure to warrant claims and awarded Mr. Durnel $1.25 million. So the company then appealed that from federal state court to federal court, alleged that the federal law preempted those state claims.
And that's how we got there to the Supreme Court for that decision.
[00:22:03] Speaker C: Is there anything else you'd like to add to all of this?
[00:22:06] Speaker B: I think the thing to bear in mind is that EPA's job is to protect public health and the environment and not necessarily to facilitate approval of toxic pesticides that have the potential to harm people and the environment.
At the very least that EPA can do is to require clear cancer warning labels so that people understand the risks and take appropriate precautions.
And so I think there's a lot of reform that needs to happen with respect to the way EPA addresses these products.
It would be great if Congress would take action to strengthen FIFRA and ensure that people are not harmed by the use of these poisons. And that's what they are.
[00:23:00] Speaker C: Well, Jason Rylander, thank you for being my guest on Sustainability now.
[00:23:04] Speaker A: Great.
[00:23:04] Speaker B: Thank you for having me. Appreciate the time.
[00:23:06] Speaker C: You're listening to Sustainability now. I'm your host Ronnie Lipschitz, and my guest today is Holland Kretzman from the center for Biological Diversity. We're talking about the Trump administration's efforts to extract more oil from California.
Holland Kretzman, welcome to Sustainability now.
[00:23:24] Speaker A: Thank you for having me.
[00:23:26] Speaker C: What is your role at the Climate Law Institute and what are you working on these days?
[00:23:31] Speaker A: I'm an attorney at the Climate Law Institute and that's part of the center for Biological Diversity. And my focus is on California oil and gas issues. I've been doing that for about 15 years now.
[00:23:45] Speaker C: Well, the Trump administration seems set on squeezing more oil out of California even though the quantity produced is relatively small relative to national and global production. Why is it doing this?
[00:23:58] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, the Trump administration is hell bent on helping their buddies in the oil industry just squeeze every last drop of oil and profit out of the ground. And that means running roughshod in California over our health and environmental protections, over our state laws, and just, you know, bending over backwards to help the oil industry anywhere possible.
[00:24:24] Speaker C: So it's just basically a principle of the oil companies should have access anywhere
[00:24:29] Speaker A: they want, is that that's the bottom line principle. And they're doing this regardless of the consequences to our oceans, to our climate and to our health.
[00:24:42] Speaker C: Where does California's oil come from and where does it go?
[00:24:47] Speaker A: Well, the majority of it comes from central California and Kern County. That's where the majority of our onshore oil and gas activity occurs.
They send it to the refineries either northward in the Bay Area or south to LA refineries where it gets converted into gasoline and other types of petroleum products and sent in state and around the world.
[00:25:15] Speaker C: And Does California import oil, you know, from other sources?
[00:25:19] Speaker A: Yeah, it imports it from around the world. Those refineries take oil anywhere they can get it. So a lot of our oil comes from Alaska or Canada or Asia for those refineries to, you know, make their products and sell those to market.
[00:25:38] Speaker C: And do the refineries basically process all the oil that California uses these days?
[00:25:46] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, they import finished gasoline products as well. The problem is that, you know, in California, a very small number of companies run those refineries, and so they have a really outsized market power where they can pretty much charge whatever they want. That's why you see a lot of price difference at the pump between California gas stations and gas stations in other states.
[00:26:15] Speaker C: Okay, well, there are at least three policies the administration is trying to impose on California. I guess. I guess the first is the reopening of the pipeline off of Santa Barbara to bring oil to shore. What?
And that's over the vociferous opposition of locals.
And the pipeline was the source of the 2015 oil spill. So what's going on there?
Can they do that?
[00:26:41] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, this is an administration that ignores the law, ignores the consequences of their actions, and tries to ram through whatever policy idea they have in their head to benefit their cronies.
And this is no different. This is the pipeline system that spilled so many thousands of gallons of crude onto Refugio State beach and into the Pacific Ocean in 2015, causing devastating consequences to the ecosystem, to the economy there. That depends on having a clean beach for people to visit and recreate in.
And so to turn around a few years later and try to restart that pipeline to, you know, process oil through that part of the state is. Is just so, you know, ill conceived and arrogant and dangerous. You know, they are trying to do this without the requisite environmental reviews and safety checks. They're handing it over to Trump's federal agencies to. To do the vetting, rather than our state agencies that have done this process in the past.
You know, fortunately, groups in California, as well as the state agencies and the governor's office are fighting back, and those have resulted in a lot of litigation in the courts, and we'll see how the courts come out on that. But, you know, this is another example of Trump trying to run roughshod over our state environmental protections, just completely ignoring the state laws we have in place to protect our residents.
[00:28:28] Speaker C: While the litigation is going on, the oil is still flowing, right?
[00:28:32] Speaker A: Yeah, that's our understanding. You know, we've. The state agencies have tried to argue that we shouldn't be restarting this project until we sort out all the legal issues. But again, this is the Trump administration we're talking about. And so those types of, you know, usual niceness. Yeah, there are arguments don't really play out the way they should in the, in the current administration.
[00:28:57] Speaker C: I'm curious, did the offshore platforms there stop pumping for the 10 years that the pipeline was out of service, or was. Was the oil being moved some other way?
[00:29:09] Speaker A: That's right.
There are these offshore oil platforms where they drill the wells and bring the oil up out from beneath the ocean, and then it's the pipeline system that brings it to shore and off to the refineries onshore. And once the pipeline stops working, there's nowhere for the oil to go. And so those platforms were shut down
[00:29:33] Speaker C: and they were, they were purchased by Sable, or was Sable the original owner?
[00:29:40] Speaker A: These platforms, I believe, were originally owned by Exxon, and Exxon sold them to Sable kind of as a. A new company created for the specific purpose of purchasing these platforms and trying to bring them back online.
[00:29:57] Speaker C: That doesn't seem like a very economic proposition, you know, buying platforms and not knowing whether you can move the oil.
[00:30:05] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, that's.
Unfortunately, it's a very common tactic in the onshore oil world as well, where, you know, smaller fly by night companies will come in and, and scoop up a bunch of idle wells and try to squeeze a few more drops out of the, out of the ground. And in the meantime, they have no financial means or intent to plug those wells, even though that's the responsibility of the operator.
[00:30:36] Speaker C: So the second policy comes from the Bureau of Land Management, which seems set on offering oil leases all over the state and not only in Kern County.
What can you tell us about that?
[00:30:50] Speaker A: Yeah, this is another drill, baby, drill special from the Trump administration.
The Bureau of Land Management is the federal agency in charge of leasing oil and gas on public lands. And in California, there's a lot of that.
So the BLM is proposing to open up more than a million acres in California across 18 different counties to new oil and gas leasing that stretches, you know, anywhere from the. Near the Carrizo Plain in Southern California all the way up to the Mount Diablo Range in the East Bay, where, you know, I like to go with my kids and take them hiking and camping.
So these are, we're talking about some of the most treasured spots in California, these public lands that millions of people visit and enjoy.
So to open that up to new oil and gas leasing is. It really hits home For a lot of folks that, that have, you know, become really attached to those places.
And you see that reflected in the, the public comments. I mean, there are hundreds of thousands of people who wrote in to oppose this plan and we're still in the preliminary stages for that. And you know, the, the BLM is insistent on moving forward, but we're going to do everything we can to fight back.
[00:32:16] Speaker C: Is there actually oil under all of those areas or is this remain to be explored?
[00:32:23] Speaker A: Yeah, that sort of remains to be seen. You know, there are a lot of areas where there's a low probability of oil, but nonetheless you don't want to see oil companies going in there and prospecting for oil and drilling wells willy nilly.
[00:32:39] Speaker C: Well, I was going to get to this later, but the economics of exploration seem sort of, again, sort of wonky right now. Right.
And generally when the price of oil is in the 60s and 70s, then new oil exploration and drilling tends to be more expensive.
And then when the price of oil goes up, it's very difficult to respond quickly to the, you know, if it's a demand issue.
So I'm wondering, is there, does again, does exploration make any sense in this particular area?
As far as, you know, it shouldn't.
[00:33:20] Speaker A: You know, like you said, California's production has been in decline for the last 40 years. The easy oil is gone. And you know, what's coming up out of the ground right now is a fraction of what California used to produce.
Nonetheless, you know, the oil industry can do a lot of damage on the way out. Just drilling those wells can add to air emissions, can contaminate groundwater resources. So even if they're not getting as much oil out of the ground as in the past, we're still putting frontline communities at risk. We're still doing damage to our environment and climate. And that's why this is such a reckless policy by the administration to just allow the oil industry to decide where and when it's going to drill with so little oversight.
[00:34:10] Speaker C: Doesn't the experience of Alaska make the oil companies cautious or someone cautious? I mean, again, I don't remember what area it is, but my recollection is that leases were being offered off the coast of Alaska in sensitive areas. You can remind us of the name, but. But there have been very little, there's been very little exploration.
[00:34:36] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's true that in the past when the administration opens up new leasing to the oil industry, they get fewer bids and lower interest than they had hoped for.
That being said, you know, all it takes is one operator, one bidder to move forward with a disastrous project. And that's going to put California's environment and our frontline communities at risk. So we don't want, you know, even if not all 1 million acres gets drilled, not knowing where those projects are going to be and knowing that the operators can get away with moving ahead with so little oversight from the federal government, that's a huge concern for Californians.
[00:35:24] Speaker C: Well, so let's get on to the third one, which is offshore oil leasing, exploration and drilling. What's going on there?
[00:35:33] Speaker A: Yeah, so every five years or so, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, boem, puts out a five year plan to sort of explain what they're thinking in the near future about how to manage the ocean energy production.
So the Trump administration's agency this time around has put out a five year plan that shows more than 30 new oil and gas leasing areas, including a half dozen in California, all up and down the coast, including off of Point Conception near the Santa Barbara channels, where, you know, those, any projects in those areas will have disastrous consequences for sea otters, blue whales, all kinds of marine life that call that area home.
[00:36:24] Speaker C: Again, I read somewhere that I think the Geological Survey estimated that there were some billions of barrels available off the California coast. Do you know what that number is? And relatively speaking, how much is that?
[00:36:42] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, the estimates can range all over the place.
[00:36:47] Speaker C: Well, nobody knows, right? Until you look, no one really knows exactly.
[00:36:52] Speaker A: When I, when I started at the center for Biological Diversity, you know, there was a lot of excitement in the oil industry about fracking in California, in particular the Monterey Shale, which was going to, according to the industry, that was going to really unlock a lot of new oil sources in California up and down the state that never really materialized and they were overly optimistic on how well they could get that source out of the ground.
So, you know, you can't really read into it too much, these projections. There's all kinds of incentives to boost the numbers. What we do know is that wherever there's drilling, there's going to be spills and accidents. This five year plan is going to result in thousands of new spills in the ocean based on, you know, historical numbers. If we project that into the future, that's going to cause untold damage to our oceans. And our tourism industry in California, which is so dependent on having that clean and accessible coastline that millions of people enjoy every year.
[00:38:01] Speaker C: What's the environment like where these leases are going to be? I mean, it's not the Gulf of Mexico, although you've got hurricanes there. Right.
Is it like the North Sea? Is it a fairly placid area?
Because, of course, that adds to the, to the difficulties. And I'm curious about that.
[00:38:22] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, it's hard to say with climate change these days. Right, right. The extreme weather events are increasing in frequency and in severity. And so even if you had, you know, projects that would stand up to events in the past, that's no guarantee that these will remain safe in the future.
On top of that, as we know, California is a seismically active state. And so earthquakes can damage well casings that go down there and cause leaks and cracks beneath the surface. Some that we know about, some that we can't detect. And so any project that messes with California's very difficult and complex geography and geology is going to put our environment and our ecosystems in danger.
[00:39:18] Speaker C: Well, I was looking into this and I read that there have been only two lease sales off the central and northern California coasts ever in 1963, and there were no commercial discoveries as a result.
So what's the rationale? I mean, I asked this question earlier. Again, in this case, it's going to cost a lot more to, to explore and, and, and extract oil than on land.
Again, what's the economic rationale? I mean, you can say the oil companies want to be given the freedom to go wherever they want, but they don't necessarily want to use that freedom. Right. They don't necessarily want to go out there and explore and drill. Is it, is it likely that anything is going to happen out there?
[00:40:06] Speaker A: Yeah, it's hard to say because of so many variables. Like you mentioned, at the top, there' price of crude oil. Right. It's maybe that goes up and changes the calculus for certain companies.
As we know, the onshore picture in California is that there's less and less oil to be found in the state. And so companies looking to, you know, boost their profits or attract investors might get desperate and look for other areas that have not been explored yet.
And like I said, all it takes is one operator who goes out there and tries to drill a well. Even just drilling the well puts us at risk from spilling all kinds of drilling fluids and messing with the geology.
So we don't want to take any chances. You know, we should have learned our lesson from the Santa Barbara spill in the 1960s spills. Exactly. That, you know, really kicked off this modern environmental movement and made us aware of the connection between fossil fuel production and all of these environmental, really damaging consequences from oil contamination in our ocean to climate Change.
And so we need to keep those lessons in mind as we look at these newly proposed projects.
[00:41:32] Speaker C: Have any companies that really expressed an interest in going offshore that you know of?
[00:41:38] Speaker A: It's too early to say for these new leases, but, you know, if you look at the Sable project, right, these were platforms that were sitting there idle, and yet there was interest in this new company from purchasing the platforms and starting anew.
[00:41:55] Speaker C: Well, they didn't have to do the exploration and the building of the platform. Right. I mean, I don't know whether they sold at a discount.
From my perspective.
If I owned those platforms and the pipeline was shut down and there was this enormous opposition, both legal and popular, I would sell those things at a discount. I wouldn't assume to get full value. So I imagine Sable did get it as a discount and it was a gamble, right?
[00:42:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:42:26] Speaker C: Of course, they could write that off on their taxes if they. As a business loss. Right?
[00:42:32] Speaker A: Exactly. And I think the same, you could say the same for the new leases in that there's all kinds of giveaways and subsidies to oil industries who are willing to go out there and explore anything from discounting the royalty rates that you pay to the government to shortcuts on pollution control requirements to reporting requirements. And so, you know, some of these administrative hurdles that may have prevented or dissuaded companies in the past just aren't there anymore. It's all green lights for the oil industry. That's why it's so hard to say what's going to happen with these new leases.
[00:43:13] Speaker C: Well, last question about that. Is anything likely to happen before the end of the Trump administration?
[00:43:21] Speaker A: Yeah, these lease sales are going to go up in December of this year. And so, you know, that'll give us a little more information about, you know, what's going to happen going forward. But right now, it's a lot of question marks. And, you know, people should rightly be concerned about what's going to happen to our ocean, what's going to happen to our local economy. That depends on having a clean and accessible ocean for folks to visit.
So, you know, we're going to do everything we can to fight back and make sure that California is able to protect its coasts from dangerous drilling.
[00:44:00] Speaker C: So the administration is really trying to do as much as it can to damage California's energy policy.
Is it suing the state over all of this?
[00:44:13] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, the litigation assault is part of the overall attack on California and our health and environmental protections. So just a couple examples of that, and these are not exhaustive by Any means, but they.
California passed a landmark health and safety law called SB 1137 a few years ago. That law prohibits new drilling within 3,200ft of a home or a school or hospital or other sort of sensitive receptor. And the same agency, the blm, is suing California on behalf of the Trump administration to, you know, invalidate that law as it applies to federal drilling. They want to be able to drill federal wells wherever they please, regardless of how close it is to homes or schools.
And so that's.
That case was filed in California just a few months ago.
You can also point to the Trump administration suing over California's, you know, automobile requirements. They're suing on many different fronts to sort of undo California's really critical and nation leading protections against oil industry pollution.
[00:45:42] Speaker C: Have they succeeded with any of these lawsuits so far?
[00:45:47] Speaker A: Not yet. I mean, these are still winding their way through the courts. And, you know, we hope that the, the court system will agree with us that these state laws are in place for a reason and they can't just be ignored by the Trump administration, but they're doing the same thing on the Sable pipeline as well. The state agencies that are supposed to be in charge of regulating and overseeing pipelines, according to the Trump administration, they are no longer in charge and they want only the federal agencies in charge with an eye towards rubber stamping these dangerous projects.
[00:46:24] Speaker C: I imagine this has to do with the three mile limit, right?
Federal jurisdiction. What is, what is the jurisdictional situation then over the coast? I should have asked that earlier, but
[00:46:36] Speaker A: yeah, I mean, anything within three miles of California's coast is considered state waters. And then anything beyond that, the, to the limits of the outer continental shelf, are supposed to be regulated by the federal government.
You know, when you have projects that span both of those jurisdictions, that's where folks on the federal side claim that they have an angle at, you know, regulating and authorizing projects in there. But historically, the state has always been in charge of anything on state land and within the state. So this is a novel and new shift that this administration is testing in the courts. And we hope that the courts reject it in favor of the running it the way it's always been run.
[00:47:26] Speaker C: And how's the state fighting back against this, these lawsuits?
[00:47:31] Speaker A: The, yeah, the, the Newsom administration and the California AG's office have been very active in this litigation.
You know, sometimes it's as the defendant because they're being sued directly, sometimes it's trying to intervene in other cases. But they are, they have been an active participant in all of these litigation attacks across the board.
[00:47:58] Speaker C: Okay.
And what is the oil industry leaving behind across California? You know, there's a lot of. A lot of wells that aren't producing anymore.
[00:48:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:48:11] Speaker C: And, you know, what's the responsibility for that?
[00:48:14] Speaker A: Yes, California is, you know, like other states, we're facing a huge crisis in terms of well cleanup. Now that we're at the end of oil production in California, we're looking at, you know, some 90,000 unplugged wells and then all the facilities and pipelines that go with them.
Legally, it's the responsibility of the operators to clean up their wells.
Unfortunately, in California, there's no deadline to do that. So operators just keep procrastinating, pushing them back until, you know, eventually they sell them off to some fly by night company or they walk away in bankruptcy. Then it becomes the public, the taxpayer that has to pay the bill for cleanup. And that can be extremely expensive.
Statewide, we're looking at over $21 billion worth of cleanup costs. Again, that's supposed to be done by the industry, paid for by the polluters who profited from those wells. But in reality, we've already spent hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds at the local level, at the state level, and at the federal level of taxpayer money cleaning up the wells that the industry has left behind.
And because production is going down, down, down, this problem is only going to get worse unless we take action very soon and force the companies that profited from all this oil production to put up the money up front and make sure that they're plugging their own wells.
[00:49:52] Speaker C: Has the legislature been reluctant to consider any kind of laws about this? I mean, why is there no deadline?
[00:50:01] Speaker A: Yeah, we've made a little bit of progress in the past few years.
We've increased the requ on the percentage of wells that a company has to plug every year. So if you have, you know, 100 idle wells just sitting there, not doing anything, you have to plug a certain percentage of them each year.
But for any particular well, there's no deadline. And you can also pay what's called an idle well fee. Just pay a little bit of money to get around any sort of plugging requirements. So we've got a long way to go.
As I mentioned, there's tens of thousands of these idle wells that are just sitting there waiting to be plugged.
[00:50:45] Speaker C: Well, we're almost out of time. Is there anything that we haven't talked about that you'd like to bring up?
[00:50:51] Speaker A: Yeah, just to go a little bit further on plugging idle wells. You know, I call it a quadruple win because these idle wells are leaking benzene and all kinds of chemicals that can harm nearby communities. So plugging those wells will decrease that local pollution.
They also leak methane, which is a really powerful greenhouse gas. And so plugging wells can also help California achieve its climate goals. That's the second win. The third win is protecting our fiscal budget. Right, because we're looking at a $21 billion bill if the oil industry doesn't get its act together and start cleaning up these wells. And the fourth one is jobs for the just transition as we're moving away from fossil fuels towards a sustainable future.
You know, folks in the oil industry are well equipped to do this plugging work. It's going to take decades, it's going to cost billions of dollars. A lot of that is the labor costs of plugging the wells and, you know, remediating the surface area, restoring the surface to what it was before.
So that's the fourth win. I think it's a no brainer that this state move forward as quickly as possible to address this idle well crisis and get California moving in the right direction toward a safer and sustainable future.
[00:52:18] Speaker C: Sounds like something for the next governor needs to be pitched to.
Whoever becomes the next governor, whoever it
[00:52:27] Speaker A: is, has a huge role to play in moving the state forward, continuing our progress in moving away from fossil fuels and rejecting these Trump supported drill baby drill policies in California.
[00:52:42] Speaker C: Hey, Holland Kretzman, thank you for being my guest on Sustainability Now.
[00:52:46] Speaker A: It was a pleasure. Thanks for having me.
[00:52:48] Speaker C: You've been listening to a Sustainability now interview with Jason Rylander and Holland Kretzman, both from the Climate Law Institute at the center for Biological Diversity.
Rylander talks about the herbicide Roundup and the recent Supreme Court decision banning state mandated warning labels from appearing on Roundup containers. Kretzman talked about the Trump's administration determination to squeeze every last drop of oil out of California, whatever it takes. If you'd like to listen to previous shows, you can find
[email protected] SustainabilityNow as well as Spotify, YouTube and PocketCasts, among other podcast sites.
If you'd like to get emails about forthcoming shows, please drop me an email@ronnie lsqd.org so thanks for listening and thanks to all the staff and volunteers who make KSQD your community radio station and keep it going. And so until next, every other Sunday, sustainability now.
[00:53:58] Speaker A: Good planets are temperate zones and tropic climbs and n true currents and thriving seas.
Winds blowing through breathing trees Strong O Zone and safe sunshine.
Good planets are hard to find.
[00:54:20] Speaker C: Yeah, good plan.
