Galvanizing Climate Action in the Face of Environmental Catastrophes

People should be protesting in the streets every time there is an environmental catastrophe like the oil spill in Southern California

Yet another oil spill

As a kid, one of my favorite things to do besides hiking and camping was hanging out at the beach — boogie boarding, building sandcastles with my brother, and laying in the warm sand of Southern California beaches.

I’ve always had an affinity for the beach. To this day, there’s nothing I enjoy more than listening to the crashing waves. There’s something entrancing about it similar to the crackling of a campfire. It is almost an innate feeling that we are more drawn to such natural phenomena than to the artificial world we have created for ourselves. It is our chance to reconnect with nature and enjoy a simpler life, even if just for a brief moment.

But it is becoming more and more difficult to have those important reconnection moments with nature because we are actively destroying it, whether intentionally or not.

These same beaches that I used to enjoy as a kid are now covered in oil from a major spill. Although the exact cause of the spill is still being investigated (it may have been caused by a ship anchor striking the pipeline), the impacts of the 126,000 gallons of spilled crude oil spread across 13 square miles are plain to see.

The impacts of this spill will likely have negative short-term economic impacts on beach tourism, but will almost certainly have negative long-term environmental impacts. Indeed, those impacts are already being felt by marine life.

As reported by the Los Angeles Times, “The spill has left crude along stretches of sand in Newport Beach, Laguna Beach and Huntington Beach, killing fish and birds and threatening ecologically sensitive wetlands in what officials are calling an environmental catastrophe.”

This is not the first major oil spill (in fact, it’s not even the first one to hit this area) and it will not be the last, despite whatever preventive measures oil companies put in place to prevent these spills. Regulations to prevent oil spills are also not enough. Oil companies, like Beta Operating Co. that owns the affected pipeline, are often cited numerous times for safety and environmental violations. Yet, these spills still occur and the fines imposed often pale in comparison to the company’s profits, so in many cases it’s cheaper for them to simply pay the fines than implement the necessary risk avoidance measures.

The only way to prevent such spills in the first place is to stop offshore drilling and end our reliance on fossil fuels.

Seems pretty straightforward but taking on the fossil fuel industry is going to take a lot more public pressure, which needs to be sustained over the next few decades as we work to decarbonize our economy.

So why not use such environmental catastrophes — that are occurring with increasing frequency — to galvanize climate action?

Funneling anger into action

If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve probably participated in at least one environmental or climate protest in your lifetime. And if not, I encourage you to! You can join one of the many local hubs or chapters of organizations like the Sunrise Movement and 350.org that typically organize climate protests. But also don’t be afraid to go it alone. After all, Greta Thunberg started her school strike for the climate outside the Swedish parliament all by herself. It was only later that the entire world started listening.

Many times these protests are organized around significant events (e.g., a big climate change conference like the one happening at the end of this month) or special days like Earth Day.

But getting the public to engage on these issues a few days out of the year is not going to be enough to take on the fossil fuel industry and the politicians that they bribe with campaign contributions.

We need a sustained, concerted effort that is constantly highlighting the problems with fossil fuels (oil spills being one of them) and the clean energy solutions that can and are replacing them.

Fridays for Future, started by Greta Thunberg, provides a good model for protesting on a more frequent basis, every Friday in this case. However, the primary issue I see with that is that there is not a galvanizing trigger for the protest. If you want to get more people involved (even traditionally non-environmental types) and really fired up, then it makes sense to organize protests when environmental catastrophes like the oil spill in Southern California occur. And ideally, it should be the local community impacted by the environmental catastrophe that is organizing these protests.

There should be people protesting in the streets of Newport Beach, Huntington Beach, and Laguna Beach right now demanding we transition away from offshore drilling and advocating for specific clean energy policies and technologies that will help us make that transition.

It is when people are angry and frustrated at some oil spill ruining their beaches, a hurricane destroying their community, an extreme heatwave killing their crops, or a wildfire devastating their favorite state or national park, that we should funnel that anger into action.

And maybe then, more people will start connecting the dots and seeing the climate crisis as the crisis that it is. A crisis for each and every community, regardless of where you live.

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