Back To Oil Spills and Wrecked Beaches…

California lawmakers will vote tonight on a budget that would close the state’s $26 billion budget deficit, a budget so unpopular every sector of the state is howling in opposition–education, social services, state workers, environmental protection groups–you name it, they’re howling. A budget that could shut down more than 200 of the states park’s and beautiful beaches, may also allow offshore drilling in those coastal waters. It would be the first time in four decades that drilling would be allowed off the coast of Santa Barbara. A blowout on the drilling platform that already exists there, in 1969, polluted miles of ocean and shoreline.

Lieutenant governor, John Garamendi–who also heads the State Lands Commission–said Tuesday the plan would essentially bypass the existing approval process for oil leases and give it to a newly created panel. “This is a play by the governor to have it his way,” he said. “This is a sellout to the oil industry. They want to open the California coast to drilling, and this is the first step.” Governor Schwarzenegger has said offshore drilling would result in $1.8 billion in revenue for the state by 2022. That figure is really royalties spread out over 14 years–there would be a one-time $100 million advance royalty payment this year, which Garamendi characterized as being of “minor usefulness” in solving the states’ enormous budget deficit.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported last month that the project–run by Houston-based Plains Exploration & Production Co.– would use drills lowered from the existing oil platform near Vandenberg Air Force Base. Those drills would bore as many as 30 wells into the seabed over the life of the project

Especially troubling is that the governor would use a time of crisis–and if a state handing out I-O-U’s to workers isn’t a crisis I’m not sure what is–to take us back to offshore drilling. This is a governor who went against the Bush administration to insist on more stringent clean air standards in California and who reached out to world leaders in an effort to reduce worldwide carbon emissions. And now it’s back to offshore drilling. Meanwhile California has growing solar and wind power industries, and a host of companies working on innovative solutions to the country’s energy woes. Just look at Sapphire Energy in San Diego, turning algae oil into crude, solar panel maker SunPower in San Jose, and vertical-axis wind turbine maker WePOWER in Aliso Viejo, Calif.

Last month the California Institute of Technology announced the creation of a new, $90-million institute–the Resnick Sustainability Institute–with a mission of taking the resources we have and making them renewable. That includes finding ways to convert sunlight and water into hydrogen fuels. The institute will also help leverage work in new energy technologies currently being done by Caltech professors and grad students–work that will likely result in alternative energy startups. All this research, all these solar panels suburban roofssmart cars on every freeway, wind farms in the state’s interior…and yet offshore drilling may once again be a reality in California.

Santa Barbara spill, 1969 (L.A. Times photo)

As that article in the Chronicle noted:

“Federal bans on offshore drilling along the nation’s East and West coasts expired last year, done in by the historic spike in oil and gasoline prices. California officials – including Schwarzenegger – have been pushing the Obama administration to reinstate the bans. If the state allows this one project, critics say, that argument will be much harder to make. The symbolism of drilling in the Santa Barbara Channel is like the symbolism of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge,” said Assemblyman Pedro Nava, D-Santa Barbara. “It means you can drill anywhere.”