[The fossil fuel industry is increasingly casting itself as an
ally of communities of color and defender of their financial
well-being. The goal is to xxxxxx oil and gas against ambitious
climate change policies by claiming the moral high ground. ]
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THE FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY WANTS YOU TO BELIEVE IT’S GOOD FOR PEOPLE
OF COLOR  
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Sammy Roth
November 24, 2020
Los Angeles Times
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_ The fossil fuel industry is increasingly casting itself as an ally
of communities of color and defender of their financial well-being.
The goal is to xxxxxx oil and gas against ambitious climate change
policies by claiming the moral high ground. _

A relief well drilled in Aliso Canyon, site of the largest methane
leak in US history. Sempra Energy paid an environmental justice group
more than $100,000 and later received its support in its campaign to
reopen the Aliso Canyon facility., Scott L. from Los Angeles (CC BY-SA
2.0)

 

The letter to Mexico’s energy minister offered a glowing review of a
fossil fuel project in Baja California.

Writing in July, three U.S. governors and the chair of the Ute Indian
Tribe praised
[[link removed]] the
Energía Costa Azul project — which was seeking approval from the
Mexican government — as “one of the most promising [liquefied
natural gas] export facilities on the Pacific Coast.”

The letter was arranged by Western States and Tribal Nations, an
advocacy group that says it was created in part to “promote tribal
self-determination” by creating easier access to overseas markets
for gas extracted from Native American lands.

But internal documents shared with The Times reveal that the group’s
main financial backers are county governments and fossil fuel
companies — including a subsidiary of San Diego-based Sempra Energy,
which received approval
[[link removed]] this
month to build the $1.9-billion facility in Baja. In fact, the group
has just one tribal member, the Ute Indian Tribe.

Western States and Tribal Nations isn’t the only effort by fossil
fuel proponents to cast themselves as allies of communities of color
and defenders of their financial well-being.

The goal is to xxxxxx oil and gas against ambitious climate change
policies by claiming the moral high ground — even as those fuels
kindle a global crisis that disproportionately harms people who
aren’t white.
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Recent examples abound.

As protests rocked the United States after the police killing of
George Floyd, a government relations firm whose clients include oil
and gas companies told news media
[[link removed]] that
the mayor of San Luis Obispo, Calif., was “getting a lot of heat”
from the NAACP over a proposal to limit gas hookups in new buildings.
That was proved false
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local NAACP chapter said it supported the policy.

Around the same time, Alaska’s all-Republican congressional
delegation wrote a letter to federal officials complaining about the
refusal of several banks to finance oil and gas drilling in the
Arctic, writing that the banks were harming Alaska Natives
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“openly discriminating against investment in some of the most
economically disadvantaged regions of America.”

Some of the most contentious debates involve natural gas. The fuel is
less polluting than coal, but an international team of
scientists reported last year
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planet-warming emissions from gas are rising faster than coal
emissions are falling. A recent study
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the peer-reviewed journal AGU Advances found that replacing coal with
gas might do little good for the climate.

Gas companies say their product is cleaner than coal and will only get
cleaner as they blend renewable fuels into their pipelines.
[[link removed]] Gas
also benefits low-income families by keeping energy prices low,
supporters say.

In recent months, California officials have faced criticism from some
lawmakers and Black and Latino groups who say the state has focused
too much on reducing pollution and not enough on the economic impacts
of climate policies.

“It’s not enough to continue to say, ‘Poor people want
zero-emission cars.’ That’s the farthest thing from their mind.
They want a roof over their head. They want a safe neighborhood to
live in. They want a good school to send their kids to,” state Sen.
Steven Bradford (D-Gardena), who is Black, told the California Air
Resources Board during a hearing on race and equity last month.
[[link removed]] “I
don’t know a single person who wants dirty water, dirty air, dirty
soil. But that’s not what keeps these folks up at night.”

Natural gas advocates also say eliminating the fuel would require
people to give up their gas stoves. Sempra subsidiary Southern
California Gas Co. has seized on this idea, using gas cooking
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a talking point
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foster opposition to all-electric building policies, which have been
passed by nearly 40
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and counties.

The company’s argument has resonated in the San Gabriel Valley,
where some Chinese restaurant owners worry their signature
dishes won’t be the same if not cooked over a flame.
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Fossil fuel companies are ignoring the ways communities of color and
low-income families are disproportionately harmed by polluted air and
water,
[[link removed]] deadlier
heat waves,
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punishing droughts
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other consequences of burning coal, oil and gas, said Leah Stokes, a
UC Santa Barbara political scientist who recently wrote a book
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utility industry lobbying.

The national uprising over racial justice and the COVID-19 pandemic
have shone a spotlight on those injustices. Black and Latino people
are more likely to suffer from the virus, and research suggests that
greater exposure to air pollution — resulting in part from decades
of racist housing and environmental policies — may be one reason
why.
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“There’s definitely a marketing campaign to gaslight everybody,
literally gaslight them, by saying, ‘If we do the [clean energy]
transition, it’s going to harm frontline Black, Hispanic and
Indigenous communities,’” Stokes said.

Tribal self-determination

For decades, energy companies built polluting power plants in
communities of color
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fossil fuels from tribal lands
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little regard for local health effects. Today, they’re working to
build diverse political coalitions to preserve the fossil fuel
economy, while making the case that their products are good for the
pocketbooks of people of color.

The main purpose of Western States and Tribal Nations is lobbying for
gas export terminals. The group says on its website
[[link removed]] that many
tribal nations “seek economic prosperity and tribal
self-determination through natural gas.”

“The Ute Indian Tribe primarily funds its government through its oil
and gas revenue,” the group says.

Internal documents obtained through public records requests by the
Energy and Policy Institute, a pro-renewables watchdog organization,
show that all but one of the group’s members are state and local
government agencies or energy companies.

In addition to Sempra, corporate backers include Virginia-based
Dominion Energy, which stands to benefit from West Coast export
terminals because it owns
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gas exploration and production firm with operations in several western
states.

Bryson Hull — a vice president at HBW Resources, the Houston-based
consulting firm that runs Western States and Tribal Nations — said
in an email that the group is “organized and led by state, county
and sovereign tribal governments to help aid rural economic
development.” He said membership “naturally includes the companies
whose investments will make that happen.”

Ute officials declined to comment for this story. They asked that all
questions be directed to Western States and Tribal Nations.

Hull said the Ute tribe — which has about 3,000 members,
[[link removed]] many of whom live on the Uintah and Ouray
Reservation in Utah — “explicitly asked for ‘Tribal Nations’
to be included in the organization’s name to reflect the fact that
they and other tribes are sovereign nations under the law and should
be accorded that status, especially given the historical injustices
they have suffered.”

The Utes aren’t the only tribe
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leaders see fossil fuels as an economic imperative.
[[link removed]] At the same time,
Indigenous climate activists have become an increasingly powerful
force in recent years, protesting pipelines
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cleaner energy.
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To Kyle Whyte, a professor of environment and sustainability at the
University of Michigan and an enrolled member of the Citizen
Potawatomi Nation, the existence of a group like Western States and
Tribal Nations is no surprise. He said there’s a “long history of
energy companies and energy interests trying to make connections with
tribal sovereignty.”

“There’s this misconception that if tribes could do fracking and
burn coal and there were no limits or regulation or anything, that
they would just do it, that that’s the economy we’ve always
wanted. And that’s just not true,” Whyte said.

In Oregon, Western States and Tribal Nations urged officials
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support the proposed Jordan Cove gas export terminal, despite
opposition from several
[[link removed]] tribes
[[link removed]]in
the Pacific Northwest. Nowhere in the group’s media blitz did it
mention it had previously received funding from Pembina Pipeline
Corp., the Canadian company behind the $10-billion project.

Hull confirmed the company was a member in 2019 but said it didn’t
renew this year.

“Whether Pembina is a member or not, WSTN has and will continue to
advocate for the Jordan Cove [liquefied natural gas] project because
it’s one the few economically viable options for West Coast natural
gas exports,” he said.

Pembina didn’t respond to requests for comments. Neither did
Dominion.

“As a general matter, we support bringing domestic natural gas
resources to global energy markets,” Paty Ortega Mitchell, a
spokeswoman for Sempra’s liquefied natural gas subsidiary, said in
an email.

Financial contributions

Member companies with over $1 billion in revenue, such as Dominion and
Sempra, are expected to provide just $20,000 annually to Western
States and Tribal Nations, internal documents show.

Still, small expenditures can have an impact — either to build
support or to preempt opposition.

Take Pacoima Beautiful, which fights for cleaner air in the mostly
Latino, low-income northeast San Fernando Valley. Between 2014 and
2018, the environmental justice group took $107,750 from Sempra
subsidiary SoCalGas.

In August 2016, Pacoima Beautiful’s executive director, Veronica
Padilla, wrote a letter
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state officials in support of reopening the gas company’s Aliso
Canyon storage facility, which a year earlier had sprung the worst
methane leak in U.S. history.
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“We have full confidence in the ability of SoCalGas to deliver
resources in a safe, reliable and non-hazardous manner,” she wrote.

Padilla now says she was reluctantly doing the company’s bidding.
Eventually her group stopped accepting SoCalGas funding, and today
it’s pushing Los Angeles officials to shut down a gas plant whose
fuel is supplied by SoCalGas. The city-owned plant recently leaked
methane for at least three years,
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concerns about potential health effects to nearby residents.

“Other environmental justice groups continue to take the [gas
company] money and say, ‘Let’s do something good with their
money.’ But I think it’s important for us to take a stand and just
say no,” Padilla said.

SoCalGas representatives urged Pacoima Beautiful to reconsider,
Padilla said. She recalled a gas company employee discussing efforts
to replace gas stoves with electric alternatives, and asking her:
“How are people going to warm up their tortillas?”

“That was so disturbing to me,” she said.

SoCalGas representatives declined to comment on Padilla’s account or
answer any other questions for this story.

Two SoCalGas executives did, however, send a letter to The Times’
owner and executive editor suggesting questions posed by the newspaper
smacked of racism.

The Oct. 23 letter
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signed by gas company vice presidents Mitch Mitchell and Andy
Carrasco. The Times, they wrote, “has repeatedly asked us, and our
community partners, if our support for their work involves some sort
of quid pro quo. Not surprisingly, these questions seem pointedly
directed at Black, Latino, and Native American organizations.”

“Our support for many community partners dates back decades, as do
our relationships with community leaders across Southern
California,” they wrote. “And yes, we speak from life experience
as men of color, one African-American and one Latino.”

“We share the goals of helping California decarbonize and move to a
cleaner energy future,” they added.

SoCalGas has worked to bring non-white voices to its cause, seeking
out Latino leaders
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support a pro-gas advocacy group it helped create and recruiting
Latino and Asian American politicians
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its campaign for natural gas-fueled trucks at the L.A. and Long Beach
ports.

The fossil fuel industry’s financial assistance and efforts to build
support aren’t limited to communities of color.
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made $7.7 million
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charitable and non-charitable contributions last year.

Those contributions included $10,500 to the American Indian Chamber of
Commerce of California, $10,000 to the California Latino Leadership
Institute and $28,000 to the Greater Los Angeles African American
Chamber of Commerce — all of whom wrote letters
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a SoCalGas proposal that would bolster the company’s preferred
climate solution, renewable gas.

Tracy Stanhoff, president of the American Indian Chamber of Commerce
of California, said many American Indians and Alaska Natives can’t
afford higher energy bills or don’t have access to modern energy
infrastructure. She described renewable gas as a potentially cheaper
alternative to the all-electric buildings preferred by climate
advocates.

“We are for clean energy, don’t get me wrong. We’re stewards of
the land,” Stanhoff said.

Environmental groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council
have pushed back against the cost argument. They’ve made the case
that electric heat pumps will be cheaper to operate
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gas furnaces in the long run and have supported
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incentives to reduce any up-front costs to low-income households from
transitioning to electric appliances.

Gas companies are presenting a “false choice” between clean power
and affordable power, said Carmelita Miller, who leads the energy
equity program at the Oakland-based Greenlining Institute. The group
argued in a report
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year that shifting to all-electric homes can benefit low-income
families by creating good-paying jobs and reducing indoor air
pollution from gas stoves.
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“Our people deserve to live in an environment that is clean and
pollution-free,” Miller said.

Who speaks for people of color?

As California officials ramped up efforts to phase out gas appliances
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cars
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recent months, a group called United Latinos Vote pushed back, arguing
that people of color would be harmed by rising costs of energy and
homeownership.

The California Environmental Justice Alliance
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a member of Congress, Rep. Nanette Barragán (D-San
Pedro), questioned
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funding the Berkeley-based advocacy group — especially as its
arguments were echoed by fossil fuel proponents.

United Latinos Vote made its first public foray into climate policy in
San Luis Obispo, where its executive director, Robert Apodaca, wrote
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a plan to promote construction of all-electric buildings would
“disproportionately impact vulnerable communities and communities of
color.” The group also bought a full-page ad
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Times, which said policies favored by climate activists would “hurt
the real people and communities we represent,” namely “low-income
and ethnic minority populations.”

“There are a lot of inequities in the world, and now the poor people
are being penalized,” Apodaca said in an interview.

But groups such as the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment
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the Asian Pacific Environmental Network
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claims made by United Latinos Vote don’t represent the majority of
their communities.

A poll conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California
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summer found that 52% of Latinos and 46% of Black people are willing
to pay more for solar and wind energy, compared with 42% of white
people. Additionally, 70% of Latinos and 65% of Black people said
stricter environmental laws and regulations are worth the cost,
compared with 53% of white people.

Those numbers track with other polls finding Latinos and Black people
are more likely to be concerned
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climate change than white people.

Gladys Limón, executive director of the California Environmental
Justice Alliance, called United Latinos Vote an “industry interest
group that describes itself as equity-based and cloaks itself by
stealing the racial justice language of the movement.”

“The fossil fuel-based economy is hurting our health,” Limón
said.

It’s not clear who’s funding United Latinos Vote, although the
group’s political action committee recently received
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each from two major oil and gas companies, Chevron and Phillips 66.
Apodaca said the gas industry isn’t funding his group’s energy
advocacy, but he declined to clarify who is, saying only that backers
include “various industries.”

Fossil fuel proponents have embraced the group’s agenda. United
Latinos Vote’s arguments have been amplified in email blasts
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social media
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SoCalGas-funded advocacy group and by Frank Maisano, a media
specialist at the Houston-based government relations firm Bracewell
LLP who works with SoCalGas.

It was also Maisano who falsely claimed the NAACP opposed San Luis
Obispo’s all-electric buildings plan. He blamed “several
sources” who turned out to be wrong, although he wouldn’t say if
he was acting on behalf of a particular client.

Even though it wasn’t the case in San Luis Obispo, it’s not
uncommon
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NAACP chapters to receive fossil fuel money and go to bat for policies
favored by the industry. The national NAACP released a report last
year titled “Fossil Fueled Foolery,”
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the “top 10 manipulation tactics of the fossil fuel industry” and
warning local chapters not to fall for them.

The report is unequivocal: When fossil fuel companies “make the case
that the benefits of using fossil fuels far outweigh the harms” —
or are caught “leveraging their wealth to create a false appearance
of community support” — don’t believe them.

[_Sammy Roth covers energy for the Los Angeles Times and writes the
weekly Boiling Point
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previously reported for the Desert Sun and USA Today, where he focused
on renewable energy, climate change, electric utilities and public
lands._]

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