Refineries Are Too Close for Comfort

If you live in Hermosa Beach, you are the envy of people all over this planet. It's easy to get jaded and take it for granted if you're a local, or to lose sight of 99 percent of the world's population who would gladly swap places with you if given the chance.

The beach, the ocean, the weather, the fresh coastal air blowing in, the Hermosa Beach culture and lifestyle--they all combine to build an image of a SoCal paradise. If it really is all about "location, location, location," then Hermosa Beach has got it made.

Or does it?

If you look at a list of California's  six worst greenhouse gas emitters (as compiled by the California Air Resources Board), you'll notice that three of them are pretty close to Hermosa Beach. The El Segundo Chevron refinery is just four miles away, the Torrance Exxon Mobil Refinery is four miles away (in the other direction), and the always-popular BP/Arco Refinery is just 12 miles away in Carson.

Check out their locations on this interactive Google Maps-based map created by PBS station KQED.

You remember greenhouse gases, don't you?  CO2 is one of the biggest of them. They're now forming a barrier that traps the earth's heat in our atmosphere. Greenhouse gases are responsible for global warming. And BP/Arco, Chevron and Exxon Mobil are the California champs at pumping them out. 

Of course, the people who have gotten filthy rich off the record profits of these three oil companies have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on propaganda that disputes what the vast majority of the world's scientists and our own eyes have told us is happening.  These oil companies fund and lead the global warming deniers/skeptics movement to take the heat off themselves. They stifle any sense of urgency to stop what they're doing or pay for the damage they've done. 

Oil companies have spent millions in towns like Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach and Torrance to pay for libraries and schools to boost their PR image and manipulate community reactions to having a refinery for a neighbor. 

You may think the jury's still out on whether humans have anything to do with climate change. You may think global warming is just a theory and that we would be foolish to spend a lot of money doing something about it. 

But you would be dead wrong on both counts. Rather, you would be supporting a belief unsupported by facts, logic or honesty. You would also have the same level of credibility as the nut jobs who claim we never landed on the moon.

Worse than your failure to make an intelligent decision on this subject would be the catastrophic consequences of that failure. 

No one will pay a bigger price if we don't dramatically reduce our greenhouse gas emissions than the people who are 30 and younger. No one will have a greater right to hold us accountable for our inaction, denial or willingness to look the other way and stay silent in exchange for million-dollar checks.

If you've been paying attention to the news, then you don't need any convincing about what's happening or the risk we're facing.  But if you've been conned or haven't been paying attention, then you can get straight real quick by downloading this extraordinary and unprecedented letter signed by 255 members of the National Academy of Sciences, including 11 Nobel Prize winners.  These are the smartest, most accomplished scientists in the business. They tell it like it is in this letter published in the May 7 issue of the journal Science.

"There is compelling, comprehensive, and consistent objective evidence that humans are changing the climate in ways that threaten our societies and the ecosystems on which we depend."

If you want to know what that has to do with Hermosa Beach, you'll find out when you read the part of the letter that says:

"The combination of these complex climate changes threatens coastal communities and cities, our food and water supplies, marine and freshwater ecosystems, forests, high mountain environments, and far more."

The same mindset and corporate ethic you can now watch destroy the Gulf Coast's environment with millions of barrels of oil are what guides the refinery operations in El Segundo, Torrance and Carson.  The guarantees of safety for Hermosa Beach and our surrounding towns are worth just as much as the "fail safe" device on the rig that burned to a crisp and then sank before spewing oil into the ocean in unfathomable amounts.

It's time to acknowledge that the income these refineries bring into our community isn't worth the risk--or the pollution and global warming the generate.  It's time to stop acting like a greedy Bernie Madoff investor when evaluating the risk management for the young and the generations to come. They're the ones who are counting on us not to pass on a world that is already toast.

It's time to look ahead 10 years and see a South Bay that would be much better off if these refineries were replaced with large-scale solar power plants generating clean renewable energy for our area.

I can see a 2020 in which we charge up our new electric cars on sunshine and stop burning the fossil fuels that are destroying the future prospects of our children.  If you can't see it too maybe it's time for you to open your eyes.

Joe Galliani is a weekly environmental columnist for Hermosa Beach Patch.