Hello.

Thanks for joining us for sustaining us here on KLCS PBS.

I'm David Nazar.

The Biden administration has drastically changed the game plan over oil here in the U.S., further distancing himself from former President Trump's goal of energy independence.

Upon taking office, President Biden instantly killed the Keystone pipeline and other oil projects throughout the nation, a completely different agenda than that of the Trump administration regarding things like oil drilling, oil fields, oil wells, oil pipelines.

No shock to anyone these days.

There's a contentious and politicized divide over oil production.

Fueling the fire are the source soaring gas prices.

And despite what you hear from the partizan left or the partizan right, the facts are our nation is split these days over the use of fossil fuels.

As an example, many conservatives, Republicans, business interests, corporate interests, they believe things like oil drilling and fracking are good for the US.

Many liberals, Democrats, progressives, environmentalists insists oil is, well, the ultimate demise of the US.

And that is where we begin our broadcast with an unbiased, fair and balanced report with two leading experts in this field who have a polar opposite view of oil.

Kind of a microcosm of the differing opinions with regards to our oil future and who could have guessed that of all places in the US, Los Angeles is an integral part of this oil argument.

In the U.S., oil production is often identified with places like Texas and the Gulf of Mexico, North Dakota or Alaska.

However, the state of California environmentally friendly.

California is in fact a mega oil producer.

Although it's not often we hear about the nation's largest urban oilfield cutting directly through a major cosmopolitan city, in this case, Los Angeles, These hundreds of oil rigs out here on about a thousand acres bordering the La Cienega Highway are part of the active and iconic Inglewood Oil Field.

Part of the field cuts its way through Culver City.

One of the oldest and historic communities in L.A. County.

As neighbors, Culver City and the Inglewood oil Field kind of evolved together.

Culver City was incorporated about 100 years ago building upon the movie industry, where the city was first home to Culver Studios, then MGM and now Sony Studios.

The Inglewood oilfield struck oil about 100 years ago and instantly became part of California's oil history, helping to build the Los Angeles economy into a booming success and helping California eventually evolve into the fifth largest economy in the world.

Listen to these two opposing experts describe the Inglewood oil field and their opinion of oil drilling.

The proof that the oil fields are dangerous is I mean, it's just established science.

You know, any scientific analysis is going to tell you that the chemicals that are present in the oil itself and in the extraction processes that they use to to get that tight oil out of the ground, all of those are known toxins.

It's really important that we focus on trying to lower carbon emissions here in California and all over the world.

And so the way that you do that is you produce oil domestically and you produce it locally and you produce it under the strictest regulations that exist.

This is the largest urban oil field in the United States.

There are a million people who live within a five square mile radius of this field and the field itself is on a fault line.

The fault line, the Newport Inglewood fault line is capable of causing a 7.4 magnitude earthquake.

So just imagine, you've got toxic oil drilling practices.

You've got 100 year old infrastructure.

You've got a million people within striking distance of a toxic release and you've got a history of failures.

And so, you know, it's not surprising to me that my community is asking me to do something about it.

A lot of people don't realize that oil is actually the thing that paved the way for the entertainment business, the aerospace industry, the fashion industry, all the industries that people associate with L.A. We're really built on the oil business that's become an important part of the tax base.

It's become an important employer, but it really is such an iconic industry here in Los Angeles.

So just who are these two experts with such differing viewpoints?

Megan Sally Wells is a self-proclaimed proud, staunch environmentalist.

Sally Wells has lived in Culver City for years.

She was part of the Culver City City Council for about a decade and has personally witnessed the recent history of the Inglewood oilfield, both as a resident and city leader.

Sally was was the mayor, vice mayor and a council member of Culver City, and she was part of the Oil Drilling subcommittee all those years in office studying and researching the hazards of the field.

Currently, Megan Sally Wells is the co-chair of a nonprofit Elected Officials to Protect California, which is part of a national organization.

Elected officials to Protect America, which identifies ways to phase out fossil fuels in California and the U.S.. Dave Quast has been a consultant to the oil and gas industries for years, specializing in California oil coasts, was formerly the California director for Energy in Depth, a campaign to educate Californians about oil and gas.

And he also teaches at USC as an adjunct professor.

Megan and Dave represent the divide in the U.S. over our oil future and say that Inglewood Oil Field is a good example of their respective opinions.

Megan Sally Wells claims that Inglewood Oil Field presents a danger to the public, both as a health hazard and as a destroyer of the environment and contributor to climate change.

The former mayor says in 2005 and 2006, there were a series of toxic oil spills at the field which sickened her community and harm to the air and threatened the water.

That's when the city of Culver City started really taking a look at the health and safety impacts of oil drilling.

And what we found was not very encouraging.

There was a lot of finger pointing.

The oil operator said, well, the state's in charge.

And the state said, well, the county's in charge.

And then and really what was happening was that, you know, it felt like nobody was minding the store.

So that's when Culver City, with the help of the county, implemented stricter regulations over oil drilling at the Inglewood oil field in an attempt to make sure some government agency was taking control of the situation to safeguard neighbors and the surrounding communities.

Those more stringent rules included things like banning intense oil drilling, distancing the oil wells from homes, parks and schools, implementing mandatory electric drilling rigs as opposed to diesel rigs and no construction of new wells.

And yet, Sally Wells says these precautionary measures could not prevent more spills in the last few years.

On Thanksgiving evening in 2018, there was a toxic release where these tanks overflowed and all the safety mechanisms failed.

There was basically like a toxic cloud, you know, contaminated air that was reaching people's homes.

This stuff isn't legal, right?

You can't just pollute like that.

And the toxicity that was in the air exceeded all compliance.

So it was it was a big failure.

And we just keep seeing these failures over and over and over again.

And then in 2019, Sally Wells says more trouble.

There was oil running down into the drainpipe just up the hill here.

And basically one of the old pipes got this hole in it, inexplicably.

And so the oil started running down right down the way as Fiona Creek.

This is a creek that ends up in the Pacific Ocean.

It was really a rush against time to make sure that that oil didn't make it down into the waterway and into the Pacific Ocean.

For about a decade.

Sally Wells and her Culver City Council colleagues have been trying to mitigate the situation and decide exactly what to do to prevent another health hazard or on site oil spill.

Megan Sally Wells says they've been listening to thousands of angry Culver City neighbors and the solution is finally clear.

What we've done is we've been talking to our community about, you know, how to make this safe.

And the answer, how to make it safe is not to have it at all.

And that is where Culver City is at today, an all out effort to rid the city of the 100 year old Inglewood Oil Field once and for all, and replace the field with a great park comparable to Central Park in New York, comprised of open space, green space, parkland, hiking trails, sports fields, just no oil.

Because Sally Wells believes there is no necessity whatsoever for oil, especially since Culver City is now a 100% renewable energy city with things like getting its residential renewable energy from the Clean Power Alliance, having solar panels everywhere and using electric city busses.

And she insists there is no place for oil drilling in her city or anywhere else in California or the U.S..

They're pumping about nearly 2 million barrels a year in the Inglewood oil fields.

Right now, production is lower because of the pandemic, and there's like a reduced demand for oil worldwide.

In fact, the barrel of oil went negative.

And then there's the experience of our residents as well.

And, you know, as the council member, former mayor of Culver City, I'm the one on the front lines listening to the stories of cancer, clusters of, you know, several moms, young, healthy moms on a same block getting miscarriage after miscarriage.

You know, these types of stories when when you're an elected official and a mom, by the way, you know, you listen to them and and, you know, I can't leave this city without listening to those voices.

Dave Cross says he also listens to the voices of the people, people throughout California and the U.S. who disagree with Megan Sally Wells in her opposition to oil and gas, says he hears them loudly and clearly because Quast says oil drilling can provide a great benefit.

California, even though it's a major energy producer, actually imports more than half of the oil that we produce, and we import it from places that have much laxer environmental, labor, human rights standards than we do.

So if we produce our oil here, which we need, you know, we should actually be producing more of it, not less in the short term because that actually reduces global carbon emissions.

And that's what we should all agree is important.

Reducing carbon emissions is an incredibly important goal, and I think it's one that's shared, especially in California, by policymakers on both sides of the aisle.

What's important, though, is recognizing that in the short term it's just not economical for renewables to completely replace oil and gas.

Oil independence is an incredibly important goal for the United States.

When we import oil, we're importing it from places like Russia, like Saudi Arabia, places that don't have even a smattering of the safety, labor, human rights or environmental standards that we do.

So we're actually exacerbating the carbon emissions problem when we import oil.

And don't forget, we're also having to bring that oil over either via pipeline or via ship, which also carries, you know, inherent potential issues as well.

So domestic production and energy independence is a really important goal, both from an economic but also a national security point of view.

And despite what Sally Wells says, Quast insists the oil industry is a safe industry, a highly regulated industry to safeguard against health hazards and environmental hazards.

Producing oil here under the strictest regulations that exist is the safest way to produce the oil and gas that we actually need.

It's going to be a long, long time until fossil fuels become irrelevant here.

That's just a simple fact.

The county did a health study comparing the health of residents near the Inglewood oil field to the residents of L.A. County, and they found it to be comparable.

We know it's bad for us.

All the health studies, you know, any any self-respecting scientist knows that this this is true.

And joining me now to discuss this further is David Colgan.

David is with UCLA's Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.

He is an author and teaches science communications.

Also joining me is Jim Rigg Heimer.

Jim is a former mayor of Costa mesa, owns a real estate company in Southern California and is a popular conservative voice on talk radio.

AM 870 The answer every Sunday morning throughout the region.

Thank you both so much for being here.

Hey, thanks, David.

David Jim, to begin, let me get your individual takes on the field report that we put together on an Inglewood oilfield.

Dave, first to you.

In your opinion, should that land that I referenced in my story be used to continue the oil drilling operations there?

Dave No, I don't think so.

I mean, you've got the most populous county in the entire nation and we have thousands and thousands of active oil wells.

Inglewood Oil Field is the largest of them.

It's in a relatively dense urban area and as time goes on, they have to use more and worse, more dangerous chemicals to get the oil that they need.

And it is affecting the lives of the numerous tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people that live very close by.

And, you know, having having done work with some of those groups in the past, I can tell you that these are really human issues that they're facing, health issues.

Their daughter has asthma.

I mean, I had a group of students from the area studying urban drilling, and they were literally in tears just talking about the problems that they face because of this.

Jim, your opinion about the Inglewood oil field in L.A., As I mentioned in the report, the Culver City officials over there, they want no part of this field.

They want to build a great park of the West.

They're talking about something like Central Park in New York.

Yeah, I mean, the bottom line really comes down to, yeah, areas get more dense.

Value of the real estate chain where it's located.

If you had to pick it today, is that where you wanted Mother Nature to put the oil underground?

The fact of the matter is we need oil.

We need hydrocarbons no matter how much we want to say we don't want it because of climate change.

We're not going to change on a dime.

But if people don't want to have it there, there's a simple process.

It's called buy it.

And if people want it for a park or open space or whatever they want to do, they need to buy it.

The problem that we've had so much and it's going on and on in this country is there's this come from, I don't want something, so therefore I'm just going to stop it and take it for free.

If they pay for it and they put them out of business and shut it down, I'm fine with that.

That's that's no big deal.

Obviously, the land is extremely valuable to the community, to the town, to the county.

And there can be, you know, a dollars raised in order to do that.

But the whole idea of we're just going to shut it down because we can because we somehow have the votes to do it, you know, maybe you can get it done, but it's just not the right thing to do in this country.

Private property rights matters, and we have to balance that with the impacts those projects do.

But on the other hand, if they just shut it down, you need to buy it.

Yeah, I mean, I do respect the tradition of private property in the United States.

I just don't think that we correctly value the situation.

I mean, with drilling for oil, not just because of climate change, because of all the local impacts and the health impacts, you're talking about enormous costs that the public already bears because of this industry.

So if you're going to try to value that land and the extractive, the destructive fuels that they take from it, you need to also include all the costs that it incurs on society and locally and globally.

And I think those are enormous.

And the oil companies have known about it for 40 years.

Yeah, but if we can stop all sorts of them, we can stop all the ships coming in the Long Beach.

We know the air quality around Long Beach because of the harbor and because the ships coming in is off the charts.

Yet you'll have people say, I want to have, you know, crystal clear, perfect air.

Well, fine.

Then just put the shipping into into Long Beach.

The bottom line is, is that we still need fossil fuels.

They still have to be used.

Everybody in L.A., you know, 99% are still driving their cars.

It's a highly impacted area.

So I don't disagree at all that there's that there's some some economic value that gets taken out of that project because of what it's for.

But it has to be bought and it has to be just figured out from party to party what that transaction is not a gun to someone's head saying you'll sell it for $10 because we can force you to.

Okay, both of you.

Now to the broader discussion of oil drilling and the use of fossil fuels here in California throughout the U.S.. David, begin with you.

Look, whether you agree or disagree with oil production, the fossil fuel industry, it has brought hundreds of thousands, really, if not millions of good paying jobs over the decades.

I mean, we're talking good union jobs for American workers.

We all witnessed what happened to just some of those workers when President Biden first took off, took office.

He instantly killed the Keystone XL pipeline as an example.

Do you really believe, Dave, that Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, even climate czar John Kerry, they've claimed that you can get these same high paying jobs, union jobs, if you replace them with renewables.

Say, for example, if you work with wind and solar, these types of technologies.

David Absolutely.

I think that's truly the case.

Not only does that, is that something that's already happening really, I mean, we've already got renewable energies with one of the fastest growing sectors of the economy in terms of jobs and, you know, the oil industry, the coal industry particularly a problem.

You know, we're now dealing with a situation where the economics just don't even make sense for fossil fuels.

Right.

Like, you've got, you know, renewables now cheaper in most circumstances, with the possible exception of natural gas than other fossil fuels.

So in terms of jobs, there has to be a plan.

It can't just be, oh, these people will find new jobs.

We need to help support the communities and their daily needs as they transition to the new Johnson, which, you know, maybe not at the same location sometimes.

So there are a lot of things to consider and it needs to be done in a careful way to not disrupt the economics of households.

Jim, Can the renewable industry replace the fossil fuel industry as far as jobs?

The Biden administration says yes.

And listen, Dave made a good argument.

What's your take?

Well, it depends how much you're going to subsidize it.

I mean, the bottom line is that the renewable industry is subsidized to a massive effect.

Tesla, for the first several years of them selling their cars, was getting a $35,000 a year of cash paid for by the other carmakers for because they're supposed to have a certain percentage of their fleet to be electric or basically non-fossil fuel type cars.

So whenever you play the game where you push it around for who's going to subsidize fuel, it works out.

If if the if the renewable industry were all penciled out, it'd be flourishing and it'd be going crazy.

It doesn't pencil out.

That's the problem now.

Over time, the technology get better.

Totally agree.

But, I mean, you know, unless we're going to do nuclear reactors in this country, but people don't seem to want to do that.

They're doing all over the rest of the world.

If you're for shutting down oil and gas, you're for blackouts.

There's just not enough fuel out there for power and wind towers and all that.

And when you see the kind of impacts these things do that, you know that literally millions of acres of solar cells are going to need out there.

And then and then you've got to build all the solar cell plants and then you've got to, you know, all the earth mining and rare earth metals.

You have to kind to do those kind of things.

So this all comes from that because we want it.

And I'm not saying we don't want to go that direction.

What I'm just saying is, is that the math doesn't work out.

Nobody's going to tell me that in northern Wisconsin there are $125,000 a year jobs hanging out there.

There isn't.

But now, because of the pipeline that was stopped by Biden, it shut down.

What happened immediately after that for paying 40, $0.50 more a gallon of gas?

I just paid that at the more expensive station.

I didn't mean to go there.

$4.19 for a gallon of gas.

I'm in Colorado right now where you pay 220 for a gallon of gas.

You know, these things have costs.

And all I'm saying is, is you want to shift away to things, fine.

But to sit there and say there's funding $25,000 a your jobs for oil workers or pipeline workers or those kind of people, they just don't exist.

And the fact of the matter is, 80% of the oil in the world, OPEC's 20% of it is the rest of the world and basically us in the United States.

And so oil and gas is still going to be produced until they can bring the cost of electric cars down.

And remember, we've got to put a whole new grid in.

Look what's happening with power.

We haven't even plugged all the cars in yet in our grid in California.

Can't handle what we have to do.

And then where's all that power going to come from?

Let me respond to a couple things.

I think the first thing that caught my ear was, you know, the subsidies, which we know that the oil industry is subsidized to the tune of $80 Billion a year in the United States.

Oil and gas companies, fossil fuel companies donating thousands and I'm sorry, rather millions and millions of dollars almost exclusively to the Republican Party.

And that causes the Republican Party to promote policies, regulations that are not in line with their voters, according to Pew Research, know, even according to Pew Research, a super majority of U.S. voters, both parties think that we're not doing enough on climate change, even within the Republican Party.

About half think we're not doing enough to promote renewable energies.

And that's the entire Republican Party.

When you look at individual demographics, more specifically when you look at the future of the party, young people, women and other people that are becoming part of the Republican Party, the numbers are actually even more drastically in favor of renewables.

So this is a place where you're looking at political donations interfering with the will of the people, and that's just not democratic.

David, I don't believe there's anyone out there who denies climate change exists.

We all have to believe in the science.

Follow the science.

Certainly you could even argue that we do have to wean ourselves off fossil fuels.

Dave Yet many say this is impractical for now anyway.

The progressives are saying the sky is falling within a decade if we don't stop oil consumption and fossil fuel usage.

Now, is this really practical?

Well, thanks for the short term memory job and I appreciate that was another part.

I wanted to respond to Jim's comments.

And yes, that's not we're not going to ever or at least not for the foreseeable future, be completely free of fossil fuels.

So especially when you're talking about things like heavy industry, like these are industries and sectors that are going to require airplanes like the best we can do is shift to biofuels for now in the electric car market.

However, what what have we done?

We've subsidized the purchase of cars largely, but we haven't built out the infrastructure to support them.

So who can afford electric cars?

Well, it's the people that are there that are least using them.

Right.

The people that can that live in places where they can charge it, not in a rent controlled apartment where the landlord won't let you put up a charger or something.

I've experienced personally or anywhere in the city where people are more dependent upon public infrastructure simply because of the density of a city and taking it even a step further.

Looking at the ridesharing this free right, You know, these people are doing the most miles, right?

We should subsidize them, right, to have electric cars because electric cars do pay off in the long term.

But it does take a while at this point.

Right.

It takes 7 to 10 years.

I think the other aspect of it is that electric cars are becoming more and more efficient and we're looking at, you know, GM and or Chevy and and some of these other American car producers now starting to make much bigger commitments towards producing an electric fleet or a more electric vehicle.

Finally, David and Jim, how can a liberal and conservative such as yourselves find common ground on this issue, really for the good of the United States and how can we all talk together?

How can we work together?

So this is a win win situation.

So we're not so politicized, polarized, we're not so divisive over oil drilling.

Yeah, I mean, I think the first thing to recognize is that Republicans were the original environmentalists largely in the seventies as they passed the clean Air Act and, you know, expanded our public lands.

So this is not something where we can't come together.

And as I said earlier, the voters of both parties are heavily supportive of this transition.

I think the other thing, though, that is really important is that we can't we can't face an existential threat with business as usual.

It doesn't matter how great an economy is doing, if the entire world around us is disintegrating and we depend upon that world for everything.

So so the idea that we can just treat this as another issue I think is a little bit absurd.

It's like, why?

Why are we talking like that?

This is this isn't just bottom lines.

The bottom line is we have to protect the earth that we depend on.

And I know that sounds a little cliché, but that's really what it comes down to.

I mean, first off, it matters that we're talking like we're talking right now on your show.

Or two sides can give back their points back and forth in a respectful way.

We're not canceling each side out.

We're saying how do we get there?

And in the communication, talking back and forth, we may disagree about certain things, but if we can start coming together on the issues, I don't think the world is going to end in nine or ten years.

And if it's going to end in nine or ten years, it's going to end because 80% of the world is doing something that that their communities and their their people want to get out of third world nation and they want to have things and and to come from that.

We're not going to supply those things.

Is it going to happen?

We're going to have to figure out how to do that.

But the most important thing is that we keep on talking to work through those issues, both both sides, and we'll get the solution.

But we got to keep on talking.

And the problems are happening in our society right now is people aren't allowed to talk about disruptive ideas without the other side getting all over them and just calling you.

You're really bad.

You know, This is good talk.

Thank you so much, David Colgan and Jim Rick Heimer for a great interview.

Thank you both.

Here now for more information about our program, just click on KLCS.org and then click Contact us to send us your questions and comments, even your story ideas so we can hear from you.

And I am going to be sure to get back with you.

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Thank you so much for joining us for this edition of Sustaining US here on KLCS PBS.

I'm David Nazar.