Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
On May 14, thousands of people from across California came to Los Angeles to call for us to Break Free from Fossil Fuels. Jack Eidt argues the only way to do this is to reform our regulatory agencies recently captured by industry, in particular the South Coast Air Quality Management District.
On May 14, 2016 Californians will convene in Downtown L.A. for a mass action to stop oil and gas drilling in our neighborhoods. Los Angeles is home to the nation’s largest urban oil field in the United States—ground zero of California’s climate fight.
The ongoing ecological disaster has been “temporarily controlled” in Porter Ranch, California, an affluent Los Angeles suburb. Yet, families continue to get sick, and SoCalGas/Sempra wants to oversee the testing inside of homes. While the Regional Air Quality regulators requested they close the leaking well down, the AQMD failed to listen to community demands for a permanent shut down of Aliso Canyon Storage Facility.
Los Angeles comes alive this November and December, sponsored by SoCal 350 Climate Action, in calling for global climate agreements at the upcoming UN conference in Paris. This includes the Global Climate March (Nov 29) at L.A. City Hall, the Vision L.A. Climate Action Arts Festival (Nov 30 to Dec 11), the California Nurses Association Climate Convergence (Dec 3) at Pershing Square and Building Blocks Against Climate Change (Dec 12) along Wilshire Blvd.
Takeaways from a recent Green Festival Expo discussion on the Los Angeles River Revitalization include that the job of planning for water resiliency belongs to all of us, not Frank Gehry regardless of his recent charge, and we must also consider how public access, parkland, ecosystem restoration, cargo and passenger rail, bicycle greenways, and anti-gentrification environmental justice will fit into the mix. Collaboration is the key.
On July 11, Los Angeles joined communities across North America to call for a halt to shipping volatile and toxic crude oil via unsafe rail cars, which has caused numerous derailment explosions during the last six years as the practice has increased 4,000%. In particular, activists call for the City of L.A. to protect their communities and $1.3 billion river revitalization by opposing a crude by rail expansion in San Luis Obispo.
The time for action against oil trains is now! On Saturday, July 11, SoCal 350 Climate Action and its regional partners rallied at L.A.’s Union Station and held a teach-in in front of Olvera Street, calling for an end to bringing exploding bomb trains loaded with tar sands and other volatile crude oils into our communities.