For generations of Americans, the rhythmic sound of a distant freight train has inspired dreams of freedom and possibility. But the trains rolling through Northern California communities may soon carry massive charges of highly toxic tar sands crude. Rather than hopeful dreams, these trains could bring nightmarish catastrophes to the heart of San Jose’s downtown neighborhoods.
Oil giant Phillips 66 is agitating to upgrade its Santa Maria refinery near San Luis Obispo to build a rail spur that will enable it to begin receiving oil trains carrying massive loads of noxious tar sands crude. If approved, these oil trains will roll through thousands of California communities, including downtown San Jose, threatening our safety, air, water and climate. Even Phillips 66 admits transporting this oil will result in “significant and unavoidable” levels of toxic air pollution to the towns along the route.
The mile-long trains transport millions of gallons of volatile oil in unsafe tank cars that are prone to derailing and exploding. California’s railways weren’t built to transport this noxious oil. If you think oil spills can’t happen in San Jose, consider that more rail-transported oil spilled in 2013 than in the four prior decades. Or ask relatives of the 47 people who were incinerated when an oil train exploded in Quebec in July 2013.
Why should we ask California’s brave first responders to risk their lives to fight the fires, explosions and spills that would likely ensue from this plan, just to further the profit margin of Phillips 66?
Oil trains aren’t just a public safety nightmare. The toxic tar sands oil they carry is some of the most polluting, climate-torching crude on the planet. Fighting the trains is fighting for a decarbonized energy future. It’s about working toward a future in which we might still have half a hope of averting the worst of a climate catastrophe, a future to which we were thankfully nudged closer by the announcement of President Obama’s landmark agreement with China to cut greenhouse gas emissions last week.
California will continue to lead the world toward a decarbonized economy, and it’s time for its citizens to step up active resistance to the oil industry’s attempts to expand crude transport infrastructure that will move our state and our planet in the wrong direction.
The defeat Nov. 4 of three Chevron-backed candidates in the city of Richmond, who were funded to tune of $1.3 million, should remind us that sometimes California’s citizens, just like David, know how to aim their sling.
Oil companies including ConocoPhillips, of which Phillips 66 is a subsidiary, have contributed huge sums of money to forestall meaningful legislative action on the climate, actively working against the public interest in order to line their own pockets. The proposed facility expansion in Santa Maria is motivated by more of the same amoral self-interest that willfully places public health, land, water and climate at risk.
We can’t hope for oil companies to behave ethically. That would be perilous. We simply have to fight them every step of the way. So we call on the citizens of San Jose to join people across California to contact the San Luis Obispo County Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors and urge them to reject the Phillips 66 proposed rail spur. (Link to submit comment: http://bit.ly/NoCAoiltrains.)
People get ready, ’cause there’s a train a comin’.
Richard Nevle and Deborah Levoy, of San Jose, are active with 350 Silicon Valley, a local branch of the international environmental activist group 350.org. They wrote this for this newspaper.
