All About Oil

The Poodle got it right, pointing to the painful connection between outside money trying to buy a local political race and the anniversary of the disastrous Refugio oil spill. That’s what it’s about: oil companies making money, and the true impact on Santa Barbara County be damned.

The outside-the-county oil PAC supporting Porter isn’t actually interested in keeping Santa Barbarans employed: All they want is to keep revenue flowing into oil company coffers. If this were really about good jobs, they’d be supporting Joan Hartmann, who alone among the 3d District Supervisorial candidates fully understands the promise of the “green economy.” Joan has been a county planning commissioner for three years and knows full well the costs associated with oil and gas development — not just environmental and economic disasters like the Refugio spill but the economic collapse that follows oil booms, like the one happening in the upper Midwest now. As a highly educated political scientist and environmental attorney, Joan is pushing for Santa Barbara County to support projects that invest in good, high paying jobs in the fastest growing sector of the energy economy: solar and wind. Where better than here, where we have an abundance of both and growing tech sectors to support it?

Outside oil interests have their agenda, and it’s not the best interests of Santa Barbara County’s workers or its environment. If Porter is the beneficiary of their money, you can bet they think he will advance that agenda. No, thank you.

Dave Davis is the former president and CEO of the Community Environmental Council.