S6, Ep6 | A Busload of COVID

Drilled S6, Part2 Ep1

Speaker 1 [00:00:00] The world's second largest economy is increasingly being sealed off from the rest of the world.

Speaker 2 [00:00:06] Think back to April 2020, when every newscast was filled with warnings like this.

Speaker 1 [00:00:13] Health officials cautioning we haven't hit the peak. The new warnings from survivors.

Speaker 3 [00:00:18] Nobody's saying no to the virus. You don't know how.

Speaker 2 [00:00:22] It's going to. Now, imagine you're the mayor of a medium sized town in California, poised to hold a city council meeting with rules about masking and social distancing So everyone feels safe. And you get a letter like this.

Speaker 3 [00:00:38] If the city council intends to move forward with another reading on a gas ban, I can assure you that there will be no social distancing in place. And I strongly urge the City Council to kick the can down the road and adhere to public safety measures. Please don't force my hand in busing in hundreds and hundreds of pissed off people potentially adding to this pandemic. We will pull permits and close streets and we'll have a massive protest. This is not the time to do this. Please tell Mayor Harmon and the rest of the Council for the sake of people's health that their efforts are better focused on how to deal with this pandemic than to stir up the emotions of people losing their jobs. Be smart about this.

Speaker 2 [00:01:17] That's former mayor of San Luis Obispo, Heidi Harmon. The letter in question was from Eric Hoffman, the leader of one of the unions representing utility workers in California and an outspoken critic of attempts throughout the state to move away from fossil gas. Hoffman did not respond to requests to speak with us for this series. Harman says a letter threatening a large crowd of people outside the council's chambers who refused to mask or social distance at a time when there was no vaccine for COVID and everyone was feeling really panicked. All of that really scared her and the rest of the city council. And ultimately the scare tactic worked. They postponed their vote on a bill that would have banned gas in new buildings. San Luis Obispo is a pretty little college town on California's Central Coast. It's got a large agricultural community and also one of the best architecture programs in the country. At Cal Poly University downtown. Spanish mission style buildings, house craft, ice cream shops, hipster cafes and farm to table restaurants. In other words, it's not the sort of place where you might expect this kind of drama. So what the hell prompted all this? That's the story we're going to get into today. Welcome back to Drilled. I'm Amy WESTERVELT. This is part two of our three part season on the gas industry. You don't have to listen to part one plastic pipelines to understand what's happening in this part of the season, but it's worth a listen if you haven't heard it yet. We're calling part two of the new climate villains because the gas industry has really kicked into high gear with its efforts to block climate policy. Today, the story of what that opposition looked like in one town.

Unidentified [00:03:21] Stay with us.

Speaker 2 [00:03:33] Back in 2016, Heidi Harmon campaigned to be San Luis Obispo mayor on a platform that included carbon neutrality goals, fossil free buildings and electric vehicle charging stations.

Speaker 3 [00:03:45] So I ran for office as mayor. With climate action as one of my main priorities.

Speaker 2 [00:03:50] Some folks told Heidi she'd never win with such a radical platform, but she's not really the type to play politics. A single mom who worked as a maid and homeschooled her kids, Harmon is used to hard work, and she's never been afraid to stand out from the pack. Her signature silver hair is almost always adorned with a red or white flour, and her bright blue eyes are usually sparkling behind a pair of large statement black rimmed glasses. She's been who she is, saying exactly what she thinks for decades. And that wasn't going to change for a campaign.

Speaker 3 [00:04:25] You know, I always felt like it's about the next generation, not the next election. And if that means that I don't get elected, then so be it.

Speaker 2 [00:04:33] But she did get elected. And as soon as she took office, Harmon started to put forth exactly the sorts of policies she'd promised in her campaign.

Speaker 3 [00:04:43] When I had just got elected, all these people wanted to meet with me. Okay. Like I know, I don't know. Make sure I'm just meeting with everybody.

Speaker 2 [00:04:49] On that long list of people wanting to meet with Harmon early on was a public relations guy who worked with the gas industry.

Speaker 3 [00:04:57] So I meet with this guy from I think it was from Socalgas, and he was trying to tell me about something he was calling. I forget now. Green. Maybe. Renewable, Renewable natural gas. Natural gas.

Speaker 4 [00:05:10] Yeah, I mean, renewable natural gas. It's a brilliant marketing term that the gas industry has created.

Speaker 2 [00:05:20] This is Charlie Spatz from the Energy Policy Institute. He's been digging into the gas guys for years.

Speaker 4 [00:05:27] And essentially they're referring to biomethane. So the capture of methane from landfills or sewage plants. Kapos can find agricultural feeding operations.

Speaker 2 [00:05:42] And sure, why not capture those emissions? But to hear the industry talk, you'd think this was the cleanest energy going right up there with solar or wind, and that there's enough of it to replace fossil gas altogether. Here's a little explainer video put out by SoCal Gas, the gas utility in Harman's region.

Speaker 5 [00:06:02] California is dedicated to improving air quality and the environment, and Socalgas is a partner in that vision by supporting the development and use of renewable energy. When many people think of renewable energy, they think of solar, wind and hydropower. That's right. Renewable natural gas or orange, is also a clean source of energy. Our energy is reliable. It's always available. Unlike solar and wind, which are intermittent and dependent upon the weather and time of day with limited storage capability.

Speaker 2 [00:06:43] There's a lot going on here. And I'm not just talking about the girlish giggles and cow moves. So first off, R&D is not an apples to apples comparison to solar. The industry presents it as not just a zero emissions option, but actually a negative emissions option, because according to them, you capture the methane, turn it into gas, and voila, you've avoided all those methane emissions, except they've left out the part where you transport and then burn that fuel emitting various greenhouse gases along the way. But anyway, look over here at how reliable R&D is. In fact, the intermittency and storage issues associated with renewables like solar and wind have largely been addressed in recent years. So this ad is misleading on that front, too. This is the sort of solution that the most recent IPCC report called mal adaptation. It's something that's supposed to reduce emissions but actually locks in fossil fuel use or causes some other type of environmental problem. In this case, the many water, soil and air quality issues associated with industrial agriculture. Not that solar and wind are perfect, mind you, they're just not as unreliable and terrible as Socalgas would like you to believe. Gas companies are into renewable natural gas because it allows them to tell a good green story while locking in gas infrastructure. But by even the most optimistic estimate, our energy could only cover about 16% of current gas use. The rest would be supplied by the usual fossil gas. At any rate, back in 2016, when Harmon first took office as mayor of San Luis Obispo, Socalgas was pretty high on its own orange supply.

Speaker 3 [00:08:31] And me not knowing any better. Was I was confused for multiple reasons because this immediately sounded like baloney.

Speaker 2 [00:08:41] Harman didn't bother to sugarcoat her response to the gas industry guy because.

Speaker 3 [00:08:46] I just turned to him and said, Oh, I think actually we're going to be moving away from natural gas altogether and not using it at all. And I had no idea because, you know, like in my world, that seems obvious, You know what I mean? Like, of course we're not doing natural gas. No. Are you going to be on that? Oh, we don't need the renewable because we're not going to be doing any type of it whatsoever. And and his face went from like public relations face to like I like the muscles in his face. You could see he was trying to hold it together, but also had not understood that this time had actually already come. I don't think you know, I think they must have been thinking, oh, we're going to trick him with this renewable, whatever the heck, and that will stop these changes from happening.

Speaker 2 [00:09:36] The gas industry really didn't seem to be expecting this at that time. For decades, their product had been thought of as a climate solution, delivering major reductions in CO2 emissions. And that's true. But the problem is CO2 isn't the only greenhouse gas. As scientists discovered more about the methane emissions associated with gas and the chemicals associated with fracking. The tie began to turn. Now big changes were looming. Harman started making good on her climate action campaign promises in her first years in office.

Speaker 3 [00:10:11] And so we had made the most ambitious carbon neutrality goal of any city at the United States at that time, which was 2035. And we've happily been surpassed since that time. And we'd committed to Community choice energy and we'd done a lot of things. And so we're really looking at the landscape of what needed to happen next. And decarbonization and electrification is really becoming really well understood is one of the main ways to get us to less fossil fuels.

Speaker 2 [00:10:38] Then in 2019, the city of Berkeley, California, became the first U.S. city to pass what's called a gas ban. Sounds scary, but what it actually means is a policy that big's energy transition into the building sector. It basically says we're not going to connect any new buildings to gas lines because once you wire a building for gas, your fuel options are pretty limited to, well, gas, maybe hydrogen. But if you wire a building for electric, you've got a pretty broad portfolio of choices, including renewable sources of electricity. So Harman learned about this gas ban in Berkeley and wanted to do the same in San Luis Obispo, which of course, was also the local gas industry's nightmare coming true. The band started to make its way toward approval and then boom, COVID hits. In April 2020, the city Council was set to vote on it. When Harmon got that letter threatening a protest slash COVID superspreader event.

Speaker 3 [00:11:41] You can imagine the overwhelm of dealing with the pandemic with and not being sure what was going to happen next and then having this threatening letter.

Speaker 2 [00:11:50] Harmon decided to press pause to avoid the public health consequences of a protest. The gas ban came up for consideration again, and the opposition was still fierce. It included front groups from the gas industry who put out attack ads like this one from a group called the Consumer Energy Alliance, which claims to be a citizen group but is run out of H. BW Resources, an industry lobbying firm.

Speaker 1 [00:12:17] Have you heard about the blow? The Berkeley, California City Council has landed on consumer choice. The city has banned natural gas in all new low rise residential buildings. That means the new Richie Rich of Berkeley will have to use an electric stovetop to cook their meals. No natural gas, water heaters, furnaces, closed dryers or barbecue grills either.

Speaker 2 [00:12:41] That barbecue grills one is a stretch. Most gas grills have their own refillable gas tank. You have to be pretty serious about your barbecue grill to pipe gas to it. Nothing. It doesn't happen, but it's not exactly a common scenario, as you heard at the beginning of this story. The Utility Workers Union of America, which represents local utility workers in California, is a major player opposing the gas ban. Since Harman considers herself pro-labor, she says it was a weird feeling for her to be at odds with the union and getting threatening letters from a union boss.

Speaker 3 [00:13:20] So there was a lot of money spent on social media and also robocalls, you know, pushing the classic line that the fossil fuel industry always uses around jobs, you know, which is one that I'm very sensitive to. You know, I brought the first project labor agreement, which is a union support policy in this county's history to our city. I'm a huge Labor supporter, so it's a really interesting tension to be in. And when you're in a leadership position, wanting to support workers and also wanting to move to a fossil fuel free world, So people are sensitive to that claim around jobs.

Speaker 2 [00:13:56] The campaign to oppose the gas ban relied on another major talking point.

Speaker 3 [00:14:01] Choice being taken away. And, you know, Americans are very sensitive to that. So really trying to tell a story about, you know, government coming in to take away your choice about things.

Speaker 2 [00:14:12] Part of the opposition's strategy involved harassing Harmon directly, too. She got a lot of nasty voicemails like this one.

Speaker 3 [00:14:22] Miss Heidi Herman, I highly encourage you to discourage this ban on natural gas because it is a scourge on the whole community. You are raping the people that have the least amount of money. You are taking things away from people no matter what. This is not a good thing. Reconsider your years for being shale gas. Thank you.

Speaker 2 [00:14:55] Some of the attacks against her got personal, too, taking on her physical appearance down to her silver hair and trademark flower pen.

Speaker 3 [00:15:03] At a city council meeting after it was clear that things that were not going to go in their direction, the president of the union himself said, I'm not resting until that fucking red flower, Cruella de vil [Unrecognized] and all those other fucking bitches are voted off that fucking council.

Speaker 2 [00:15:22] Hoffman said this to a roomful of utility and union supporters following the council's vote to move forward with its decarbonization policy. That was a few months before he sent the letter threatening an intentionally unsafe protest if they moved forward with a gas ban.

Speaker 3 [00:15:38] I just think of what's going on in a wider context with the fossil fuel industry is really this toxic masculinity just percolating throughout it and what is called maybe petro masculinity, Right? As soon as I heard that word, I just thought this is exactly, on some level, a deep thread of what's going on in general and the bullying. So is it largely men in the union really threatening the largely predominantly female city council in a way that, quite frankly, you know, had. There is a violence to the culture that they brought. And you can see it here in their letter, you know, and then so they can see, though, that I was committed to this, you know, and on some level, I think that's one of the gifts of being in this potential penultimate moment of human existence. You know, I've got kids, so you're going to busload in hundreds of scary guys with potentially a disease and violence in mind. Okay. Because my kids lives are already at stake. So bring it on. I mean, I don't want them to do that, obviously, but I'm not going to let that intimidate me into not doing what's right to save my kids lives on some level, which is how it feels to me and on some level is how it is.

Speaker 2 [00:17:01] Despite all this, the insults and the attack ads On July 10th, 2020, Herman and the San Luis Obispo City Council did pass a modified version of the gas ban. Rather than banning gas in new buildings altogether, it made it more expensive and incentivized electrification. In 2022, the city council reintroduced the idea of an all out ban. So far, they haven't voted on that proposal yet. Looking back on all she endured along the way.

Speaker 3 [00:17:33] I just want to state for the record a couple of things. One, I was voted in the next election by a landslide. And quite frankly, there's really nothing more complimentary than to be called a [Unrecognized] because they're sending stronger and more life affirming. And everybody, as you know, is about it. So thank you. I guess I'd have to say.

Speaker 2 [00:17:53] San Luis Obispo was the first city in SoCal Gas's territory to pass a ban, but it definitely wasn't the last. Pretty soon the utility was playing whack a mole with gas bans all over Southern California. By the end of 2020, there were more than 50 gas bans in California alone. Now they're in Washington, New York, Massachusetts, even Texas, according to Charlie Spatz with the Energy Policy Institute. The rapid growth and mobilization of the Electrify Everything movement, this push over the past few years to electrify buildings and transportation as part of a transition away from fossil fuels really caught the gas industry off guard at first, especially Socalgas in.

Speaker 4 [00:18:35] Southern California, a gas company or SoCal Gas, which is often trying to market itself as a green and climate champion. And all of a sudden that they are now the new coal, and that is something they're still getting used to. And I think that's that's a shared experience throughout the gas utility industry that all of a sudden they are public enemy number one. They're now big coal. They are passing preemption legislation throughout the United States. They are a climate villain. And this is a new experience for many of those lobbyists.

Speaker 2 [00:19:15] But it didn't take them long to adapt. As of early 2022, 19 states have passed preemptive laws banning gas bans. Yeah, bans on bans. That aggressive strategy Harmon experienced firsthand has only intensified. Next time, I'll look at how the industry has adapted to its new role as a climate villain.

Speaker 3 [00:19:44] We're trying to beat counties and localities from passing bans that then force the hand of governors and state legislators to pass something nationwide. So we've got two wins on that so far, which is great news. The legislation has been introduced in several other states, including Georgia, Missouri, Oklahoma and Kansas.

Unidentified [00:20:05] Back for that. Drilled is an.

Speaker 2 [00:20:13] Original Critical Frequency production and producer is Jules Bradlee. Our editor for this season is Jude JOFFE-BLOCK. Sound design, mixing, mastering and original music throughout this episode, including our new theme song by Peter Duff. Our fact checker is Wu-Tang Yan. Our First Amendment attorney is James Whitman of the First Amendment Project. Our artwork is drawn by Matt Fleming. And of course, the show is recorded and created by me, Amy WESTERVELT. You can follow us on Twitter at We Are Drilled. For me, Amy WESTERVELT, big thanks to our new Patreon supporters. We're now at 300 supporters and so awesome. Thanks, you guys. Particularly thanks to Quinn, Emmett, David Urban Binder, Frank Burge. Jessie Worker. JJ Star. Michael Constantino. Steven Kretzmann. Mimi 101 Clair Kelly, Jesse, Greg, Nathan, Paul Weidenfeld, Abigail Room and Julie Gutmann is. Thanks very much. We appreciate the support. If you would like to support more reporting on climate accountability, you can do that at Patreon dot com slash Drilled or you can sign up to have bonus episodes and content delivered straight to your inbox via Drilled podcast dot com. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week.