Climate change is a concept that presents extreme juxtapositions: scorching droughts and raging forest fires alongside howling storms of increasing frequency and magnitude. Although the exact timeline is debated, it is largely understood that the world needs to transition to renewable energy sources quickly to prevent some of the worst of climate change. Coal, oil, and natural gas are all fossil fuels that cause the greenhouse effect when burned, trapping heat in our atmosphere.

However, renewable energy sources like solar and wind don’t contribute to our planet’s heating in the same way, and as an added bonus, they tap into inexhaustible sources of energy. They’re the clear winner when it comes to protecting the environment, safeguarding human communities, and ensuring resilient energy sources long into the future. 

But much of the current activism centered around ending our reliance on fossil fuels fails to look deeply enough into the issues that come with creating half-fixes that merely shift the burden of fossil fuel extraction away from home. This large-scale issue is reflected in local advocacy.

Local climate organizations like SanDiego350 (SD350) have been outspoken in advocating for a transition to renewable energy sources throughout California. In 2020, an SD350 youth organization, Youth v. Oil created a resolution that was passed by San Diego Unified School District urging Governor Gavin Newsom to end oil drilling in California. Westview’s Advocates for a Better Environment club members have promoted a similar resolution with Youth v. Oil, but this time in PUSD. The resolution comes at a time when California has a serious petroleum problem: 47.5% of the electricity produced in our state is produced by burning natural gas, and California is the seventh-largest crude oil producing state in the country. The resolution is well-intentioned but not as effective as it could be, since it fails to address systemic issues.

Unfortunately, the problems don’t end once we shut down drilling operations at home. We are still dependent on oil and natural gas, and when the supply is not being acquired domestically, we turn elsewhere. According to a report by Stand.earth and Amazon Watch, 50% of all the oil drilled and exported from the Amazon rainforest is pumped by California gas stations. While we shut down oil rigs at home, we are still contributing to deforestation and pollution on Indigenous peoples’ land elsewhere. The fight against Big Oil, then, can’t merely involve shutting down oil production, but needs to especially bolster our renewable energy infrastructure in-state.

The solar panels and wind turbines that we have now are cool, but we need to be adopting more, faster. In a report from Berkeley Lab’s Electricity Markets and Policy department, enough renewable energy projects in the United States are currently backlogged to achieve a mostly clean American power grid by 2030—a huge contrast to the country’s existing electricity, about 60% of which is produced by fossil fuels. What is one factor slowing down the transition to renewable energy? Old wires.

A lot of the power lines that link energy production sites to workplaces and homes where that energy is needed were built in the post-war boom to transfer electricity produced by coal, oil, and gas. Higher voltage power lines are needed in order for the state to be able to distribute electricity produced by wind and solar, and a lot of the time, those lines take years to be replaced. According to The Sacramento Bee, an average transmission line plan in California can take six to 10 years to go through regulatory processes. Communities often oppose the building of new transmission lines or have issues with the high costs of the projects, which are often the burden of energy customers as transmission policy is contested. The result is a slow process of updating the electricity infrastructure we require to transition to renewables.

Although we need to end oil drilling in California, our power won’t be truly green until antiquated regulational processes are updated. Once our infrastructure is modernized and extended to support the ambitious renewable energy projects that developers are capable of, we can reap the benefits of ending oil and natural gas extraction in our state.