The Courage Campaign and CREDO Action called on the public to stop buying gasoline at Valero and Beacon stations after the oil company became the largest single contributor to the campaign to qualify the initiative.
Financial disclosure statements show that Tesoro Oil Co., San Antonio; [image-nocss] Tower Energy Group, Torrance, Calif.; and World Oil Corp., Houston, have each contributed $100,000 to help the initiative gain enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. Southern Counties Oil Co., Orange, Calif., gave an additional $50,000, and JACO Oil Co., Bakersfield, Calif., contributed $10,000, said a report by SolveClimate.com.
The ballot measure is aimed at slowing implementation of a law known as AB32, which requires that the state's greenhouse gas emissions be reduced to 1990 levels by 2020.
At issue: Whether imposing costly regulations on businesses is a smart move as the U.S. struggles to emerge from the worst recession since the 1930s, said the Associated Press. Under the measure, oil refineries, manufacturers, cement plants, utilities and other carbon polluters are to begin cutting their emissions in 2012. It is the first economy-wide cap on emissions in the nation, obligating California to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, about 30% from the levels projected if there were no climate regulations.
Oil companies have long opposed California's climate law.
Petition backers say California cannot afford to impose environmental regulations that would raise utility bills, fuel prices and cost jobs. Republican lawmakers say the law gives companies another reason to flee California or locate elsewhere when they decide to expand.
The ballot measure would suspend the law's implementation until California's unemployment rate falls below 5.5% for four consecutive quarters. The rate is now 12.5%, one of the highest in the nation. At the time the measure passed, unemployment was about 4.8%, Anita Mangels, communications director for the campaign to suspend the law, told the news outlet.
"The initiative is very simple," she said. "All it would do is adjust the timetable for the implementation of regulations under AB32 until California's dismal unemployment situation improves."
Proponents of the measure are aiming for the November ballot and need about 433,000 valid signatures to qualify, said the AOL report.
Bill Day, executive director of media relations for Valero, declined to comment on the boycott. "As is Valero's policy, we don't discuss rumors or boycotts," he told CSP Daily News.
But he disputes the description of the company as a Texas outsider trying to influence California, he told SolveClimate. "We employ 1,600 people in California in our refineries and gas stations. We own 80 gas stations and contract with many more in the state to carry our brand. We have a vested interested in the California economy." Valero has two refineries in California, one in Benicia and one in Wilmington.
SolveClimate asked Day why the company, which has invested in Texas wind farms and ethanol plants in the Midwest, was investing in an effort to get AB 32 suspended rather than putting its money into renewable energy development in California: "Valero has looked at all the data, and we're convinced that this [AB 32] is going to eliminate far more jobs than it will create. We're talking about jobs that exist right now at our refineries that provide people with good salaries, health care and other benefits that are in danger because of this measure," Day said, then added, "we're in the gasoline making business, and we make a lot of gasoline in California."
Day told AP that the initiative gives California voters a "chance to delay the detrimental economic effects" of the climate regulations.
The Courage Campaign and CREDO Action have been urging members to email Valero CEO Bill Klesse directly to tell him of their support for the boycott.
On its website, CREDO Action posted e-mail replies it said members had received from Klesse in which he maintained that carbon dioxide emissions are not air pollution, an opinion at odds with the views of the scientific community.
Backers of the initiative are seeking to make jobs the issue, not the environment. "We are not about stopping carbon reduction," Mangels said. "We are about doing it in a responsible manner that won't destroy jobs and cost billions of dollars at the worst possible time."
But Rick Jacobs, chairman of the Courage Campaign, countered that the oil company's measure would reduce jobs in the state's growing green technology sector. "Beyond the wanton destruction of our environment, Valero's initiative is a job killer for California that will stifle innovation and deepen America's dependence on foreign oil," he told AOL News. "Our message to the Texas polluters trying to disguise corporate greed as corporate citizenship is, 'don't mess with California'."
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