Letters: Green governors don't frack

Letters: Green governors don’t frack

From left, Mary Polak, environment minister of British Columbia, Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and California Gov. Jerry Brown sign an agreement to collectively combat climate change on Monday in San Francisco.

Nov. 2, 2013 12 AM PT

Re “Governor signs emissions pact with neighbors,” Oct. 29

Gov. Jerry Brown is right to seek new ways to address climate change, but he’s sabotaging his own efforts by greenlighting fracking for dirty oil in our state. The governor’s support for fracking is out of step with both climate science and the electorate here, where a poll this summer found that 58% of Californians want a moratorium on the practice.

To have a decent chance of avoiding the worst impacts of climate change, we have to leave most fossil fuels buried safely in the ground, as noted by the recently released report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In 2012, the International Energy Agency estimated that two-thirds of all fossil fuel reserves need to be left in the ground if we are to prevent more than 2 degrees Celsius of global warming — and even that increase would cause severe problems.

That’s why any climate pacts signed by the governor will be fatally undermined by the fracking industry’s efforts to turn California into the dirty-oil capital of the United States. Brown needs to face the facts: Climate leaders don’t frack.

Rose Braz

San Francisco

The writer is the climate campaign director for the Center for Biological Diversity.

Three U.S. states and British Columbia vow to address climate change; this follows a report last week that 70 major pension funds asked the world’s top oil, gas and coal companies to assess how addressing climate change could impact their bottom lines.

The question is whether the billions of dollars being invested in fossil fuel exploration are worth it. They aren’t. The planet has five times the fossil fuel reserves we can burn safely, according to the group 350.org. Business-as-usual is driving us deeper into a hole.

We could be off fossil fuels soon if Congress were to put a price on carbon pollution, using the market to correct current inequities. Fossil fuel companies dump waste for free, and the public pays the cost.

Good start, Gov. Brown.

Mark Tabbert

Newport Beach

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