Some of Taft’s 7,000 residents are anticipating a comeback for the petroleum industry in California – Copyright AFP Robyn Beck<\/p>\n
Romain FONSEGRIVES<\/p>\n
Every five years, the fading US town of Taft puts on a days-long \u201cOildorado\u201d festival to celebrate its glory days at the center of California\u2019s black gold rush.<\/p>\n
Thousands flock to its parade of cowboys on horseback, antique cars and floats featuring oil pumps \u2014 a hat tip to the Wild West of yore.<\/p>\n
This year, nine months into Donald Trump\u2019s second term, the tone has shifted from reminiscence to renaissance.<\/p>\n
Shrugging off climate change concerns, the US president has embraced fossil fuels with a stated goal of \u201cunleashing American energy\u201d and removing \u201cimpediments\u201d to domestic energy production.<\/p>\n
Some of Taft\u2019s 7,000 residents are anticipating a comeback for the petroleum industry in California, which has pledged to abandon oil drilling by 2045 to meet its climate goals.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m 100 percent satisfied with President Trump,\u201d Buddy Binkley told AFP, a minority view in a heavily Democratic state. \u201cAnd as for the state of California, I think he\u2019s putting a nice pressure on them to hopefully turn around their prejudice against oil.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 64-year-old retired maintenance supervisor with oil company Chevron sported a red cap with the words \u201cMake Oil Great Again,\u201d a play on Trump\u2019s MAGA motto and a slogan featured on several parade floats.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe oil industry in California is suffering due to political reasons,\u201d Binkley said. But with Trump in power, \u201cI think it may go back the way it was.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 \u2018Great hopes\u2019 \u2013<\/p>\n
Located about 200 kilometers (120 miles) north of Los Angeles, Taft was founded in 1910 atop California\u2019s most extensive oil field.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Today, Kern County \u2014 where Taft is located \u2014 contributes more than 70 percent of California\u2019s total oil production. Its rural landscape is dotted with thousands of oil pumps.<\/p>\n
A giant wooden oil derrick serves as a central landmark in Taft, which finances its schools, fire department and police force with oil revenues.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n
Festival-goers can compete for the title of best welder, crane operator or backhoe loader \u2014 or be crowned the \u201cOildorado Queen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite its pageantry and pride, the town is in decline.<\/p>\n
California oil production has been waning since the 1980s and has more recently been pinched by the push for cleaner forms of energy. Some of the town\u2019s residents have moved to Texas, where drilling is less regulated.<\/p>\n
Many in Taft are delighted that Trump has pulled out of the Paris climate accord and removed obstacles to drilling on federal lands while handing out billions in tax breaks for the oil industry.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have great hopes,\u201d said Dave Noerr, Taft\u2019s mayor. \u201cWe have all the raw materials. We had the wrong direction, now we have leadership that is going to unleash the possibilities.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 \u2018Stuck in the past\u2019 \u2013<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s administration has slashed federal funding for renewable energy and climate science, and he wants to strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Like the president, Noerr is a skeptic of \u201cquote, unquote, climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to question the narrative, and we need to update those things with the existing science,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Yet California is increasingly vulnerable to the extreme weather produced by climate change. Earlier this year, 31 people in the Los Angeles area died in fires spread by hurricane-force gusts of 160 km\/h (100 miles per hour).\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIf everyone around the world behaved like the US, the world would be on pace for four degrees centigrade of global warming by 2100,\u201d said Paasha Mahdavi, a political scientist specializing in environmental policy at the University of California, Santa Barbara.<\/p>\n
Agriculture remains the top employer in Kern County, and \u201cwould be dramatically affected by increased incidence of drought, and unprecedented heat waves that are already hitting the region,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
That worries Taylor Pritchett, a 31-year-old dog groomer in Taft who frets about air pollution in the area.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I were to have a child, I wouldn\u2019t want to raise them in Kern County,\u201d she said. \u201cI would like to go somewhere cleaner.\u201d<\/p>\n
She believes that \u201cwe need to get away from fossil fuels.\u201d But in Taft, she acknowledged, \u201cwe\u2019re stuck in the past a little bit, you know, like, very unwilling to change.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some of Taft’s 7,000 residents are anticipating a comeback for the petroleum industry in California – Copyright AFP…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13556,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,643,8390,13,1181],"class_list":{"0":"post-13555","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-california-headlines","10":"tag-california-news","11":"tag-environment","12":"tag-oil","13":"tag-politics","14":"tag-us"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}