Don’t let the oil companies fool you. Proposition 87 will neither raise your gas price nor create a new bureaucracy. Proposition 87 is about technological advancement, cleaner air and national security. Anyone who tells you differently is most likely on the Exxon Mobile payroll. In all honesty, if Proposition 87 was going to raise gas prices, why would big oil be fighting it, since when are oil companies concerned about high gas prices? Since gas prices almost doubled in 2005? The truth is that oil companies, like all companies, are concerned about one thing – making profit. Why don’t the oil companies use some of that $78 billion in profits last year and pay the fair amount for drilling in California? It’s not like they can’t afford it, right?
All Proposition 87 does is make the oil companies pay California the same amount of fees that they pay to other states like Alaska, Louisiana and Texas. California, oddly enough, actually brings in more revenue from selling fishing and gaming licenses than it does from drilling fees. I didn’t realize big oil was so cheap. Drilling for oil and not paying the fair amount of fees is a lot like eating at a restaurant and bailing without having the common decency to tip.
But wait, Dr. Phillip Romero, former chief economist for the California Governors Office and mouth-piece for the no on 87 glee club says that 87 would shrink California’s oil supply, decrease dependence on foreign oil and result in higher gasoline prices.” Well I don’t agree with that, but the good folks at Chevron and Aera Energy agree whole-heartedly. They agree so much that they are bank-rolling almost the entire no on 87 campaign.
Chevron is contributing $30 million and Aera Energy is voicing their support to the tune of $27 million. The majority of the rest of the no on 87 campaign is being funded by other oil production-related and affiliated companies. What does all that oil money buy? Well, for starters it buys a lot of misinformation. Many of the economists that the no on 87 group trot out to predict economic ruin and higher gas prices are, for all practical purposes, on Chevrons payroll. So listen Nostradomus, why don’t you keep your predictions and your big oil paycheck to yourself? If you vote for no other reason, vote yes on 87 to stick it to the oil companies that have been sticking it to you every single time you fill your car up. A vote for 87 is a vote against the greed, the deception and the corruption of big oil.
Besides the slightly juvenile and vindictive drive to get back at the oil companies for inflating the gas price there are other – although less satisfying – reasons to vote yes on 87. For starters, the state spends more than $20 billion on lung disease, asthma and heart disease all of which can be caused, or made worse, by pollution. Last year, more than 3 million school absences reported because of asthma. Pollution has become so bad that asthma is becoming an epidemic in California. Proposition 87 would enable new, better and more environmentally friendly technologies to be built which would greatly decrease the amount of pollutants being let into the ecosystem. A vote for 87 is a vote against asthma. If you vote no on 87, you are, for all intensive purposes, voting to give kids asthma and keep them out of school. Is that what you really want to do? I didn’t think so. Sure, Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright and Al Gore want you to vote yes on 87 but that’s way better than the oil CEOs who want you to vote no. Make voting an early Christmas present to yourself and kill two birds with one stone: Vote yes on 87 and help kids with asthma and screw the oil companies. Who could want anything more?
Joey Seagraves is a junior English major and a copy editor for the Daily Forty-Niner.
