Publisher’s Notebook:

BHP Billiton’s Cabrillo Port: The Ghost Ship Goes Down

BY ANNE SOBLE

The governor still drives a Hummer, but he sent the message that his environmental conversion is not just another photo opportunity when he dealt the final blow last Friday to BHP Billiton’s attempt to control the state’s energy policy, degrade its air quality and endanger regional marine life for up to 40 years. By every criterion other than the BHP bottom line, the offshore floating LNG ship dubbed Cabrillo Port was the wrong design in the wrong place at the wrong time. This quintessential case of corporate hubris should become a textbook study of how a behemoth can miscalculate the power of people to fight back when their communities are threatened. Malibu, Oxnard and their neighbors created a tidal wave that no amount of largess could quell.

Even though the media from Mississippi to Mumbai focused on entertainers, including some who were visible briefly, if at all, at events, let alone at the planning table, more than celebrity is needed to get beyond the first stage of the public policy agenda-setting process. Stars attract the spotlight, but it takes commitment and hard work to challenge an international powerhouse. It also takes heart. From the consultants to the attorneys, from the scientists to the high-schoolers, all of the testimony and every letter, e-mail, and hand-lettered sign made a difference.

We applaud the governor’s resounding veto letter to the U.S. Maritime Administration, but we do not endorse his belief that an offshore LNG facility is required to provide a bridge on the road to clean energy alternatives. Short-term crutches may be needed during the transition to renewable resources, but any project that calls for a decades-long contract, as Cabrillo Port did, holds the state hostage and slows down the creative application of real alternatives to put the planet on a sound environmental path.

It is imperative that Sacramento now undertakes a thorough assessment of the state’s energy needs free of special interest lobbying. This should be done with complete transparency to assure that the results do not become a precursor to one LNG project, or another, getting a green light while the environmental red signal is flashing.