After a genuinely epic meeting overflowing with heartfelt testimony and even more heartfelt emotion from all sides of the oil issue, the Santa Barbara County supervisors voted 3-2 to start the process of pulling the plug on onshore oil industry, an industry with roots in Santa Barbara dating back close to 150 years.
On one side was the issue of climate change, expressed with naked existential urgency by many speakers but perhaps most sweepingly by Supervisor Joan Hartmann. On the other side, were the scores of oil company workers and their families, giving a human face to an industry otherwise represented in government meetings by attorneys paid $700 an hour or more.
Matching Hartmann’s ferocious passion was Supervisor Bob Nelson, who recounted growing up the child of a single mom who worked in the oil industry. The oil industry was not his donor base, Nelson stressed; its workers were his constituents and friends, and he was going to fight as hard for them as supervisors Hartmann, Laura Capps, and Roy Lee were going to fight to phase them out of business…