Hey all, I hope you’ll read my latest L.A. Times column and let me know what you think. Here’s how it starts:
>*Much of America’s collective consciousness is focused on Major League Baseball this week, as the game’s brightest lights gather in Texas for the All-Star Game. Dodgers fans — myself included — will be glued to their screens on Tuesday evening, cheering on Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman, Teoscar Hernández and Will Smith (plus injured stars Mookie Betts and Tyler Glasnow).*
>*A few days from now, the players will return to Los Angeles, where Dodgers owner Mark Walter will almost certainly keep taking ad dollars from companies whose South Bay oil refineries poison the air breathed by millions, especially people of color.*
>*The team’s official charity, meanwhile, will likely keep hosting health events for kids sponsored by one of those oil companies — a scheme to make us forget that fossil fuels are terrible for our health, even as their fumes scar our lungs and roast the planet.*
>*Sound messed up? That’s because it’s messed up.*
>*Turns out there’s an even more insidious aspect to the Dodgers’ relationship with the fossil fuel industry.*
>*The Dodgers Foundation has a sterling reputation in the community — for good reason. In the dozen years since Walter and his partners bought the team, the charity has invested more than $60 million in programs, building dozens of baseball fields serving hundreds of thousands of kids, funding college scholarships, offering health screenings, working on youth literacy and donating to organizations that supply meals and other essentials to children and families living in poverty, among other initiatives.*
>*Foundation board member Joel Reynolds told me the group is “unsurpassed in the quality of its leadership, the impact of its work, and the exceptional services it provides to children in the greater Los Angeles area,” including underserved communities.*
>*But as much as Reynolds admires the charity’s work, he thinks its leaders should stop promoting fossil fuels.*
>*That view is informed by Reynolds’ environmental activism. He’s a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council.*
>*When I asked him about the Dodgers Foundation and Phillips 66 launching a science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education program for 5,000 local kids in 2022, Reynolds acknowledged that “joint promotions with [76 gasoline] and Phillips 66 are antithetical to the overwhelming scientific evidence of the causal connection between fossil fuels and climate change.”*
>*For those of you keeping score at home, climate change is responsible for increasingly deadly heat waves — like the one that plagued the Western U.S. this month — as well as ever-more-dangerous fires, floods, storms, droughts and other weather extremes.*
>*“In my personal opinion, the promotions, if indeed they’re still ongoing, should end,” Reynolds said via email.*
Again, I hope you’ll read the rest. Happy to discuss!
1 comment
Hey all, I hope you’ll read my latest L.A. Times column and let me know what you think. Here’s how it starts:
>*Much of America’s collective consciousness is focused on Major League Baseball this week, as the game’s brightest lights gather in Texas for the All-Star Game. Dodgers fans — myself included — will be glued to their screens on Tuesday evening, cheering on Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman, Teoscar Hernández and Will Smith (plus injured stars Mookie Betts and Tyler Glasnow).*
>*A few days from now, the players will return to Los Angeles, where Dodgers owner Mark Walter will almost certainly keep taking ad dollars from companies whose South Bay oil refineries poison the air breathed by millions, especially people of color.*
>*The team’s official charity, meanwhile, will likely keep hosting health events for kids sponsored by one of those oil companies — a scheme to make us forget that fossil fuels are terrible for our health, even as their fumes scar our lungs and roast the planet.*
>*Sound messed up? That’s because it’s messed up.*
>*Dodger Stadium has long been a hotbed for fossil fuel promotion. As I* [*wrote last month*](https://www.latimes.com/environment/newsletter/2024-06-20/column-its-time-for-the-dodgers-to-stop-taking-big-oil-money-boiling-point)*, Union Oil helped finance the ballpark’s construction. Ads for Union Oil successor 76 gasoline, owned by Houston-based Phillips 66, are plastered across the stadium.*
>*Turns out there’s an even more insidious aspect to the Dodgers’ relationship with the fossil fuel industry.*
>*The Dodgers Foundation has a sterling reputation in the community — for good reason. In the dozen years since Walter and his partners bought the team, the charity has invested more than $60 million in programs, building dozens of baseball fields serving hundreds of thousands of kids, funding college scholarships, offering health screenings, working on youth literacy and donating to organizations that supply meals and other essentials to children and families living in poverty, among other initiatives.*
>*Foundation board member Joel Reynolds told me the group is “unsurpassed in the quality of its leadership, the impact of its work, and the exceptional services it provides to children in the greater Los Angeles area,” including underserved communities.*
>*But as much as Reynolds admires the charity’s work, he thinks its leaders should stop promoting fossil fuels.*
>*That view is informed by Reynolds’ environmental activism. He’s a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council.*
>*When I asked him about the Dodgers Foundation and Phillips 66 launching a science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education program for 5,000 local kids in 2022, Reynolds acknowledged that “joint promotions with [76 gasoline] and Phillips 66 are antithetical to the overwhelming scientific evidence of the causal connection between fossil fuels and climate change.”*
>*For those of you keeping score at home, climate change is responsible for increasingly deadly heat waves — like the one that plagued the Western U.S. this month — as well as ever-more-dangerous fires, floods, storms, droughts and other weather extremes.*
>*“In my personal opinion, the promotions, if indeed they’re still ongoing, should end,” Reynolds said via email.*
Again, I hope you’ll read the rest. Happy to discuss!