Right now, California is facing the largest natural gas leak ever recorded. With 1,200 tons of methane still pouring into the sky every day, many are naming this the worst environmental disaster since BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010.
But this problem is bigger than one leak at one facility. Fossil fuel infrastructure is outdated, under-regulated, and dangerous. This is just one leak, and it’s wreaking havoc on both Californians and our climate. We need to shut down the facility that caused this disaster -- and put an immediate moratorium on new fossil fuel development in California.
So far, the leak at Aliso Canyon Natural Gas Storage Facility has displaced over 2,000 families in Porter Ranch, a neighborhood about 25 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles. It's caused evacuations and forced two schools to close. And it's been going on for two months.
The still-uncontained leak is spewing heat-trapping gas into the air at an alarming rate. Methane, the main component of natural gas, is also a powerful greenhouse gas. Pound-for-pound, methane traps more than 86 times more heat than carbon dioxide (at least in the immediate timeframe -- which is what's most important from a climate perspective). That 1,200 tons per day -- or more than 100,000 pounds an hour -- is the equivalent of six coal-fired power plants or seven million new cars on the road.
Tell Governor Brown to shut down the Aliso Canyon facility. And give Californians a fossil fuel moratorium to address the bigger problem of fossil fuel development and infrastructure.