Susan Shelley: California’s war on oil and plastic

Of all the blithering idiocy perpetrated by the California government, the obsessive regulation of grocery bags is possibly the most puzzling.

The latest U-turn on the road to grocery bag perfection is Senate Bill 1053, which bans plastic carryout bags effective Jan. 1, 2026. After that date, the law will allow you to bring your own reusable bags to the store or to pay not less than 10 cents for a paper bag that contains at least 40% post-consumer recycled material (increasing to 50% starting in 2028).

This reverses a 2014 law, Senate Bill 270, which claimed to address the problem of plastic pollution in the ocean by banning “flimsy” plastic grocery bags. It was said that these thin plastic bags clogged up recycling machines and also flew out of trash bins in the wind. Sometimes they traveled to the beaches, where they were most unwelcome.

SB 270 was supported by major grocery chains, irritated that 87 cities and counties in California had already enacted their own bans on plastic grocery bags. The California Grocers Association wrote in a letter of support for the statewide law, “California’s grocery industry faces a dizzying array” of local ordinances regulating carryout bags, a situation that was “untenable.”

Gov. Jerry Brown signed SB 270 into law on Sept. 30, 2014. It required grocery stores to provide customers only with recycled paper bags or thicker plastic bags that could be reused up to 125 times. The law directed the stores to charge customers 10 cents per bag, which was not “untenable” because the stores could keep the money.

Supermarkets and stores over 10,000 square feet were already required under the 1989 California Integrated Waste Management Act to have an At-Store Recycling Program that accepted plastic bags returned by customers, and to maintain and keep three years of records about returned bags in case CalRecycle asked for them. In 2020, the legislature let the program expire.

Judging by all this regulatory fidgeting, you might think plastic bags were the single largest contributor to plastic waste in the ocean. Not even close.

In 2018, NBC News reported on The Ocean Conservancy’s annual beach clean-up. “For 32 consecutive years, cigarette butts have been the single most collected item on the world’s beaches, with a total of more than 60 million collected over that time,” the network said. “That amounts to about one-third of all collected items and more than plastic wrappers, containers, bottle caps, eating utensils and bottles, combined.” Cigarette filters are commonly made of cellulose acetate, a form of plastic.

According to the Cigarette Butt Pollution Project (cigwaste.org), “Cigarette butt waste damages habitat, landscapes and ecosystems; ignites destructive, deadly fires; poisons wildlife and children; consumes tax dollars for cleanup and disposal; and lasts forever!”

Well, if that’s the case, why don’t we see cities, counties and the state banning the sale of cigarettes?

The answer could be: because they’re collecting a giant cash settlement from the tobacco companies.

And why are cities, counties and the state going after plastic bags, plastic utensils, plastic food containers and plastic straws?

Maybe because they’re not yet collecting a giant cash settlement from the oil companies.

“According to the author,” states the recent analysis of SB 1053 prepared for the Senate floor vote, “Eliminating plastics is about fighting big oil.”

The author listed on the legislation is Sen. Catherine Blakespear, D-Encinitas.

The quotation continues, “As our grid moves to renewable sources, oil companies are not ending their drilling. By 2050, plastics will drive half of global oil demand, more than shipping or airlines. To save the planet, our energy transition must go hand in hand with a plastics transition.”

That sounds a lot like the California government’s version of “Nice little business you got there, shame if anything should happen to it.”

If you’ve lost count of all the different ways the government of California is threatening to burn down the oil industry, and who hasn’t, here are a few highlights.

Last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom spearheaded and signed a law directing state regulators to penalize oil refiners for “excess profits.” This year, denouncing profits during price spikes, Newsom called a special session of the legislature to demand a law giving regulators the power to direct refinery maintenance schedules and control oil inventories.

In September 2023, California sued five oil companies for what the governor’s press release called “more than 50 years of deception, cover-up, and damage that have cost California taxpayers billions of dollars in health and environmental impacts.”

On Wednesday, Newsom signed three bills aimed at further restricting oil and gas operations. The Associated Press called it “the Democrat’s latest move in an ongoing battle against the fossil fuel industry.”

And last Sunday, Attorney General Rob Bonta announced a “first-of-its-kind lawsuit” against ExxonMobil, seeking “to hold one of the largest petrochemical companies in the world accountable for misleading the public on plastic’s recyclability and polluting California’s environment and communities.”

According to the attorney general’s office, in 1989 — 35 years ago —  ExxonMobil took out a 12-page editorial-style ad in Time magazine titled “The URGENT NEED TO RECYCLE.” Not only that, since 1970 — 54 years ago — the energy giant “promoted the chasing arrows symbol for plastics.” And now, ExxonMobil promotes “advanced recycling” without telling the public that the process “cannot handle large amounts of post-consumer plastic waste such as potato chip bags without risking the safety and performance of its equipment.”

Can you see where this is going?

Tobacco company executives were caught being untruthful for many years and the result was a gargantuan settlement that saw seven tobacco companies agree to pay the states an estimated $206 billion. Now, nobody’s coming after them for polluting the ocean.

If that’s what’s ahead for the oil industry, we will be paying even higher prices for gasoline, for plastic, and for everything that’s made or moved in California. But you won’t hear any  complaints from the government. A golden goose is always welcome at the beach.

Write Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on Twitter @Susan_Shelley