(bright music) - There's no denying that fossil fuels impact our day-to-day lives, cars, plastic oil, check, check, check.

So as the industry shifts to renewable energy, there's more and more need to make sure that we don't leave people behind in the process.

(bright music) (wind whooshing) In this episode, we're going to speak with Norman Rogers, the second vice President of the United Steelworkers Local 675, about how environmental activists and fossil fuel workers can find common ground in a changing climate.

(bright music) (wind whooshing) The American oil industry began in 1859 on a major scale, but it what blew my mind to hear that petroleum had been used since ancient civilization times for waterproofing and construction.

The 19th century was a period of great change.

The iron and steel industry forged new construction materials.

The railroads connected the country, and discovery of oil provided a new source of fuel.

In a short period of time, more than 1,500 oil companies were chartered and oil became the dominant fuel of the 20th century, an integral part of the American economy too.

Fast forward to today and the United States is producing more oil than any country in history.

This comes at a challenging time when leading nations have agreed to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, so, meaning the US needs to make a super-swift transition to renewable energy.

(bright music) (wind whooshing) We spoke with Mr. Rogers, Norman Rogers, a lifelong trade worker and leader, to hear how best we can support California's climate goals, his advice, get fossil fuel workers new jobs.

(bright music) - As we phase in renewables, we're being phased out of what we're doing.

We also need to phase in supports and safeguards for ourselves as employees and at a larger sense as well for the community, because as we lose our jobs, then that's the tumble down effect where public services start to suffer because of tax revenue.

So it's been a hell of a party for refining, oil refining in the United States over the last 150 years, and everybody's benefited from it, whether you are a fan of it or a opponent to it, everyone's benefited from tennis shoes to aspirin to polyester, synthetic tires, all these other things outside of just fossil fuels.

So the just transition to me started out being that workers in these areas have been doing the right thing for over a hundred years now, and the right thing had been going to work and earning money to keep a roof over your head and food on the table.

Now we're being told the right thing is for you to lose your job out of necessity for the issues that are taking place in the environment.

So where do we go?

What do we do?

So just transition was to help with that move from where we've been to where we need to go, and that no one is negatively impacted from that.

However, now the term has been co-opted and worker-led transition is more, fits with me better.

And even the term equitable transition has a bit more meaning to it than just transition.

And I would even put forward the idea of accurate transition because all the talk has been about fossil fuels, but all the other things that come out of a barrel of oil aren't being captured in the current discussion.

So, as I mentioned, plastics, synthetic rubber, paint, all those items, until we have that full discussion about everything that needs to be looked at as far as petroleum goes, we're not going to have a fully fledged solution because we're only addressing part of the bigger issue.

- Norman explains what happens when a rapid shift to renewables fails to take into account support for fossil fuel workers.

(wind softly whooshing) - A lot of the learnings that we're using and that are guiding us towards fixes stem from what happened here in 2020.

The Marathon Martinez Refinery in Northern California, things were already slow, demand had been slowed up by COVID, so they reached a decision that they were going to make the transition to renewable diesel.

They were no longer going to be a full fledged refinery, and by that I mean they were going to stop making jet fuel, stop making gasoline, and stop making ultra-low sulfur diesel.

They were going to switch over and use fats, oil and greases as a feed stock and make renewable diesel.

With that, they let 350 people go.

(somber music) What we found out was those folks that lost their jobs, primarily the operators, folks that did maintenance that were welders, pipe fitters, they had an easier time of moving on other employment, but the operators had a very difficult time because it's not fully understood in the rest of the employment world what a refinery operator does.

But otherwise, those folks went out into the job market.

In the end, it's all about employment.

It's all about jobs.

So we can do training left and right, it doesn't matter if we train them if there aren't jobs there.

So it's finding out what the jobs are, where the jobs are, and matching those two things up.

- It's important to recognize the people and families whose livelihoods have been a part of the extraction economy for centuries.

Make sure that they're a part of the conversation.

- 'Cause in the end, all of this boils down to getting people into high-paying jobs, good pay, parity in pay and benefits with what they've had.

So we don't know what that's going to be.

So it's learning about hydrogen, it's learning about battery storage, it's learning about microgrids, it's learning about waves, using waves as an energy source, learning about the new industries, where that's going to be, where they'll be placed, where our folks fit in, where everybody fits in.

So the role of collaboration, unity, solidarity, moving forward, this addresses the piece where I talked about just transition and moving away from that term and looking at worker-led transition.

We all need to have one another's back about what's coming next.

I come to the realization, I believe there's a path forward.

I believe there's always a path forward where everybody can join in.

Sometimes we're able to join in and we're standing shoulder to shoulder, and we're eight people wide and moving forward.

Sometimes we're able to join in, but we're heel to toe, because that's the one thing we're able to agree on.

There's just a lot of wonderful people that are working towards the same thing, and you don't know they're out there, but then they pop up and they go, oh, good, good, good, good, and that they're people you're glad to be allied with.

- There is no doubt that we are at a pivotal moment in our nation's history.

After centuries of fossil fuel extraction, there is need for rapid change so we avoid the worst of global warming.

Now more than ever it is essential that we forge common ground between environmentalists and fossil fuel workers.

So we prioritize people and working together.

While we don't know what the road ahead looks like, thanks to people like Norman, we'll work together and make sure that everybody has a place in this movement.

Until next time, happy exploring.

(gentle music) (bright music)