Community Environmental Council (CEC) — No new drilling: Why energy policy is really about power

Sigrid Wright and Joan Hartmann unpack why oil isn’t security — and what real energy leadership looks like for California and the nation.

President Trump is once again pushing to expand offshore oil and gas drilling off California’s coast — and calling it “national security.”

In a new op-ed, CEC’s CEO Sigrid Wright and Santa Barbara County Supervisor Joan Hartmann explain why this claim doesn’t hold up — and what’s truly at stake for California’s coast, our communities, and the country’s future.

“Trump’s Energy Policy Isn’t About Security. It’s About Power — and It’s Costing America the Future,” shows how doubling down on fossil fuels isn’t about protecting people — it’s about protecting an outdated and unequal power structure, while communities bear the risks.

Key takeaways:

• Offshore drilling and expanded extraction on public lands threaten California’s coast, economy, and climate stability

• Fossil fuel dependence concentrates wealth and political power while imposing public health and environmental costs

• Distributed clean energy strengthens communities, resilience, and democratic control

• Slowing renewable energy hands the industries of the future — jobs, manufacturing, and innovation — to other countries

• Real national security protects people, not pipelines

California has shown there’s a better path — one where clean energy, economic strength, and community resilience grow together. But federal backsliding makes local leadership more important than ever.

If you value CEC’s work to protect our coast, accelerate clean energy, and ensure power — economic, political, and electrical — flows to communities, we invite you to support this work with a contribution.

Thank you for standing with us — for our coast, our climate, and a future built on people power, not petropower.