California has the toughest global warming standards in the country, requiring polluters to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions much more than pending Federal legislation. Remarkably, this legislation was backed and signed by Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger after a campaign by dozens of environmental groups, including CREDO Action.
While imperfect, this legislation would address global warming more swiftly than anything being considered in Congress. Indeed, the standards are so tough that many Senators backed by polluting interests have made preemption of just this kind of innovative state rules a precondition for obtaining their support for weaker national legislation.
Valero Energy, a large Texas-based oil company with fifteen refineries and nearly 6000 retail gasoline stations around the country, is extremely unhappy about California's path breaking rules. So unhappy, in fact, that they are the primary financial backers of an initiative that would kill California's standards.
Anyone who buys gasoline from Valero, either from its Valero or Beacon stations, is helping to fund this audacious attack on global warming standards. Surely no environmentalist would want to buy gasoline from Valero and any independent-thinking Californian should resent this under the radar attack from Texas (and, as a Californian who grew up in Texas and buys gasoline, I triply resent it!).
There is one easy solution - don't buy Valero gasoline and tell them why. We have made it easy to join the boycott at www.boycottvalero.com.
CREDO has joined with the Courage Campaign to send a message to Valero to leave our global warming standards alone. Rather than undermining progress, Valero should be cleaning up its own dirty act. But Valero believes that it will be cheaper to deceive California voters than to slow its global warming damage.
Valero will not stop so long as misleading Californians is the profitable thing to do. But why should we help pay for Valero's political activities that undermine our values and our health?