Andrew Christie

How will the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary provide economic benefits and environmental protections to the Central Coast? Let us count the ways. A 2014 study of the potential economic impacts of a national marine sanctuary off the Central Coast (conducted by Jason Scorse, director of Center for the Blue Economy at the Monterey Institute […]

I’m writing this the day after the oil spill off the coast of Orange County hit the news. By the time you read this, I doubt I’ll be the only one to have drawn a straight line between what just happened off Orange County and what happened two days earlier at the Santa Barbara County […]

The 30 by 30 plan is a big deal. The Biden administration’s recognition of the need to conserve 30 percent of the nation’s natural lands by 2030 to head off mass extinction and the worst effects of climate change entails a big plan, and it is an axiom of Newtonian political law that the announcement […]

Between an explosive sting video starring a senior lobbyist and a shareholders meeting that saw three seats on their board going to climate activists, ExxonMobil’s been having a rough year. It couldn’t happen to a nicer oil company. But it hasn’t slowed their roll on the Central Coast. It’s been almost a year since I […]

For the past year, The Dunes Alliance (American Woodland Conservancy, Surfrider San Luis Obispo, Sierra Club’s Santa Lucia Chapter, Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of Oso Flaco Lake, Morro Coast Audubon, ECOSLO, San Luis Obispo Coastkeeper, Oceano Beach Community Association, Defenders of Wildlife, and the Northern Chumash Tribal Council) have been asking Gov. Gavin Newsom […]

But Katie Davis, chair of Sierra Club’s Los Padres Chapter (Santa Barbara and Ventura counties), recently described what it was like to live through the Refugio Beach oil spill five years ago: “You can’t completely clean up an offshore oil spill. The oil sinks into the marine environment, damaging fragile underwater ecosystems, killing or contaminating […]

For some time now, the Sierra Club, in concert with environmental groups in SLO and Santa Barbara counties, has been supporting the Chumash in advocating for the designation of a Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary off the Central Coast. Per the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “The primary objective of a sanctuary is to protect […]

A political candidate has a lot of latitude when speaking in general terms about what he’s going to do in the future or cultivating an image as a political moderate and all around nice guy who is in favor of mom, apple pie, and multiple cars and/or chickens in pots and/or garages. But when he […]

What is one to make of the current efforts in Morro Bay and Grover Beach to advance a political agenda based on a lie? The majority of the Morro Bay City Council is trying to do the right thing. It has decided that it will not attempt to build a sewer plant in a flood […]