Clay Collins: Fossil fuels are polluters. The supply of them is finite. And yet they still run a lot of the world as the need for power, in all its forms, grows. To some, fossil fuels are a key source of American strength and independence.
Stories around such fuels might be about regulation or competition, about technology and innovation, about tradeoffs and transitions. There are often stories in which geography looks like destiny. Think Texas and oil fields, West Virginia and coal mines. The politics around fossil fuels also tend to be predictable. But not always.
Simon Montlake, a senior staff writer with the Monitor, and Alfredo Sosa, our director of photography, went to Southern California recently, and to a town called Taft. The place is a relative rarity in a state that owns solar: it’s in a SoCal county whose once, and possibly future, lifeblood is … oil.
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Collins: This is “Why We Wrote This.” I’m Clay Collins. Simon, a return guest, joins me today to talk about his reporting. Welcome back to the show.
Simon Montlake: Nice to be with you again.
Collins: So, Simon, energy isn’t your beat, strictly speaking. You’ve been on [this show] and talked about a lot of topics – including folk music. But it strikes me that your story this time is really broader than [energy], it’s about a thought shift. Back in September, California Governor Gavin Newsom, “a climate hawk who had previously urged California to move beyond oil,” as you write, signed a Democratic-written bill to allow more oil and gas drilling in Kern County, where Taft sits.
Is this a near-term-pivot in California, kind of “moving the curve” as one source told you, because renewables need investment and time to scale? Or is this sort of a philosophical evolution?
Montlake: I think it’s a reality check. I mean, we forget California is built on oil. I mean, the highways, the lifestyle, the distances, it’s all around the car. And obviously when you look at electric vehicles and hybrid vehicles, California is ahead of the country. You know, something like one electric vehicle … for every 10 gasoline-powered cars on the highways in California. And you know, the national average is more like one to 20. So in that sense, there is a transition happening there, and there is, as you note, solar and wind and other forms of energy.
But that still leaves millions of cars, making many, many journeys, and they need gasoline. It’s a question about, you know, affordability, about profit. And so really what you are seeing is that California needs to produce more of its own oil to feed its consumers. Gavin Newsom has had to retreat, really, and that has not been popular with everyone within his political coalition, of course. But Democrats have come [in] behind this, and that’s what happened in September.
Collins: There’s a global dynamic that mirrors this to some degree. China and others are heavily betting on renewables and EVs. China’s leading the world on both of those fronts, actually. And, obviously, eventually market forces will hold sway, but this is kind of all about aspirations versus reality, and who’s trying to hedge and who will eventually “win.”
You reported from California on a local understanding of the need to evolve on energy, but also the barriers. One of your sources told you “We embraced renewables because of the jobs and the revenues, not the politics of climate change. One catch is that the economic benefits don’t match what oil offers.”
Now I assume this is partly about what other petroleum-based products bring [too]. But that’s basically pragmatism, isn’t it?
Montlake: I mean, the county where Taft lies, which is … Bakersfield would be the county seat. And that’s where we were for some of the reporting. I mean, that’s an enormous county, and it is the biggest oil-producing county in California. And California’s still in the Top 10 of oil-producing states. A century ago it was a world leader in producing oil. But within that state, they’ve also got solar and wind, and they’re also working on other, you know, hydrogen-based technologies as well. So their argument is that … “we are driving California, we are where the energy comes from. And we are not about to give up on the oil and gas. We are, what they call, making an evolution to these other forms of energy.” But they would [also] say: “Look, you still need our oil and gas, and you’ve made it very hard for us to drill and transport and make it profitable. And regulations need to change.”
So, you know, we went to Taft because that’s where it’s happening. And as you pointed out earlier, when people think of oil, they think of Texas. And actually, if you close your eyes and imagine Southern California, I don’t think you would be seeing what we saw in Taft. You wouldn’t be seeing dusty, tawny hills, low hills with, um, nodding donkey derricks up and down. Barely any greenery. Very dry. Quite desolate. With some agriculture in there as well. But I mean, this is sort of the Texas of California, if you will. If you’re in California and you’re from Southern California, or you’re driving, you’re heading north, it’s equivalent to fly-through country, “fly-over” country. There’s sort of a big divide there. But this is where the energy comes from. And that’s sort of the political tension, right? Which is, you may aspire to have a different energy system, a different economy, but for now the world does run on fossil fuels.
Collins: I was picturing [the I-5 freeway] as you were talking, that dead straight road north of Los Angeles that runs through flats before it gets to central California and, and more of the breadbasket.
I want to detour a bit more to your process. You talked about that being the logical place, because of the “nodding donkeys.” You also said it at an event called “Oildorado,” a festival around oil. And I am assuming that once you identified that as an event, that became a big factor in setting the story there.
Montlake: Absolutely. I spoke to the mayor of Taft, Dave Noerr, and this was while I was developing the story and actually still trying to figure out where to go. I mean, going to Texas and North Dakota seemed pretty obvious, but I was interested in what was happening in California, and I’d kept up with some of the events there. And, I got hold of him and he was telling me his point of view and how he feels about the new legislation.
And he said, “Oh, and you know, tomorrow we start our celebration.” I said, “What’s the event?” And he told me and he said, “This is a 10-day event. And we hold it every five years.” So, I said, “Well, thanks very much. Can I get back to you? Because I was talking about coming to visit in a few weeks’ time or later this month, but I think we should change our plan.” So that’s how I moved the schedule up, and made sure that we got there before the festival ended. Luckily, it was a 10-day festival and the final weekend is the culmination. It was the parade. The mayor had a lunch for business elites and donors. And then you had the oil field skills. You had a racetrack. There was a lot going on that final weekend.
Collins: I think you said there was a welding, pipe-welding event as part of the festivities there.
Montlake: Yes. And it was done in sort of mid-afternoon heat, you know, out there with sparks flying and welders’ glasses. And uh, yeah, that was very interesting to see them taking apart the pipes, putting ’em together. Eight or nine competitors. And one was a woman, which was quite unusual in that setting.
Collins: So it’s a story- and photo-rich environment. And when we talked to you after your reporting on “dialogue units” in Columbus, Ohio, recently, you talked about how useful it was to be teamed up with Alfredo. And I assume this was another good collaboration. Any notes from how the dance went … in this particular case?
Montlake: It was great for the parade, because we, you know, you have a lot of people out there, and we didn’t want to stay together. We’ve threaded off into the crowd. And so basically, the idea is, well, if you meet someone really interesting visually or has something to say, then text me or call me, and we can try and get together, and make sure we have their photo or that I talked to them. We also had a great time being on the road there. I mean, Alfredo actually, earlier in his career, lived in Southern California, so he was far more familiar with it than I was.
Collins: Yeah.
So on [getting] views, and on how easy or hard this assignment was, how did both of you go about talking to really ardent stakeholders, while maintaining outward neutrality – or actual neutrality, as the case may be – including on things like the rejection of the premise of decarbonization?
Montlake: Yeah, we did come across that. There were people who just chose to, you know, not engage or talk around the question. And there were others who actually wanted to, in one case, wanted to take it on and sort of have … almost an argument with me about climate science and what the projections are. And I had to say, “Look, I’m not here as a climate science advocate. I’m just telling you this is what the majority of governments around the world believe is happening and are doing about it. And this is the position that oil and gas is within that.”
You know, the interesting argument you hear there is from people producing in California. They point out that California is importing a lot of oil, from the Middle East, from South America. And they say, “We can produce oil and gas here in a cleaner way, with less environmental impact. Why would we be importing fuels from overseas?” In addition, of course, the cost of the transportation itself adds to the carbon footprint. So they would craft an environmental argument for domestic oil production, which still doesn’t get you to the unavoidable physics of climate change, which is real and happening.
Collins: Right. I wonder, how often in your reporting on issues like this do you get into what amounts to an exchange – where someone tries to bring out your view, as opposed to just taking your questions and answering them? To turn it into a debate, in other words?
Montlake: It’s fairly common. After a while you get to know the type of person who has a certain style and is looking for that attack. Or that they, they often come with an idea that, well, [they assume] you are a national liberal journalist who has this particular view. I mean, I think about doing a story in Kentucky on a gun rights advocate who was suing the NRA and spending several days at his ranch. And, you know, right from the get go, when we arrived there and his dogs were barking, he said, “Oh, don’t worry, they only bite liberals.” So, you may start off on that track and you just have to keep coming back to, “Look, I’m here to hear your story and to make no judgments. I’m not here as an advocate for anything.”
I mean, because of my accent as well, I even had someone in California say, “Well, look at the UK. They’re making a terrible mess of energy policy. What about your policy on that?” I said, “I’m not here as a representative of the UK government.” But um, it’s a tricky one. And this topic in particular has got some entrenched views of course. And some, you know, some self-interest. If you are in the oil and gas business, and there are politicians saying that we need to move beyond you, then it’s quite natural and right that you will want to push back.
Collins: You had this quote in the story, which I thought was interesting. It echoes something you said earlier. A source told you: “You have essentially people driving longer distances and bigger cars on smaller wallets. They think differently about energy.” Again, that’s that pragmatism. Do you ever hear that about renewables in reporting elsewhere? Do you ever hear anyone say, “Here in [this] urban environment we use EVs, because they charge once….”?
Montlake: I don’t hear that. I mean, the arguments against wind farms from a visual point of view, I find that comes up. But, if you spend time in oil country. I can’t imagine they’d want to live in Bakersfield and look out over a dry, dusty patch filled with metal pumps going up and down day and night. But that is what energy production is. And we all sort of want it out of sight, out of mind, and just want to turn on the spigot, plug something in, go to the gas station, not think about how it’s produced. But, I think those arguments are quite interesting, to say: “Well, have a look at oil country. Would you rather be looking out on that, or would you rather be looking out on solar panels and turbines?
Collins: Right, right, exactly…. You gathered a lot of stories from individuals, obviously. How did you decide to give Tyler Weeks, a crane operator whose work depends on production, the last word? The last word in stories seems so important.
Montlake: I felt we needed to bring the story back to Taft and back to someone who is part of the celebration and part of the industry there. And, you know, talking to him, he was quite a thoughtful guy. We stood in the shade before he went to do his. term with the crane. And he seemed like someone who didn’t have a strong ideological position. He talked about the value of the people he worked with. He talked about people he worked with who, you know, didn’t have a good work ethic, and they left the company. And he, you know, he took great pride in the physical, manual side of what he did. And I felt that he was in that sense representative of people in the area for whom, for many generations now, that is an opportunity for them. If they’re not going to sort of college or leaving the area, that’s the industry they want to work in.
Collins: Your story adds a great deal of context to, you know, what could look like a simple [story] on the surface. How did this reporting, this particular story, influence how you feel about covering the global energy transition, and the challenge of doing that fairly?
Montlake: It reminded me that to understand the stakeholders you have to go to where they live and see how they inhabit the world and, and what they do. And I, I think it was really valuable for that, something you wouldn’t get from a climate conference or even an oil association meeting. So it just made me feel again that it’s such a huge, complex system. And that we’ve built entire worlds and economies and lifestyles around a certain form of energy extraction. Just to see that and experience it and for the people there to tell you their stories was very helpful for me.
Collins: And thanks to our listeners. Find links to the story you just heard discussed, and to all of Simon’s reporting – and to his previous appearances on this podcast – in our episode show notes at CSMonitor.com/WhyWeWroteThis. This episode was hosted by me, Clay Collins, and produced by Jingnan Peng. Mackenzie Farkus is also a producer on this show. Our sound engineers were Alyssa Britton and Tim Malone. Original music is by Noel Flatt. Produced by The Christian Science Monitor. Copyright 2025.
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