A city in California has voted to ban the construction of new gas stations, with far-left “green” activists hoping that this will be the beginning of a new broader trend, according to Axios.
In the city of Petaluma, California, the city council voted unanimously to proceed with a resolution that would permanently ban the construction and implementation of new gas stations. The final vote on the matter will take place next Monday. Among the proposed ban’s requirements are further restrictions on the 16 existing gas stations in the city, including forbidding them from adding new pumps.
The Democratic council member who introduced the resolution, D’Lynda Fischer, said that “the goal here is to move away from fossil fuels, and to make it easy and possible to do that.” The resolution is supported by a far-left environmental group called Stand.earth. Stand.earth’s oil and gas campaign director, Matt Krogh, applauded the resolution as “political bravery,” while claiming that “we don’t really need new gas stations.” Krogh added that “ideas like this can spread rapidly, particularly in California.”
As such, there are other similar groups across the state of California and elsewhere pushing for similar bans. Among them are the Coalition Opposing New Gas Stations, or CONGAS, which is pushing for a broader ban on new gas stations in the entirety of Sonoma County, California. A similar group called Coltura is attempting to promote similar bans in Seattle, Washington, and elsewhere across the country.
“Just as the no-smoking movement highlighted the dangers of secondhand smoke,” Coltura’s website claims, “the beyond-gasoline movement raises awareness of the health, climate, and equity impacts of gasoline and diesel use.”
Woody Hastings, the co-coordinator of CONGAS, claims that his group has already blocked at least three applications to build new gas stations in Sonoma. He says that “the 2020s…is not the time to be expanding fossil fuel infrastructure,” adding that “a lot of the stuff that happens here can be framed in the climate crisis frame, and that does motivate people here.”