Commentary: Activists, celebrities urge Dodgers to cut oil advertisers

What do Emmy Award-winning actress Kyra Sedgwick, Rainforest Action Network, former Doors drummer John Densmore, noted environmental activist Bill McKibben and “Anchorman” director Adam McKay’s Yellow Dot Studios have in common?

They all want the Los Angeles Dodgers to fire their oil industry advertisers.

In a letter made public Tuesday, dozens of people and organizations called on team owner Mark Walters to end its sponsorship deal with Phillips 66, owner of the 76 gas station chain. Formerly known as Union 76, the chain’s orange and blue logo has been a staple at Dodger Stadium since it opened and currently occupies prime real estate above both scoreboards.

But with the world recently experiencing 13 consecutive months of record heat, devastating fires, torrential rains, toxic air pollution and other deadly effects of burning fossil fuels ravaging people and the planet, some Angelenos believe it’s time for Walter to prioritize the health and safety of his residents over the easy profits of his deals with Big Oil.

Jordan Howard, a South Los Angeles resident who signed the open letter, lives about a mile from a Phillips 66 gas station just off the 110 Freeway, where trucks hauling goods between the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach stop to fill up. Phillips 66 also operates the South Bay Oil Refinery, as does Marathon Petroleum, which advertises an ARCO gas station at Dodger Stadium.

These are two of many companies that pollute the air Black, brown and low-income families in South Los Angeles County breathe, negatively impacting people like Howard, who has been diagnosed with lupus, which can be caused in part by environmental factors.

“I’m walking my dog [on a hill]”As soon as you turn the corner, you see the El Segundo refinery,” Howard told me, referring to another highly polluting fossil fuel facility owned by Chevron. “As soon as you turn the other corner, you see the Marathon refinery in Carson.”

Is Howard a Dodgers fan? Of course. She has a bobblehead of former Dodgers first baseman and current announcer Eric Karros on her mantelpiece. She wants the team to be “part of the solution” and “find a business model that doesn’t allow for exploitation.”

“You can’t pledge allegiance to companies that are causing harm,” she said.

The question now is, will Walter listen?

When I first wrote about the problems with the Dodgers’ continued affiliation with Phillips 66, the team did not respond to a request for comment. When I subsequently wrote a column criticizing the team’s official charity for accepting money from Phillips 66 and Marathon Oil to fund children’s health and education programs (which prompted activist Zan Dubin to write an open letter to Walter and begin collecting signatures), the team’s ownership group again declined to comment.

The silence continues. I reached out to the Dodgers for comment on the matter but haven’t heard back.

Will this letter change things for Walter, especially if the list of signatories continues to grow?

In addition to those mentioned above, initial signatories include the Center for Biological Diversity, former Culver City Mayor Megan Sali-Wells, science historian Naomi Oreskes, public radio broadcaster Warren Olney and “MASH” actor Mike Farrell.

When I asked McKibben why he signed the letter, he had a simple answer.

“Baseball is America’s great pastime,” he said, “and it would be a shame to see it tainted by something that ruins our summer and makes it impossible for us to recreate the relaxation and play that our forebears were able to do in this country.”

If that sounds like an exaggeration, you haven’t been paying attention.

July was a scorching hot month, with temperatures reaching 120 degrees Fahrenheit in Las Vegas, future home of the major league team Oakland Athletics, beating the previous record by three degrees. Death Valley recorded its hottest month ever, with an average temperature of 108.5 degrees Fahrenheit. Needles, California, the hometown of Snoopy’s brother Spike, recorded an average temperature of 103.2 degrees Fahrenheit, breaking Phoenix’s record for the hottest month of any U.S. city. The Earth experienced its hottest day on record, then broke the previous record the next day.

As an anecdote, I took some friends to a Dodgers game on a Sunday afternoon in July, and while we were sitting in direct sunlight, most of my friends couldn’t stand the scorching heat, so they spent most of the game in shady, secluded spots under the stands.

What will happen if the Earth gets even warmer?

“It’s a tradition to sit in the sun on a hot summer day, but when it’s 109 degrees that doesn’t work,” McKibben said.

Fossil-fuel-fueled heatwaves and other increasingly extreme weather events could also pose a threat to athletes. Reporting from Paris, The Times’ David Wharton called the Olympics “the latest in a trend that has winter athletes struggling to find enough snow and summer athletes facing health risks like cramps, vomiting and heatstroke.”

“We are in a race against time,” wrote Sebastian Coe, a former Olympian and president of the International Association of Athletics Federations. “As global temperatures continue to rise, climate change must increasingly be recognized as an existential threat to sport.”

At home, the same oil and gas companies that are fueling the climate crisis are also damaging the lungs of vulnerable children and parents.

Morgan Goodwin is fighting to protect these families. As director of the Sierra Club’s Los Angeles chapter, he’s led campaigns (all ongoing) to stop oil drilling in Culver City, Signal Hill, and throughout Los Angeles County. Researchers have found that living near oil and gas wells can increase the risk of health problems like asthma and premature birth, and lead to more serious consequences.

Goodwin said Walter was sending a message to Dodgers fans by tacitly endorsing these companies.

“It’s like the Dodgers giving a 16-year-old player a new car, a set of keys and a bottle of rum and saying, ‘Go for it!'” he said.

But if Walter were willing to forego funding from Phillips 66 and Marathon Oil, the Dodgers’ owner could help clean up Southern California’s polluted air. Who knows how many lives could be saved and how many devastating diseases could be prevented.

I’m not saying the Dodgers are responsible for the misconduct of Big Oil.

But by selling ads to Phillips 66 and Marathon (both named in a lawsuit filed by California officials accusing oil companies of a “decades-long campaign of climate fraud”), Walter is enabling “sportwashing” — the sports equivalent of greenwashing, a tried-and-true tactic for industries facing PR crises like tobacco. Knowing the future is bleak, they’re trying to influence public policy by buying favor with beloved brands like sports teams.

That often works well, as long as people like Walter keep getting paid.

“That cozy, warm, fluffy orange 76 [at Dodger Stadium] “That dictates the direction of everything else,” Goodwin said.

As a climate journalist, I find this whole thing demoralizing. As a die-hard Dodgers fan, I find this incredibly frustrating. It’s crazy to see my favorite players — Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and Clayton Kershaw — being used to sell planet-destroying propaganda.

It’s also unfortunate that Walter and his partners have refused to comment, perhaps hoping the story will be forgotten.

Well, it’s not going away, and I’ll continue to write about fossil fuel advertising at Dodger Stadium and in sports in general.

Even the Bay Area, long known for its environmental zeal, has a sportswashing problem: I attended Dodgers games this summer in San Francisco and Oakland, and both stadiums had Chevron ads along the outfield walls.

“It would be great if the Dodgers could beat the Giants in the race to get fossil fuels out of their stadium,” said Jennifer Krill, a Berkeley resident and executive director of Earthworks, a national environmental group that signed the open letter.

“Don’t tell my Giants fan friends I said that,” Crile added with a laugh.

The Chevron ad along the left field line at San Francisco’s Oracle Park is actually pretty unusual. As SFGate reported in 2021, the ad juts out from a flat wall, which regularly requires special permission from Major League Baseball, helping to promote Chevron and potentially keeping fly balls in play that would otherwise fly over the fence.

It would certainly be a lucrative deal for the Giants, and it would be easy for MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred to keep saying “yes,” just as it would be easy for Walter and other executives to shirk responsibility for climate change and blame someone else.

But there is no one else.

Scientists say we need to rush to nearly halve climate pollution by 2030 to avoid the worst effects of global warming. Right now, we’re nowhere near that goal. Unless we all work to make better choices — consumers for their lifestyles, politicians for their votes, and business owners for their profit margins — we’ll soon regret the things we once felt were more important.

Phillips 66 did not respond to my request for comment on the story, nor did Marathon Petroleum.

The letter organizers plan to keep collecting signatures on a MoveOn.org petition until the Dodgers give up the 76. It remains to be seen whether they will be successful. But Dubin, who is leading the movement, has a track record of success: Earlier this year, she led a campaign to urge Disneyland to speed up its schedule for phasing out the gas-guzzling engines of its iconic Autopia ride.

Like Disney, the Dodgers “can set an example that can really have a big impact,” Dubin said.

“With Disney, we were successful,” she said, “and I really hope we can have the same success with the Dodgers.”

The letter organizers have one other request: that electric vehicle chargers be installed at Dodger Stadium.

That’s right. For some reason, there are no EV charging stations in Chavez Ravine’s vast parking lot. Even the Oakland Coliseum, notoriously the worst ballpark in baseball, has two charging ports, as I learned during a visit last week.

The Dodgers declined to say whether they plan to install one.

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