In a 2024 commentary, “How California’s Energy Policies Fuel Real-World Atrocities Abroad,” I exposed a contradiction that had become impossible to ignore: California’s insistence on shutting down its own tightly regulated oil production while quietly increasing dependence on foreign crude delivered by some of the dirtiest and least accountable supply chains on Earth.

At the time, the discussion centered on ghost ships, tanker pollution, and the moral cost of exporting our energy needs to nations with weaker environmental and human-rights protections.

What we know now makes that contradiction even harder to defend.

Over the past year, the picture has sharpened — and with it, troubling inconsistencies.

California now operates one of the most expansive air-monitoring networks in the world, with hundreds of California Air Resources Board regulatory monitors and Assembly Bill 617 community stations surrounding ports, freight corridors, refineries and urban centers.

These monitors were meant to deliver transparency: to show Californians where pollution comes from and who pays the price.

In a memo to the state Senate Rules Committee, attention of committee appointments director Lisa Chin, CARB asserts that it can track emissions up to 100 nautical miles off the California coast, only to contradict that assertion three pages later in the same document — an inconsistency few took the time to examine.

What the inconsistency shows is not an emissions miracle created by shutting down local production. They show a state that has outsourced risk, pollution and moral responsibility, while congratulating itself for doing so.

California oil production still accounts for a small fraction of statewide greenhouse gas emissions, yet the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach remain among the largest single sources of air pollution in Southern California.

The difference now is that we can no longer claim ignorance. Near-road monitors, school-based stations and community sensors confirm what working families already knew: tanker traffic, marine fuels, rail and heavy-duty transport tied to imported crude are the dominant pollution drivers in frontline communities.

Meanwhile, the global oil trade has become increasingly visible, revealing the true scope of unregulated shipping, shadow fleets and environmental risk.

Since sanctions were imposed following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, a vast “shadow fleet” of tankers — often operating without proper insurance, transponders or maintenance — has expanded.

Ship-to-ship transfers occur beyond regulatory reach. Crude is laundered through intermediaries and relabeled before entering global markets.

Environmental safeguards are absent, labor protections nonexistent and spills frequently go unreported.

California may distance itself from the transactions on paper, but it cannot distance itself from their consequences.

By funding imported oil, we assume moral responsibility for the environmental devastation borne by rainforests and vulnerable communities elsewhere.

The same political leaders who insist California oil is uniquely dangerous are effectively endorsing production regimes that would never survive a week under the the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), AB 32 or Air Resources Board oversight.

Crude arriving from abroad is not produced under methane-control rules, leak-detection requirements, worker-safety standards or environmental-justice review.

Yet it is welcomed at our ports, refined in our facilities and burned in our engines —its upstream damage conveniently out of sight and off the books.

This is what “environmental leakage” actually looks like.

The consequences extend far beyond California’s coastline. In the Amazon, illegal extraction and land clearing continue to be fueled by global commodity demand.

Indigenous leaders are threatened or killed. Entire communities are displaced. These atrocities are not separate from our energy policies; they are downstream of them.

Every barrel we refuse to produce locally does not disappear; it is produced elsewhere, often under conditions that would be criminal here.

The same holds true for so-called “green” supply chains. From cobalt mines in the Congo to rare-earth extraction across the developing world, child labor, environmental devastation and violent coercion remain common.

California’s political class speaks endlessly about environmental and social justice, yet structures its economy to depend on materials sourced in ways that violate every value it claims to uphold.

What has changed since 2024 is not the reality, it’s the evidence.

With today’s monitoring data, we can see that communities near ports and freight corridors bear the cost of imported energy, while oil-producing regions within California are shut down despite operating under the most stringent environmental rules on the planet.

We have built a system that punishes compliance and rewards opacity.

This is not climate leadership. It is moral outsourcing.

If California were serious about environmental justice, it would prioritize clean, local production, not symbolic shutdowns.

If it were serious about reducing global emissions, it would account for lifecycle impacts — not just what happens within state borders.

And if it were serious about human rights, it would stop pretending that banning production here absolves us of responsibility for what happens elsewhere.

We do not lack resources. We do not lack technology. And we certainly do not lack regulatory oversight.

What we lack is honesty.

California can produce energy cleaner, safer and more transparently than almost anywhere in the world.

Doing so would reduce tanker traffic, cut marine emissions, protect frontline communities, create skilled jobs, and deny revenue to regimes and networks that thrive on exploitation.

Continuing down our current path does the opposite while allowing politicians to claim victory.

In 2024, I warned that we were trading environmental progress for political theater. In 2026, with the data in hand, that warning is no longer theoretical. It is measurable, mapped, and monitored.

The question now is not whether we know better. It is whether we are willing to do better.