Column: Don’t listen to the Dodgers Foundation. Big Oil is no All-Star
Much of America’s collective consciousness is focused on Major League Baseball this week, as the game’s brightest lights gather in Texas for the All-Star Game. Dodgers fans — myself included — will be glued to their screens on Tuesday evening, cheering on Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman, Teoscar Hernández and Will Smith (plus injured stars Mookie Betts and Tyler Glasnow).
A few days from now, the players will return to Los Angeles, where Dodgers owner Mark Walter will almost certainly keep taking ad dollars from companies whose South Bay oil refineries poison the air breathed by millions, especially people of color.
The team’s official charity, meanwhile, will likely keep hosting health events for kids sponsored by one of those oil companies — a scheme to make us forget that fossil fuels are terrible for our health, even as their fumes scar our lungs and roast the planet.
Sound messed up? That’s because it’s messed up.
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Dodger Stadium has long been a hotbed for fossil fuel promotion. As I wrote last month, Union Oil helped finance the ballpark’s construction. Ads for Union Oil successor 76 gasoline, owned by Houston-based Phillips 66, are plastered across the stadium.
Turns out there’s an even more insidious aspect to the Dodgers’ relationship with the fossil fuel industry.
The Dodgers Foundation has a sterling reputation in the community — for good reason. In the dozen years since Walter and his partners bought the team, the charity has invested more than $60 million in programs, building dozens of baseball fields serving hundreds of thousands of kids, funding college scholarships, offering health screenings, working on youth literacy and donating to organizations that supply meals and other essentials to children and families living in poverty, among other initiatives.
Foundation board member Joel Reynolds told me the group is “unsurpassed in the quality of its leadership, the impact of its work, and the exceptional services it provides to children in the greater Los Angeles area,” including underserved communities.
But as much as Reynolds admires the charity’s work, he thinks its leaders should stop promoting fossil fuels.
That view is informed by Reynolds’ environmental activism. He’s a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
When I asked him about the Dodgers Foundation and Phillips 66 launching a science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education program for 5,000 local kids in 2022, Reynolds acknowledged that “joint promotions with [76 gasoline] and Phillips 66 are antithetical to the overwhelming scientific evidence of the causal connection between fossil fuels and climate change.”
For those of you keeping score at home, climate change is responsible for increasingly deadly heat waves — like the one that plagued the Western U.S. this month — as well as ever-more-dangerous fires, floods, storms, droughts and other weather extremes.
“In my personal opinion, the promotions, if indeed they’re still ongoing, should end,” Reynolds said via email.
I’m not sure if the promotions with Phillips 66 are ongoing. I sent several messages to the Dodgers Foundation’s chief executive, Nichol Whiteman, and its chief operating officer, Chaitali Gala Mehta, asking for comment. Neither of them got back to me.
A Dodgers team spokesperson also didn’t respond to my request for comment.
Even if the foundation is no longer working with Phillips 66, it’s definitely taking money from the Arco gas station chain.
In addition to advertising at the stadium, Arco — a subsidiary of Ohio-based Marathon Petroleum — is this year’s lead sponsor for “Dodger Days,” a series of foundation events that offer youth baseball players and their families “access to health screenings, education programs, and basic essentials,” according to a foundation news release. The first of seven Dodger Days took place in April. The most recent, as best I can tell, was in June, with outfielder Jason Heyward and pitcher Bobby Miller in attendance.
So why does it matter if the Dodgers Foundation is taking fossil fuel money and funneling it toward good causes?
It matters because oil companies use partnerships with trusted institutions to influence the way we perceive them, even if most of us don’t realize it’s happening. That’s according to Melissa Aronczyk, a media studies professor at Rutgers University.
“These are all very insidious, under-the-radar ways of advertising that are not officially advertising,” she told me.
“It’s almost 100 years old as a strategy, and it’s been going on so long because it’s been incredibly effective,” she added.
Aronczyk — who co-wrote a book on public relations and environmental destruction and has testified to Congress on fossil fuel industry disinformation — said there’s rampant “greenwashing” in sports. In part, that’s because sports is a big business. And in part, it’s because people like me love their favorite teams. Oil companies are eager to exploit our deep-seated affections.
“You can divert attention from some of your less savory values,” Aronczyk said.
This is exactly what Walter and the Dodgers have been letting Phillips 66 and Marathon Petroleum get away with.
The companies’ Los Angeles-area refineries have ranked among the region’s top sources of smog-forming nitrogen oxides, lung-irritating sulfur-oxides and cancer-causing particulate matter in recent years, according to state regulators. The pollution spreads across the L.A. Basin but is especially bad for nearby residents in Carson and Wilmington, many of whom are Latino.
Also bad: The oil produced at the refineries is burned in tens of millions of engines, creating more deadly fumes, especially along freeway corridors. The oil also generates carbon dioxide that traps heat in the atmosphere, fueling a climate crisis that this month has contributed to record-high temperatures across the West. Las Vegas hit 120 degrees, three degrees above the old record.
You wouldn’t know any of that from the news releases issued by the Dodgers Foundation and its fossil fuel partners.
When the charity announced its education initiative with Phillips 66, Whiteman, the foundation’s CEO, was quoted as saying that “teaming up with [76 gasoline] affords us the opportunity to further our mission of providing STEM curriculum to youth.”
The charity added that fans who donated $76 or more might receive swag, including a limited edition pin featuring Smilin’ Jack — a giant jack-o’-lantern face on a storage tank at the Phillips 66 refinery that, in a brilliant public relations trick, has become a local cultural touchstone since it was first painted in the 1950s. In the same news release, a Phillips 66 spokesperson said the company was “proud to support [the foundation’s] efforts advancing education and fostering strong and resilient communities.”
The basic message: Hey, we’re Phillips 66. We’re just like the Dodgers. Nice to meet you.
To my mind, the foundation’s Arco partnership is even worse.
That’s because this year’s Dodger Days feature health screenings offered by UCLA — and oil is such a health hazard.
There are almost certainly children and caregivers showing up to these events suffering from asthma and other illnesses caused or aggravated by fossil fuel pollution, spewing from refineries, cars and trucks, gas stoves and other sources. And meanwhile the Dodgers Foundation is letting Arco and its parent company, Marathon Petroleum, serve as the “presenting sponsor”?
It’s sickening. It needs to end.
As I wrote last month, Dodgers owner Mark Walter — who chairs the foundation’s board — needs to make it end.
Again, the oil companies know what they’re doing. Arco’s marketing website notes that the company’s audience “loves sports,” highlighting ad deals with the Dodgers, Chargers, San Diego Padres, Arizona Cardinals and Bally Sports. The site describes Arco as “taking over” Dodger Stadium with ads this year. I wouldn’t go quite that far, but I’ve seen plenty of gasoline promos.
For those of you wondering: Yes, I drive my car to Dodger Stadium (although I’ve been taking public transit more lately). To me, that doesn’t mean I’m a hypocrite who can’t be taken seriously. It means I’m like most everyone: I was born into a world crafted by forces much bigger and more powerful than me. Including Big Oil, the auto industry and the highway builders.
Speaking of which: Both companies featured in this story, Phillips 66 and Marathon Petroleum, are connected to a lawsuit filed by California officials accusing Big Oil of a “decades-long campaign of deception” to hide the dangers of global warming.
Phillips 66 is being sued because it was formerly part of ConocoPhillips, one of the firms accused of covering up climate change. And although Marathon isn’t named in the lawsuit, Arco is mentioned several times because more than 300 of its California gas stations are operated by BP, which is being sued. BP previously owned the Arco brand and associated South Bay oil refinery.
Phillips 66 declined to comment for this column. Marathon Petroleum didn’t respond to my emails.
In their absence, I’ll tell you something they may not want you to know: We have viable solutions to the climate crisis.
The U.S. got nearly 40% of its power from solar panels, wind turbines and other climate-friendly sources in 2022, with California achieving more than half. Electric cars made up 18% of global passenger vehicle sales last year. President Biden’s climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, is pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into clean energy. Coal plants continue to shut down.
We’re not going to stop burning fossil fuels tomorrow, or even a decade from now. But scientists say we need to slash emissions as quickly as possible. Refusing to accept ad dollars from the companies polluting our air and wrecking our planet should be low-hanging fruit, not a hard ask — especially for a foundation that says it has “ambitions to be the city’s premier charity.”
So I’ll watch the All-Star Game. I’ll cheer on Shohei, Freddie, Teoscar and Will. If they do well, I’ll have fun.
I’ll do my best not to get frustrated by the massive ad on the center field wall at Arlington’s Globe Life Field for Energy Transfer — the company behind the Dakota Access oil pipeline, whose other owners include, guess who, Phillips 66 and Marathon Petroleum. I’ll try not to dwell on the fact that Texas Rangers players started wearing Energy Transfer patches on their jerseys this year.
And I’ll continue hoping that before long, the world’s best athletes won’t be stuck promoting products that make life hell.
ONE MORE THING
Speaking of making life hell for baseball fans, my L.A. Times colleague Bill Shaikin posed an important climate-related question: When the Oakland Athletics move to the Sacramento area next season, will it be too hot to play during much of the day?
As Bill reports, it’s been so hot in Sacramento this month — with average highs of 107.5 degrees during the first 12 days of July — that the nearby Yolo High Wheelers of the independent Pioneer League moved several games from 6:45 p.m. to 10 a.m. The head of the Major League Baseball Players Assn. is interested in exploring morning games as an option for the A’s.
Even better: Maybe keep the A’s in Oakland?
I’ve endured enough broiling Sunday afternoons at Dodger Stadium to know how unpleasant heat can be; I’ve also read enough studies and articles and books to know how easily it can kill. So with no disrespect to whomever runs the Pittsburgh Pirates’ social media, who probably didn’t know any better, I didn’t love this post about Paul Skenes being named the National League’s starting pitcher for the All-Star Game, which declared that a “heat wave is about to hit Texas.” Clearly, we need some more education.
Sports apparel giant Nike, long a sustainability leader, could probably help with that education. Alas, the Oregon-based company laid off 20% of its sustainability staff, according to this story by ProPublica’s Rob Davis and the Oregonian’s Matthew Kish.
That doesn’t mean Nike is out of the game, climate-wise. But in the race to save the planet, every poor decision hurts.
This column is the latest edition of Boiling Point, an email newsletter about climate change and the environment in California and the American West. You can sign up for Boiling Point here. And for more climate and environment news, follow @Sammy_Roth on X.
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