Roughly a hundred people marched to the front gates of the Chevron Richmond refinery Tuesday afternoon to protest the global energy giant’s role in climate change and wildfires, and California’s investments in the company.
Demonstrators included union members, environmental leaders, and members of the environmental organizations that co-organized the action: California Common Good, Sierra Club, Fossil Free California, Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) Action, 350 Southland Legislative Alliance, Oakland Education Association, and Youth Vs. Apocalypse.
The protest was also attended by several people who lost their homes in the recent Los Angeles urban wildfires.
Demonstrators slowly marched through Point Richmond before reaching the refinery, where they used ashes collected from the Los Angeles fire to help create a mural advocating for investments in communities, not fossil fuels.
Prior to the march, the group gathered at Judge George D. Carroll Park in Point Richmond, where former Richmond City Councilmember Melvin Willis introduced speakers, who detailed the demonstrators’ demands.
Quinn Eide, executive director of Fossil Free California, lambasted CalPERS, the state public employee retirement fund, for including Chevron and other major polluters in its “climate solutions” investment portfolio, with $7.1 million going to Chevron alone.
“Chevron is not a climate solution,” they said.
Demonstrators demanded that California legislators pass the Polluters Pay Climate Superfund Act of 2025 that would require fossil fuel polluters to share the cost for damages caused by wildfires and other catastrophic events linked to climate change..
“Imagine if Chevron was charged for the destruction it’s caused in Richmond, to the Bay, to the entire state of California,” Eide said. “Imagine, as a state, if we got to decide how the money was used to create a climate-safe future.”
Local environmental activists attempted to put a similar measure on the ballot in Richmond during the last election that would have taxed oil refining, but Chevron opted to settle with the city instead, and will pay $550 million over 10 years.
Speakers on Tuesday pointed to the health effects linked to fuel refining and related industries in Richmond, which include heart disease, respiratory illness, and asthma. Air district studies have estimated that pollution from the Chevron refinery is responsible for five to 11 premature deaths annually.
Camila Domingo, an eighth-grade student at Urban Promise Academy in Oakland and a member of Warriors for Justice, a student activist group, came to show her solidarity with the demonstrators in Richmond. She told the crowd she would never forget the night her younger brother had an asthma attack “and almost died” before spending nine days in the hospital.
“If I could reduce the amount of asthma rates, I would,” she said.
What’s fueling Richmond’s air pollution?
This article is part of a series investigating the causes, impacts, and possible solutions to local air pollution. See the full series.
This investigation was supported with funding from the Data-Driven Reporting Project. The Data-Driven Reporting Project is funded by the Google News Initiative in partnership with Northwestern University | Medill. Read our nonprofit’s policy on editorial independence.
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