Laird Nixes Gas- Malibu Paddle Out Protests Cabrillo LNG Plant

The local reporter asked: “What is the #1 negative about this particular plan?”

“LNG is a fossil fuel,” Brosnan responded. “You will smell it. You will see it. Any human error that comes into play could be quite disastrous. Pipelines burst and fracture around the globe. This is too close to our beautiful community and it should be protected.”

The reporter asked: “The notion of a paddleout, a classic California way to communicate their message. Tell me about the paddle out. What’s happening here today?”

“We’re paddling out. Paddling out,” Brosnan responded patiently. “I’m going to kayak, but Laird Hamilton is going to be here, a mighty warrior of the ocean.”

Brosnan made way down the pier, talking on his cell phone, talking to fans, friends, paddlers and volunteers. As he got to the end, where a pancake breakfast was raising more money for the campaign against the plan, he was followed by a number of movie stars, including Tea Leoni and John C McGinley.

Darryl Hannah came to the event styling in a primer-black El Camino with the words “biodiesel” across the back window in gang-ganger gothic script. She’s cool, but she was hot about the idea of this audacious energy plan: “It’s so dangerous to put an LNG plant off the coast of California.”

Dick van Dyke said:  “I think the location is a sad mistake for the State of California.”

Ted Danson said: “That whole process of getting it into our pipeline ends up putting out more pollution, than the thought that this is a clean fuel.”

Halle Berry was there with a boyfriend and a bodyguard, and she said: “…toxins that it can put in the air can be really harmful in an age of global warming and I am out here because I really don’t want to see this happen.”

They all spoke out against the Cabrillo Port, which would be visible from shore and always seen as a threat.

Brosnan made some think of James Bond and that created an image of a team of terrorists blowing up the Cabrillo Port, creating a fireball that would spread for more than 7 miles around the plant. The threat of terrorism is not as clear and present as the fact that Cabrillo Port will vent more than 200 tons of air pollution, and 2.3 billion gallons of intake and thermal waste water that would be 28.3 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the ambient sea temperature in the surrounding ecosystem.

The finger of fog going in and out around Malibu suggested the huge cloud of volatile natural gas that could rise from a plant damaged by nature or terrorists or human error, then move into shore without dissipating, and erupt. There were enough arguments against the LNG plant to attract hundreds of paddlers and spectators, who started the morning with a pancake breakfast at the end of the pier, then wandered down to the water’s edge, where there was an enthusiastic drum circle and volunteers organizing the paddlers into color groups.

Along with all the movie stars, there were surf stars, including Lisa Anderson, Herbie Fletcher, Kassia Meador and Allen Sarlo, and they were joined by several hundred paddlers on everything from kayaks to boogie board, with a few standup surfers here and there.

Down at the water’s edge, the natives and visitors were getting restless. The surf was absolutely pumping, guys like Andy Lyon were getting great waves out at First Point and the shorebreak along the beach was knocking people ass over teakettle, threatening to drown the expensive cameras of the paparazzi. There was a lot of energy on land and sea, but as the 11:00 hour came to start the paddle out, a buzz went through the crowd: Where’s Laird?

Some joked that Laird took a warmup paddle out to Catalina and back while insiders suggested Laird was surfing up the coast at a certain secret spot that had been cleared out by the rest of Malibu doing their civic duty. At around 11:20, Laird walked down from endless interviews with the press crews on the pier to get the party started.

Pushing off from the beach on his special standup board, Laird inspired a stampede of paddlers who came off the
beach in orderly groups/ Laird was probably tempted to do a quick sprint to a point 14 miles offshore to show where the Cabrillo Plant would be, but he took pity and went about 100 yards offshore, to where a boat was towing a floating protest sign. There were several hundred paddlers of all shapes and sizes who went with him. Lisa Anderson was stand up paddling a thick fish-looking thing. Darryl Hannah paddled out with a girlfriend and John C. McGinley, the doctor from Scrubs, was out there too.

As people cheered from the pier and land, Laird circled the group, then paddled into the middle, pulled them together and raised a ruckus that hopefully will be heard all the way to Sacramento. “Bad idea,” Laird said, in a few words, as a couple of hundred like-minded ocean lovers and residents splashed the water in response.

Then Laird aimed for the lineup at First Point, bringing a couple hundred friends with him, and you have to wonder if the crowd at First Point noticed that the lineup tripled, all of a sudden. The tide was still high and the surf was throbbing and now there were eight people per wave, rather than the usual six.

Coming back in, local resident Jefferson “Zuma Jay” Wagner talked about his pier jump in protest of the LNG plant: “A news guy asked why I was jumping off the pier, and I said it was symbolic. He said, ‘Isn’t pier jumping illegal?’ I said, ‘So is this LNG plant.’”

Laird and Pierce Brosnan and the organizers should be congratulated for putting on a large, effective protest that attracted a lot of genuinely concerned celebrities, with attracted a lot of media. The protest raised awareness from local news to national, and also raised a significant amount of money through the pancake breakfast, sales of hats and shirts and buttons and with a raffle. Malibu resident Ozzie Silna offered matching funds up to $100,000 for the war chest, to persuade Governor Schwarzenegger (or his replacement) to say nix to the idea when the Cabrillo Plant comes across his desk at the beginning of 2007.