The Southern California metropolis of Huntington Beach is at the moment coated with crude oil from a pipeline breach. It could also be jarring to see officers speeding to save lots of a California seashore from a crude spill, however the metropolis’s tradition has been awash in oil for many years. You can look no additional than the native highschool mascot.

Huntington Beach High School’s staff identify is the Oilers, and its emblem is a drilling derrick. The faculty isn’t sheepish about its mascot, both. Its web site is HBOilers.com, the place the college cheerily notes, “Do not be fooled by our laid-back, beach atmosphere; Oilers put in work.” On its telephone voicemail, a girl cheerily says “Go Oilers!” Huntington Beach High School’s mascot is an oil employee clad in orange and black named Derrick. (Get it?) Jeremy Deaton, an alum of the highschool, said on Twitter that the college’s colours had been even orange for the California sundown and black for oil. It’s… rather a lot.

Deaton grew up within the metropolis and graduated from Huntington Beach High School in 2013. “As a teenager, I actually thought it was great, not because I was a fan of oil, but because I liked that our high school had a mascot that was rooted in our city’s history,” he mentioned in a textual content message. “Lots of high schools have mascots that have nothing to do with anything—lions and vikings and so on. So, it genuinely felt special.”

He didn’t assume a lot about environmental points as a young person, which isn’t surprising, contemplating how a lot fossil gasoline propaganda will get into faculty curricula and the way little local weather training youngsters at school obtain. Today, he’s steeped in these points and thinks it’s time to alter the mascot.

“I think it’s significant that the high school maintains the oiler as its mascot, both because the school exists to serve young people–who are most imperiled by climate change—and because the school has been around for so long that a lot of the city’s history is invested in that particular institution,” Deaton mentioned.

Oil performed a significant function in shaping Huntington Beach. The area has been a fossil gasoline hub for a century. In the 1910s, oil was discovered beneath the seashore, and shortly after, Standard Oil began extracting it. The trade sparked the city’s population growth, giving it the nickname Oil City.

But oil isn’t the one side of Huntington Beach’s historical past. The metropolis helped construct a part of NASA’s Saturn V rocket, which was used to get a man on the moon for the primary time. “It also has produced some of the best surfers in the world. So there’s a lot to be proud of,” Deaton mentioned.

Even earlier than this previous weekend’s spill, the fossil gasoline sector’s native legacy has been removed from all rosy. It’s additionally been a supply of poisonous air pollution and planet-warming greenhouse gases. This isn’t the realm’s first large leak, both; an oil tanker ruptured in 1990, unleashing 390,000 gallons of oil. (There are plenty of other ones as effectively.) Then, as now, the spill threatened wildlife and delicate ecosystems alongside a key fowl migration hall.

“It’s weird that we choose to celebrate oil, which actually threatens — as demonstrated this week — so much of what makes HB a wonderful place: the pristine beach, surf culture, the Bolsa Chica wetlands,” mentioned Deaton. “I mean, the Huntington Beach Conference and Visitor’s Bureau has trademarked the name ‘Surf City.’ You can’t surf if the ocean is covered in oil.”

I don’t imply to recommend that Huntington Beach is liable for the fossil gasoline sector’s maintain on California, however romanticizing an trade that threatens native communities and habitats isn’t the transfer. With the necessity to wind down the trade rising extra pressing, the college’s mascot may quickly be out of date anyway. But there’s no want to attend for that day to come back. Huntington Beach High School, for those who’re studying this, be proactive. The rockets, the surfers, or the dolphins are all there for the taking if you wish to root a mascot with deep native historical past and legacy. Oil isn’t the one choice.

“I think it’s important as a statement of which parts of our history we decide to honor,” mentioned Deaton.