Following Devastating LA Wildfires, California Legislators Introduce Bill to Make Big Oil Pay

“Now’s the time,” says one state lawmaker, for climate polluters to “pay for the damage they knowingly have caused.”

The Eaton fire engulfs a house in flames. Credit: US Forest Service photo by Jason Benton/ Captain, SRF Engine 341, via Flickr, public domain

Last year the small New England state of Vermont became the first state in the country to enact a law holding some of the world’s largest fossil fuel producers liable for helping pay for climate change damage and adaptation costs. Vermont’s Climate Superfund Act passed in just one legislative session with tri-partisan support, following horrific flooding in July 2023 – the worst flood event Vermont had seen in nearly a century – that ravaged the state and caused over a billion dollars in damages. Now another, much larger state is considering adopting similar legislation in the wake of experiencing its latest climate-fueled disaster – the devastating Los Angles wildfires in January that could end up costing $250 billion, per initial estimates.

On February 21, California Senator Caroline Menjivar (D-San Fernando Valley) and Assemblymember Dawn Addis (D-Morro Bay) introduced a climate superfund bill for their state. California’s Polluters Pay Climate Superfund Act would require major oil, gas, and coal companies that have generated over one billion tons of climate pollution between 1990 and 2024 to pay a one-time fee into a newly created state fund, which would go towards paying for various climate change resiliency projects in California. The legislation, modeled after the federal Superfund law that allows polluters to be held liable for the costs of cleaning up hazardous waste sites, is an attempt to shift some of the financial burden of the climate crisis from taxpayers onto the companies most responsible for the damage, according to the bill’s architects and supporters.

“Profits for polluters skyrocket year over year, and California’s taxpayers simultaneously pinch their pennies for household expenses while also solely footing the bill for catastrophic wildfires and other related disasters. The Polluters Pay Climate Superfund Act is a commonsense way to tap into a small fraction of polluters’ profits, and collect their share of the financial burden,” Menjivar said in a statement.

“For decades, Big Oil has reaped massive profits while driving the climate crisis and misleading the public,” said Darryl Molina Sarmiento, executive director of the environmental justice group Communities for a Better Environment and a steering committee member of Campaign for a Safe and Healthy California, which is co-sponsoring the bill. “This legislation provides a critical pathway to hold these corporations accountable for the damage caused by their products.”

Peer-reviewed research has shown that a relatively small number of major fossil fuel and cement producers have generated the majority of the carbon pollution that is dangerously heating the planet and supercharging extreme weather disasters. Investigative research and reporting have also revealed that Big Oil companies have long understood the potential for their products to cause “catastrophic” climate impacts, yet instead of disclosing these risks they funded and disseminated climate denial and disinformation, which effectively delayed the transition to cleaner energy alternatives.

“We know that [these] corporations had knowledge that they were hiding, and were misleading the public,” Addis told me. “Now’s the time, 35 years later, to have them contribute to making a better situation for Californians, and to pay for the damage they knowingly have caused.”

California’s bill directs the state’s Environmental Protection Agency to undertake a comprehensive climate cost study to quantify the damage and adaptation costs to the state. The agency is also tasked with identifying which companies are on the hook to pay, and how much each owes; the fee would be proportional to their share of total emissions over the past 35 years.

“California faces hundreds of billions in annual climate costs by 2050, but we now have a proven policy solution. This legislation uses established attribution science to assess damages and creates a dedicated funding stream from major carbon emitters - potentially hundreds of billions to strengthen flood protection infrastructure, upgrade emergency response systems, install community cooling centers, and harden homes against wildfires,” said Cassidy DiPaola, communications director for the Make Polluters Pay campaign, which is supporting climate superfund legislation and other climate accountability initiatives nationwide.

DiPaola said that this state level polluters pay policy is even more important with the federal government now scaling back funding for climate action and disaster recovery. Trump has threatened to withhold or condition disaster aid for California in the midst of the January wildfires, and he has also floated the possibility of eliminating the Federal Emergency Management Authority.

“With the Trump administration planning to gut federal disaster response capacity by 84%, state action on climate funding has never been more urgent,” DiPaola said.

“We’ve been attacked and threatened so much by the Trump administration,” Addis told me. The climate superfund bill, she said, is “really important, given the onslaughts by Trump - directly attacking any kinds of efforts to increase [electric vehicle] use or EV infrastructure, threatening to take money away from California when it comes to fire damages, etc.”

The January wildfires in southern California torched tens of thousands of acres, destroyed more than 16,000 structures, and claimed 29 lives. Researchers with World Weather Attribution have determined that the fire-prone conditions that fanned the flames were made about 35% more likely under today’s climate of 1.3°C warming above pre-industrial levels.

“The LA fires show in a really heartbreaking way why this bill is so needed,” Kassie Siegel, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute, told me. She said she is optimistic the bill will end up making it across the finish line this year, especially in the wake of the devastating fires. A version of this legislation made it through three committees last year but ultimately did not end up advancing further.

If the bill does become law, it is expected to face legal challenges from the fossil fuel industry and its allies. The American Petroleum Institute and the US Chamber of Commerce are currently suing Vermont over its Climate Superfund Act. And now New York, which enacted climate superfund legislation in late December, is facing a lawsuit from 22 Republican-led states and several fossil fuel entities seeking to strike down that law.

Siegel said the expectation of litigation should not deter California from advancing its climate superfund bill. “California should follow in the footsteps of New York and Vermont,” she said, “and enact this commonsense legislation and defend it against inevitable court challenges.”