Lawmakers push for unprecedented move to hold major industry accountable: 'It's past time'
Big Oil has been allowed to freely pollute the world with heat-trapping gases that lead to higher global temperatures and climate-driven disasters — but soon those companies may have to pay for the damage they've done because of a law on the table in California.
The Center for Biological Diversity reported on the Polluters Pay Climate Superfund Act, a bill recently introduced in the state legislature by Sen. Caroline Menjivar and Assemblymember Dawn Addis.
If passed into law, it would create a program under the California Environmental Protection Agency that would require major oil companies operating in the state to pay into a fund that accounts for the more than 1 billion tons of heat-trapping air pollution they produced between 1990 and 2024. The money would be used to address the effects of that pollution.
Those effects are extensive and critical. Higher global temperatures have contributed to wildfires, drought and flood cycles, more intense storms, heat waves, and rising sea levels — all of which come with human deaths and property damage.
The superfund would help address those issues. It would fund disaster response and support the construction of infrastructure that would make communities more resilient against climate disasters.
"The L.A. fires show with heartbreaking clarity how much we need this bill to make the biggest climate polluters pay for the astronomical damage they've caused," said Kassie Siegel, director of the Center for Biological Diversity's Climate Law Institute. "The public shouldn't be shelling out billions of dollars every year to recover from severe and deadly climate disasters. By passing this commonsense bill, state lawmakers can put the financial burden of climate damage on giant polluting companies, where it belongs."
California has already attempted to pass similar legislation, but this law could put the state in the driver's seat. It won't be the first to adopt such an approach; New York and Vermont have passed legislation to hold polluters accountable for their far-reaching effects.
"Profiting off destruction has been the Big Oil playbook for far too long," Siegel said. "It's past time we took on these corporate behemoths who've sold off our future and our fragile planet to line their own pockets."
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