In The Wake Of Wildfires And Floods
For more than half a century, fossil fuel companies have knowingly harmed the climate — and thus people and the economy — causing trillions of dollars of losses from extreme weather events. The Palisades and Eaton fires last year helped spur a burst of legislation here in California. But the most ambitious measure — a proposed polluter’s pay climate superfund, similar to laws passed in New York and Vermont in 2024 —died in committee. That was due in part to an avalanche of spending by the fossil fuel lobby, even as insurance rates soared because of the fires.
But on Feb. 5, a new approach was announced by Sen. Scott Wiener: a bill to authorize the attorney general to sue fossil fuel companies for damages from extreme weather events like the LA fires.
“With the cost of home insurance shooting through the roof and more and more families getting rejected by private insurers, we have to do everything we can to stabilize the market and boost affordability,” Weiner said. “The AIR Act takes an innovative approach to this problem by shifting the cost of wildfires and other climate-driven disasters from the survivors who are suffering to the fossil fuel giants most responsible. No one should be pushed out of their home by insurance costs, and the AIR Act will take an important step to ensure they won’t be.”
Weiner was joined by survivors of the LA fires and San Diego floods, labor and civil rights leader Dolores Huerta, and consumer advocates, as well as other legislators.
“Our house was gone, but so was our entire neighborhood of Northwest Altadena,” said Rashid Ali. “Everything we owned, our furniture, our photos, my music studio, my wife’s photo studio, all of our artwork, all of our works in progress, gone. We had insurance, but insurance didn’t mean we were protected.”
“The system failed us. We’re rebuilding because of GoFundMe, grants and people who showed up for us,” his wife, Gail, said. “Families across California are learning the same painful lesson. After the disaster, insurance falls short and survivors are left holding the bill. That’s why we support the Affordable Insurance Recovery [AIR] Act.”
“I’m a flood survivor, and what happened to my family is happening to communities all across California,” said Marisa Wo. “We are a multi-generational working-class family. What had been a place of music, shared meals, and daily life was suddenly gone. Our homes looked like a war zone. Neighbors were trapped inside, screaming for help. Children, elders, pets, and entire families were displaced all at once. We are paying the price for disasters made worse by billion-dollar oil corporations, not by us.”
“Californians are facing an insurance affordability crisis fueled by extreme weather disasters, and doing nothing is no longer an option. This bill is about shifting the burden off families, homeowners and taxpayers, and placing it where it belongs: on the corporate polluters that knowingly caused this damage,” said EnviroVoters CEO Mary Creasman. “We can protect communities, stabilize the insurance market and hold polluters accountable at the same time.”
“The oil companies have known about climate change for a very long time,” said California state Sen. Jerry McNerney. “I first learned about climate change in 1969 in freshman engineering at the United States Military Academy at West Point,” he said. “So the armed forces of this country have been preparing for climate change for decades. And what did the oil companies do despite the fact that they knew that climate change was coming? They suppressed information about climate change. They promoted oil. They promoted fossil fuel use in this country and around the world. And they reaped in billions and billions of dollars.” What’s more, “Since 1991, there’s been 28 trillion dollars of climate-related damage inflicted upon the world by these companies and these actions.”
By any measure, the AIR Act is long overdue. But looking forward, it could add $50 billion to the state’s GDP, along with 340,000 new jobs and $3,800 in average net savings per household, according to a report from Greenline Insights.
Contrary to claims by industry spokesman Jim Stanley in the LA Times that “This is a political stunt that will kill jobs and increase costs for consumers,” the report explained that “The responsible parties covered by the bill are large, diversified firms that sell fossil fuel products into international markets. Because these entities operate on a global price-setter model, California effectively exports the vast majority of litigation damages to the global shareholder and consumer base, while importing the full recovery amount into the local economy.”
When the fires and floods struck, “We all felt helpless,” Heurta recalled, “But now is our moment,” even though there will be ferocious pushback from oil companies. “This is our moment that we’ve got to really organize, organize, organize, and make sure that our legislators in California, whomever they may be, that they are on the right side,” she said. “Because at the end of the day, it is people’s power over corporate power.”