California lawmaker seeks to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for climate change-related damage

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (CN) — A California state senator said Monday that he wants to give homeowners and insurers the ability to sue oil and gas companies when a disaster caused by climate change damages their property.

The bill, called the Affordable Insurance and Climate Recovery Act, seeks to give people injured by climate disasters a private right of action to recover their losses from oil and gas companies. State Senator Scott Wiener said those companies have misled people about the harm caused by their products.

Senate Bill 222 also would provide insurers with a direct cause of action against oil and gas companies. They could recover losses resulting from climate impacts and rising costs looming over the insurance market and the state’s FAIR Plan.

“These disasters happen and then who pays for them?” said Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat, standing Monday outside the state Capitol. “It’s us, the taxpayers, because of course we step in to help people rebuild, as we should.”

Additionally, the bill would affect the state’s Fair Access to Insurance Requirements Plan, or FAIR Plan. An independent expert’s assessment that finds litigation would outweigh costs could lead FAIR Plan officials to sue oil and gas companies on behalf of policyholders.

Wiener announced his bill about three weeks after the Palisades and Eaton fires erupted, destroying thousands of structures and leading to over two dozen deaths. The senator emphasized that these wildfires broke out in the middle of winter, typically the state’s wettest season and a time when fires aren’t a major threat.

Climate-related disasters have led to increasingly rising insurance costs, and forced many people into the FAIR Plan, once meant to be an insurer of last resort. The continual climbing cost of such disasters has, in turn, caused higher prices for insurance policyholders.

If insurance companies and the FAIR Plan can recoup their losses caused by climate disasters from oil and gas companies deemed responsible for those damages, the insurance market will stabilize and help with California’s high insurance costs, Wiener said in a statement.

“We are seeing flooding, all sorts of climate-driven disasters,” Wiener said.

He argued that oil and gas companies have known for decades about the climate impacts caused by fossil fuels, making the products that lead to more destructive climate and weather events. However, they are also the companies that aren’t paying for those same impacts.

The bill has a handful of coauthors, including state Senator Sasha Renée Pérez, a Pasadena Democrat whose district was impacted by the Los Angeles-area fires.

“Our communities have never seen anything like this in urban Los Angeles,” Pérez said in a statement. “The reality is that climate change is here and will continue impacting communities everywhere. What makes this worse is decades ago, Big Oil knew this would be our future, but prioritized lining their own pockets at the expense of our environment and the health of our communities.”

State Senator Caroline Menjivar, a San Fernando Valley Democrat and another bill coauthor, said in a statement that taxpayers and property owners have faced the financial burden of damages tied to climate change. She said a bill package crafted by lawmakers, which includes Wiener’s legislation, will hold polluters financially responsible.

The Golden State faces increasingly volatile weather, with Wiener saying it’s on the front line of the climate crisis. He pointed to floods, mudslides and extreme heat that force higher costs on communities.

Wiener said that initial damage assessments from the Palisades Fire are over $250 billion. A set of atmospheric rivers that hit the North State in 2024 cost some $4.5 billion.

Additionally, California between 2018 to 2022 had the most acres burned each year and most homes destroyed because of wildfires than any other state.

Wiener said he anticipated the bill would face a tough path through the Legislature.

“We condemn the latest attempt by Senators Scott Wiener and Sasha Renée Pérez to divert attention away from the real reasons for the devastation in Southern California, including arsonists, environmental activist lawsuits preventing forest management and brush clearing, mismanagement by state and local officials including cuts to firefighting budgets, and lack of water resources that left brave firefighters without sufficient tools to do their job," said Rock Zierman, CEO of the California Independent Petroleum Association, in a statement to Courthouse News.