As climate change takes an increasing toll on California, who should pay for the damage caused by rising sea levels and increasingly ferocious wildfires, floods and heat waves?
Fossil fuel companies would like taxpayers to continue footing the bill while they reap the benefits of burning coal, oil and methane gas. That is not right. Companies whose products are responsible for vthe majority of greenhouse gas emissions must be responsible for the costs.
That's the concept behind Polluter-Paid Climate Cost Recovery Acta bill in the California Legislature that would create a Superfund-style program to raise money from major fossil fuel companies like Chevron and ExxonMobil to help the state pay for environmental damage caused by their products.
Other states, including New York, Massachusetts and Maryland, are considering similar bills called “Climate Superfund.” They build on the 1980 federal Superfund law that established an industry-funded trust fund to pay for the cleanup of abandoned hazardous waste sites and holds current and former operators and other responsible parties accountable for the costs. California would not be the first to act; Vermont lawmakers earlier this month sent a Climate Superfund bill to your governor's desk.
Senate Bill 1497, by Senator Caroline Menjivar (D-Panorama City), rightly focuses on the world's largest fossil fuel companies, arguing that they are responsible for much of the climate impacts California is facing. experiencing and paying today.
The fund would come from the estimated 41 fossil fuel extraction and refining companies that meet the bill's threshold of being responsible for more than one billion metric tons of emissions between 2000 and 2020. Each would pay a portion of the costs. climate changes to the state based on a study to be conducted by the California Environmental Protection Agency. Full cost recovery could run into tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars, according to legislative analysts, and could be paid in installments over 20 years.
It may seem like a lot, but even that wouldn't fully offset the climate-related costs and damages California is expected to suffer in the coming years from just those two decades of pollution. Wildfires alone have caused tens of billions in property destruction, health costs and other losses in California in recent years.
The new climate fund, supporters say, could pay for everything from building seawalls and zero-emission vehicles to forest and wetland restoration and wildfire-fighting costs. A new approach to addressing climate dangers is also warranted given California's precarious, roller-coaster budget, which Menjivar, the bill's author, said shows that “we need creative solutions to relieve taxpayers of this load”.
Just a few years after Gov. Gavin Newsom boasted about setting aside $54 billion to fight climate change, state lawmakers now face a $45 billion budget shortfall and plan to cut billions of that same amount. climate programs. The state's other big source of climate finance, the cap-and-trade program, has raised more than $27 billion over the past decade, but is designed to generate less revenue as emissions decline.
Oil companies have posted some of the biggest profits in their history in recent years, so it's no surprise that the fossil industry and trade groups are opposing the bill to continue raising money at the expense of the planet and the public. . But it's time for them to sacrifice some of their huge profits to clean up the environmental mess they helped create. It is not fair for taxpayers to bear such an overwhelming burden.
Passing this bill will not be easy as it requires a two-thirds vote. But it would show that California is serious about responding to the climate crisis in a fiscally responsible way, without putting all the costs on ordinary people. It's also an opportunity for state legislators, including so-called moderate Democrats who have a history of kowtowing to the oil industry (which is one of the biggest lobbying spenders in Sacramento), to show that they will put health and well-being at the forefront. California residents before the short-term profit interests of polluters.
