Even as the Trump administration is atavistically encouraging fossil fuel extraction, and companies like Sable are jumping on the bandwagon, recklessly risking our coastline and dirtying our air, we Californians still have a terrific opportunity to continue to look to the future by making extraction less profitable while at the same time mitigating the disastrous economic and environmental effects being wrought by climate change.
That opportunity is the proposed Polluters Pay Climate Superfund Act of 2025, which is currently making its way through our state legislature. Modeled in large part on the EPA’s Superfund, this legislation would charge the biggest polluters — companies that are responsible for putting more than one billion metric tons of emissions in the air globally between 1990-2024 — to pay into a fund that would help relieve the state’s (meaning the taxpayers’) financial burden for recovery from climate disasters like the L.A. Wildfires. Additionally, the fund would pay for projects to create greater resilience, and to help mitigate future disasters by, for example, installing solar panels in low-income communities.
High fire season is around the corner, and that’s a reminder of just one cost burden due to climate change — the fact that many of us are paying much higher premiums for fire insurance — and we’re the lucky ones; others can’t get fire insurance at all.
New York and Vermont have already passed similar legislation. If holding the biggest polluters accountable sounds good to you, please contact Senator Limon https://sd21.senate.ca.gov/contact and Assemblymember Hart https://a37.asmdc.org/contact.
