Santa Barbara High School Students Walk Out to Make Polluters Pay

A world on fire in one hand and a big bag of cash in the other: This is how oil industry executives appear to young climate activists, if you base it on the “Make Polluters Pay” posters displayed by student protestors on Friday morning.  

Around 60 teens from Santa Barbara High School walked out of class and marched down Anapamu Street looking like an oil spill. They donned hazmat suits covered in black handprints and chanted: “Hey, hey, ho, ho, fossil fuels have got to go!” 

They joined 50 schools statewide that walked out to advocate for the Polluters Pay Climate Superfund Act (SB 684/AB 1243). This legislation would force responsible companies to pay for environmental damages attributed to fossil fuel production — such operations produced more than one billion tons of greenhouse gas pollution in California between 1990 and 2024, according to the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the bill’s sponsors.

Under the bill, the state would calculate these climate damages through 2045 and assess compensatory fees from producers and refiners, which would be proportional to their emissions over the last 35 years. Fees would go into a new fund for remedying damage and disasters tied to climate change — such as intensified wildfires, floods, drought, heatwaves, superstorms, and sea-level rise. 

Students do have a stake in the matter. Beyond taking lives and destroying property, recent disasters have displaced families and caused millions of California students to miss school. The Thomas Fire and subsequent debris flows in 2018, for example, interrupted many Santa Barbara students’ educations for weeks. 

The students’ journey on Friday ended at the County Administration Building a few blocks away, where they were joined by other movers and shakers to speak out against big oil and demand polluters to “Give us back our future!” 

“We often feel so sad and depressed and worried, but this right here, this is hope, this is the future,” said sophomore Ethan Maday, the young leader who organized the walkout with community partners. He spoke with the passion and verve of a seasoned activist, despite his notably young appearance. 

“I can’t vote. A lot of us here can’t vote, but look at us. We’re here, influencing policy, lobbying, standing up for what we believe in,” he beamed.

Jenna McGovern, a recent UC Santa Barbara graduate organizing to stop offshore oil expansion in Santa Barbara, noted the local consequences of climate change: watching the hills burn, seeing beaches blackened by oil, and witnessing the sky turn that eerie orange hue when communities and wildland are ablaze. 

“We’ve been told for too long that the climate crisis is our fault; that the problem is that we’re drinking coffee with straws, we’re not driving electric cars, we’re not washing out jars before we recycle them,” she said. “But the reality is that the destruction we’re living through, the wildfires, the floods, the toxic air, they come from a handful of fossil fuel corporations.”

Younger generations are inheriting “this messy world,” she noted, while “corporations have raked in record profits.”  The Make Polluters Pay Act reflects a golden rule, she added, that “if you break it, you buy it, you make a mess, you clean it up.”

“We’ve paid the price,” she lamented. “And will continue to do so until real change happens today.” 

According to the day’s speakers, the Climate Superfund could raise more than $150 billion, without taxes on families, to invest in resilient schools, safe infrastructure, and clean energy.

Santa Barbara County Supervisor Joan Hartmann expressed her vehement support for the bill and the county’s recent decision to phase out the onshore oil industry, despite the inevitable impacts on the local economy and jobs.

“The thought that keeps going through my mind is, what are good jobs on a dying planet?” she mused. “We really need to take this seriously, and the federal government is not doing that. They’re doing everything they can to increase oil production.”

She noted that recent disasters have cost the county upwards of $100 million.

“We still haven’t been reimbursed for that, so the federal government doesn’t want to pay for that anymore. We can’t afford it. So who’s going to pay? We should have the polluters pay.” 

Right now, the bill is stuck in legislative limbo, pending a hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee. But the teenage advocates found hope in their action, with Maday exclaiming to his peers: “They’ve called it a dying bill — is it dying? No, it is not, because of you guys.”