A bill that would require major oil companies to pay fees to cover climate damages based on their past emissions was reintroduced in California on Friday.
What happened: California state Sen. Caroline Menjivar (D) and Assemblymember Dawn Addis (D) introduced the “Make Polluters Pay Climate Superfund Act” in both houses of the Legislature.
“At the core of these disasters are the Californians whose lives and property have been destroyed,” said Menjivar. “We must be relentless and creative in pursuing all avenues to redirect the financial burden away from the consumer as we mitigate the consequences of human-made disasters.”
What’s in the bill: The bill, SB 684, would create a program in California’s EPA to assess fees on major fossil fuel producers that did business in the state and emitted more than 1 billion metric tons of climate-heating CO2 from 1990 to 2024.
