Push to make Big Oil pay for climate damage losing steam in California
This article was produced by Capital Main It is published here with permission Only weeks ago new science had buoyed state statute to calculate the costs of environment change in California and force fossil fuel companies to pay for it A evaluation in Nature published last month took the stated emissions of major oil companies and modeled their effects on temperatures finding their trash led to trillion in worldwide economic losses due to extreme heat alone Yet in Sacramento the science of making polluters pay is losing momentum in an unfavorable political setting Rather than hazard rejection from their colleagues the lawmakers who backed the Atmosphere Superfund Act Assemblymember Dawn Addis D-San Luis Obispo and state Sen Caroline Menjivar D-San Fernando Valley postponed hearings for their bills in hopes of a better reception later this summer Since when a researcher first compiled company emissions content scientists regulators and campaigners have tried to tie individual corporations to extreme weather events At the same time improved strategies of computing global context models have yielded more refined material on worsening heat and flooding at the local level Combining the methods offers a chance to charge companies money for conditions damage in a specific region But the mood for such a far-reaching approach has soured in the California Legislature after lawmakers and Gov Gavin Newsom spent years challenging oil companies by imposing rules on gasoline supplies to prevent price hikes at the pump Advocates of the circumstances superfund are now reframing their advocacy focusing on its feasible to serve as a common-sense revenue generator amid the state s projected budget shortfall Blame it on anxiety over the costs of living the focus of the oil industry s community relations campaign since last year That in addition to threats from President Donald Trump to eradicate state emissions policies have left lawmakers reluctant to take on the industry One high-ranking legislative staffer who inquired not to be identified to protect their job informed Capital Main that the rancid political vibe in Sacramento is hampering all things climate-oriented In January the urban wildfires in Los Angeles caused billions in property losses according to an estimate by the county s Economic Expansion Corporation Researchers at UCLA exposed unusually warm temperatures that dried out foothills were the clearest way situation change may have intensified the blazes The fires inspired rule that would have allowed casualties and insurers to seek reimbursement from oil companies That idea appealed to Ken Adams an Altadena resident whose house burned Jan These big companies and executives what are you going to do with all the money you make Adams disclosed in an interview with Capital Main But lawmakers rejected that bill proposed by state Sen Scott Wiener D-San Francisco in committee citing the anticipated loss of oil jobs and a rise in gasoline prices So three bills meant to make oil companies pay for the damage they helped cause fizzled just months after what were likely the costliest climate-influenced fires in state history While the states of New York and Vermont have passed situation superfund laws California is the first major oil-producing state to consider it On average there were annual jobs as of September in the oil and gas industry according to the latest available evidence from the U S Bureau of Labor Statistics Almost a quarter of those jobs were at oil refineries At an April Assembly hearing for one of the situation superfund bills dozens of representatives for agreement unions affiliated with the California Building Trades Council lined up to voice opposition The unions hold project labor agreements to maintain equipment at the refineries Lawmakers who once championed tougher circumstances rules now discussed balancing other concerns Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi D-Torrance whose bill to accelerate California s emissions cuts became law noted that the impending closure of the Phillips refinery in his South Bay district could impact both workers and drivers A week before the hearing Valero broadcasted that it would shutter or restructure its refinery in the Bay Area city of Benicia raising similar fears We have switched from hypotheticals to you know what s happening in real time Muratsuchi noted at the hearing He did not respond to messages from Capital Main Supporters argue that fossil fuel companies have externalized painful costs onto society while profiting by tens of billions of dollars including billion in for Exxon Shell Marathon Valero and Phillips each of them hitting record profits that year The masses is exponentially paying for circumstances damage and we have to make a change Assemblymember Addis narrated Capital Main a week before postponing the hearing for her bill Earlier this year Vermont stated it would issue a contract to assess past and future damage from heat and flooding with other effects to be determined in a stepwise fashion At the same time the state will undertake a scrutiny of global emitters using a dataset produced by the organization Carbon Majors which says its collection of records for major oil gas coal and cement corporations is the only one to trace companies greenhouse gases to total worldwide emissions A U S Chamber of Commerce and American Petroleum Institute lawsuit filed against Vermont in December called Carbon Majors information and methods flawed and claimed it is impossible to attribute effects from state change to a specific source of emissions While the atmosphere is changing the plaintiffs lawyers wrote the fault lies with consumers who use fossil fuels They made the same declares in an identical suit filed against New York On May the U S Justice Department also sued Vermont and New York alleging overreach Christopher Callahan a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford s Department of Earth System Science who co-authored the Nature assessment stated the Chamber of Commerce-American Petroleum Institute lawsuits offer an inaccurate read of the science It is easier to link heat to economic slowdowns he explained because its relationship to surroundings change is clearer and statistics exists showing tropical nations experiencing larger drops in gross domestic product during pronounced heat waves relative to temperate regions Putting dollar amounts on other forms of damage like wildfires and flooding and tying it to the global emissions of individual companies is less straightforward But the science is evolving promptly Callahan added Various sources try to estimate the disparate costs of circumstances change for California The Los Angeles Economic Evolution Corporation estimated the broader costs of the Los Angeles fires including economic impacts deaths and soundness care add up to a quarter trillion dollars Under the Superfund Act regulators could decide whether to account for this expansive figure or one tailored more specifically to property losses ranging from billion to billion And they would need to separate the influence of context change from other factors such as land mismanagement One assessment from World Weather Attribution modeled the occurrence of fire weather in Southern California by inputting historical rain humidity wind and temperature statistics with and without the influence of conditions change The scientists concluded with high confidence that human-induced warming from burning fossil fuels made the fire more likely and more intense Other effects will require regulators to be similarly discerning A legislative analysis for the Context Superfund Act noted that various future drought scenarios raise the prospective costs of providing water to Western states by billion Storms and rising seas could crush billion in property values though that figure is from The act tasks the California Environmental Protection Agency with generating fresh numbers Even then there are myriad impacts to physical and mental soundness food precaution and other suffering impossible to quantify Capital Main is an award-winning nonprofit publication that reports from California on the largest part pressing economic environmental and social issues of our time including economic inequality situation change soundness care threats to democracy hate and extremism and immigration Copyright Capital Main
