As Fires, Floods Rage, California’s Push to Make Big Oil Pay Stalls — For Now

California lawmakers and environmental advocates behind a bill that would have required large gas and oil companies to pay for the effects of climate change promised to keep pushing after the legislation stalled in Sacramento.

The Polluters Pay Climate Superfund Act of 2025, introduced in February, faced fierce opposition from Republican lawmakers and a slew of influential groups, including the California Chamber of Commerce, as well as millions of dollars in lobbying efforts by the fossil fuel industry. It also emerged during a challenging legislative year, marked by a major overhaul of the California Environmental Quality Act and a significantly reduced state budget.

Although the legislation had support from the public and Democratic lawmakers, the bill’s authors decided to push the idea into the next legislative cycle, erasing any chance of it becoming law this year.

“We had fewer oil bills come forward this year, and they absolutely put a target on this one,” said Assemblymember Dawn Addis, D-Morro Bay, a co-author of the bill. “When you have this kind of money being spent by the oil industry, it is challenging, but we’ve won these fights before and we’re prepared to keep fighting.”

The bill would have directed the California Environmental Protection Agency to identify the state’s largest polluters, those responsible for more than a billion metric tons of greenhouse gases between 1990 and 2024. Regulators would then conduct a climate cost study to determine the amount each business would need to contribute to a new fund within the state treasury. It was modeled after similar laws in New York and Vermont.

Fossil fuels are the primary driver of human-caused climate change and account for around 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the United Nations. These emissions warm the atmosphere and, in turn, play a significant role in increasingly devastating disasters, such as recent wildfires, floods and extreme heat.

Climate researchers believe the science is clear: “Emissions need to be reduced by half by 2030” to avoid the worst impact of anthropogenic climate change, according to the United Nations.

But efforts targeting companies that pump or refine fossil fuels in California are proving to be an uphill battle.

A representative for Chevron, one of the most profitable oil companies in the world and operator of a Bay Area refinery in Richmond, said the corporation had no comment on the latest bill.

However, Jim Stanley of the Western States Petroleum Association, a trade group whose members include the state’s largest refiners, said in a statement that the legislation would likely raise gas prices and “retroactively punish companies for providing a legal product.” Stanley called the bill “a misguided proposal to retroactively punish companies for providing a legal product that was, and remains, critical to our state’s economy.”

The Western States Petroleum Association spent nearly $3.5 million on lobbying in the first quarter of 2025, and Chevron spent more $3.7 million. While oil companies did not use all of that money to oppose the Climate Superfund Act, the legislation was among a list of bills and agencies they tried to influence.

In comparison, one of the bill’s prominent supporters, the Center for Biological Diversity, spent just over $51,000 on lobbying efforts in the first quarter of the year.

Supporters don’t buy the oil industry’s claims that gas prices would skyrocket if the bill were to become law. Maya Golden-Krasner, deputy climate director at the Center for Biological Diversity, argued that prices would be unaffected and said the oil companies’ efforts to sink the bill reveal a lack of ownership in their role in exacerbating flooding in places like Texas, wildfires in Los Angeles, and record-breaking heat summer after summer.

“This is the opportunity to hold them accountable and use that money to invest in the transition as quickly as possible to get out from under the thumb of the oil industry,” Golden-Krasner said.

Still, she said, there were also lingering questions about the bill, including whether the costs would be passed on to taxpayers or whether people might lose their jobs as a result. Additionally, legislators got caught up in reducing the state’s budget and passing an overhaul of the California Environmental Quality Act, a landmark environmental law that critics say has slowed development and made it too expensive to build.

As a result, Golden-Krasner said, the team behind the Climate Superfund Act decided to turn “it into a two-year bill.”

“This bill is absolutely not dead,” she said. “It has a huge amount of support among Californians, and everybody is still really enthusiastic about pushing for it. So, we just needed a little bit more time. It’s a really big idea.”

For Addis and the bill’s main author, Sen. Caroline Menjivar, D-Panorama City, the mission to get Big Oil to pay for its climate impact is personal.

In 2023, major flooding wreaked havoc in at least 20 communities in Addis’ 200-mile-long district on the Central Coast during back-to-back atmospheric rivers.

“I saw a child’s stuffed animal floating through the living room, and everything was ruined,” Addis said. One woman “broke down in tears on my shoulder, and it was because of the climate crisis that this happened. It was because of what the oil and gas industry has done to our environment and has been doing for decades, knowingly.”

In Los Angeles County this year, the Eaton Fire destroyed more than 9,000 homes in Menjivar’s district, leaving many still reeling from the aftermath half a year later.

“If we don’t do something to increase the revenues for these kinds of catastrophes, we’re going to be falling even more behind on being able to combat or be responsive or be preventative for the next kind of catastrophe,” Menjivar said in an April hearing.

Addis argued that the bill would help the state’s budget picture in the long run by “creating funds” for climate work at the local level, such as hardening homes to withstand future wildfires and boosting electrification in low-income communities.

Though the bill has stalled for now, it will live on.

Celeste Jale, Menjivar’s press secretary, told KQED the bill is still in committee. Now that it is a two-year bill, Jale said supporters will have more time “to continue strengthening the coalition and building support behind the bill.”