Promote the big oil wages for losing steam in the California Legislature » Yale Climate Connections

Only a few weeks ago, New Science upgraded state legislation to calculate the cost of California’s climate change and forced fossil fuel companies to pay for it. Nature Research A report published last month reported that major oil companies have reportedly developed an impact on temperature, finding that their pollution caused $14 trillion in global economic losses due to extreme heat alone.

In Sacramento, however, the science that makes “polluter payments” is losing momentum in an adverse political environment. Legislators (D-San Luis Obispo) and state Senator Caroline Menjivar (D-San Fernando Valley) who support the Climate Super Fund Act – a bill that hopes to get a better reception later this summer.

Since researchers first compiled company emission data in 2013, scientists, regulators and campaigners have tried to connect individual companies to extreme weather events. Meanwhile, improved methods for calculating global climate models have generated more data on heating and flood deterioration at local level. The combined approach provides an opportunity to charge money for climate damage in a particular region.

But the California Legislature sentiment has caused changes in the California Legislature in the California Legislature. Advocates of the Climate Superfund are now re-advocating their advocacy, focusing on the potential as a “common sense income generator” amid the state’s projected budget shortage.

Blame it on anxiety about the cost of living – the focus of the oil industry’s public relations movement since last year. In addition to President Donald Trump’s elimination of the threat of national emissions policies, it also made lawmakers reluctant to accept the industry. A senior legislative staff member demanded not to be identified to protect their work, telling Capital & Main that the “rancid” political climate in Sacramento is hampering everything climate-oriented.

In January, urban wildfires in Los Angeles caused billions of dollars in property damage, according to estimates from the County Economic Development Corporation. UCLA researchers found that unusually warm temperatures in the dry foothills are the “clearest way” climate change may exacerbate the intense alcohol.

The fire inspired legislation that would allow victims and insurers to seek reimbursement from oil companies. The idea attracted Ken Adams, an Altadena resident whose house was burned down on January 7.

“How will you deal with all the money you make in these big companies and executives?” Adams said in an interview with Capital & Main. But lawmakers rejected the bill proposed by state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-san Francisco) on the grounds that the committee’s potential losses and rising gasoline prices. So three bills designed to get oil companies to pay caused damage just a few months later, which is perhaps the most expensive fire in state history.

Although New York and Vermont have passed climate superfund laws, California is the first major producer to consider it. According to the latest available data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of September 2022, as of September 2022, there are 38,558 jobs per year. Almost a quarter of these jobs are in refineries.

During a conference hearing on a climate superfund bill on April 21, union representatives affiliated with the California Construction Trade Commission lined up for the opposition. The union holds a project labor agreement to maintain equipment in the refinery. Parliamentarians who once advocated for stricter climate rules now discuss balancing other issues.

The 2022 bill of the General Assembly, Al Muratsuchi (D-Torrance) (D-Torrance), accelerates the turnover of California's emissions into law, noting that the imminent closure of the Phillips 66 refinery in the South Bay Area could affect workers and drivers. A week before the hearing, Valero announced that it would close or “reorganize” its refinery in the Bay Area, a week after it ignited similar concerns.

“We have moved from assumptions to what happens in real time,” Muratsky said at the hearing. He did not respond to Capital & Main's news.

Supporters believe fossil fuel companies pay the painful costs to society while profiting for hundreds of billions of dollars, including $129 billion in 2022 for ExxonMobil, Shell, Marathon, Valero and Phillips, 66, each of whom hit record profits with record profits. “The public is paying for climate loss and we have to make changes,” Addis, the compiled form, told Capital & Main for a week before postponing the hearing.

Vermont said earlier this year that it would sign a contract to assess past and future damage to heat and floods – other effects to be determined in a step-by-step manner. Meanwhile, the state will use the organization's carbon specialized dataset to study global transmitters, which says it collects records from 180 major oil, gas, coal and cement companies and is the only one tracking the company's greenhouse gases to the total global emissions.

The lawsuit filed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the U.S. Petroleum Institute against Vermont in December called Carbon Majors’ data and methods “flawed” and claimed it was impossible to attribute the effects of climate change to specific sources of emissions. The plaintiff's lawyer wrote that “the climate is changing” but the error lies in consumers using fossil fuels. They made the same claim in the same lawsuit against New York. On May 1, the U.S. Department of Justice also sued Vermont and New York for excessive charges.

Christopher Callahan, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Earth Systems Science at Stanford University, co-authored Nature Research.

He explained that it is easier to link heat to the slowdown because it has a clearer relationship with climate change, and that data exist that in the temperate regions, there is a greater reduction in tropical domestic products in the context of significant heat waves. Put dollar amounts into practice, such as wildfires and floods, and tie them to the global emissions of individual companies. But “science is moving rapidly,” Callahan added.

Various sources attempt to estimate the different costs of climate change in California.

Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation estimates the greater cost of the Los Angeles fire, including economic impacts, deaths and health care, totaling up to a quarter of a trillion dollars. Under the Super Fund Act, regulators can decide whether to say this spacious number or be tailored to property losses from $28 billion to $53.8 billion.

They need to distinguish the impact of climate change from other factors such as poor land management. A study from world weather attribution simulates the occurrence of fire weather by inputting historical rainfall, humidity, wind energy and temperature data with and without the impact of climate change. Scientists ended with “high confidence” and the possibility of warming caused by burning fossil fuels made the chance of a fire 35% higher and the strong intensity of 6%.

Other effects will require regulators to identify similarly. Legislative analysis of the Climate Superfund Act points out that some future drought scenarios increase the potential cost of providing water to Western countries, increasing by $750 billion. Storms and rising oceans could damage $119 billion in property value, although that figure began in 2010. The legislative mandate of the California Environmental Protection Agency generates new numbers. Even then, there will be countless impacts on physical and mental health, food security, and other “unquantifiable” suffering.

Originally published by Capital & Main, the story is part of Climate Now, a global news collaboration that enhances the reporting of climate stories.