California Democrats seek to allow 'climate disaster' victims to sue oil-and-gas industry

The devastating Los Angeles wildfires have been blamed on factors ranging from high winds to overgrown brush to budget cuts, but Democratic legislators are pointing the finger at another culprit: the oil-and-gas industry.

Democratic state Sens. Scott Wiener and Sasha Renee Perez  introduced Monday legislation to allow insurance companies and victims of “climate disasters” to seek legal damages from fossil-fuel businesses operating in California.

“Californians shouldn’t be the only ones to pay the costs of devastating climate disasters,” Mr. Wiener said in a Monday statement on X. “From last year’s floods to the fires in LA, we know that the fossil fuel industry bears ultimate responsibility for fueling these disasters.”

No state has been more hostile to fossil fuel than California, which has a strict renewable-energy mandate and ban on sales of gas-powered vehicles by 2035, but Mr. Wiener argued that the industry has thwarted the climate-change agenda.

Oil-and-gas companies “knew this was going to happen,” he said, but “obstructed policy changes to transition away from fossil fuels & toward clean energy.”

The legislation would also require the FAIR Plan, the state’s property insurance program, to take oil-and-gas companies to court to recover damages after natural disasters.

Catherine Reheis-Boyd, Western States Petroleum Association President and CEO,  accused the Democrats of grandstanding.

“It is a shame that Sen. Scott Wiener and Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez see the Los Angeles fires as nothing more than a political opportunity,” said Ms. Reheis-Boyd in a Monday statement. “We need real solutions to help victims in the wake of this tragedy, not theatrics.”

She called the legislation “the latest installment of an ongoing effort to scapegoat our industry.”

“Every day, consumers, including Sen. Wiener, rely on and choose to use gasoline-powered cars and purchase products made from fossil fuels,” Ms. Reheis-Boyd said. “Our economy depends on oil and gas even as California looks to reduce its carbon footprint.”

Last week, Assembly Democrats  approved a $2.5 billion wildfire-recovery bill while rejecting a Republican amendment to sink $1 billion into fuel-reduction projects.

Mr. Wiener said the legislation would address the state’s insurance crisis by “forcing the fossil fuel companies driving the climate crisis to pay their fair share,” but University of Colorado professor Roger Pielke Jr. said the insurance debacle has other roots.

He pointed to Proposition 103, the Insurance Rate Reduction and Reform Act, a ballot initiative backed by consumer advocate Ralph Nader and passed by voters in 1988.

“The law has led directly to California’s insurance crisis of 2025 because it prevents insurance companies from charging actuarially sound rates for homeowners insurance,” said Mr. Pielke on his Substack page, The Honest Broker.

His Jan. 20 post  entitled, “California’s Insurance Crisis: Guess What? It’s Not Climate Change,” found that California had the largest insurance-rate suppression of any state from 2018-22, explaining why companies like State Farm and Allstate are fleeing the Golden State.

Initial assessments have put damages from the Palisades Fire at upwards of $250 billion. Now 94% contained, the wildfire that began Jan. 7, has burned 23,448 acres, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire.