How labor killed a bill to let California wildfire victims sue Big Oil for climate change

Oil companies had their hackles up this year after Sen. Scott Wiener introduced a controversial bill that would allow victims of wildfires and other climate disasters to sue them for causing climate change.

Facing potentially billions of dollars in losses, Big Oil had a lot to lose.

But oil companies took a back seat last week when it came time to persuade environmentally friendly lawmakers to kill the legislation.

Instead, Big Oil’s most influential allies in California’s Democratic-controlled Legislature – the unions that represent oil industry workers – led the opposition. They successfully persuaded a committee made up of pro-labor Democrats to kill the measure, which had support from nearly every California environmental organization.

Despite California’s reputation for taking the lead on climate change, the death of Senate Bill 222 is the latest example of how environmentalists’ most aggressive policies regularly fizzle out when Big Labor works on behalf of Big Oil.

“That’s how the oil companies breach the machine in Sacramento,” said Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, one of the groups that supported the legislation.

A spokesperson for the Western States Petroleum Association, which typically represents oil company interests in Sacramento, declined to comment on why the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California took the lead in killing the legislation.

Chris Hannan, the trades council’s president, said union members feared SB 222 would have a “chilling effect on our economy, setting gas prices through the roof, with absolutely no environmental benefits.”

“This bill’s terrible, terrible policy,” he said. “And it puts our jobs in jeopardy and puts our state in jeopardy.”

Big money turns out to oppose climate bill

At last week’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Wiener, a Democrat from San Francisco, argued his proposal was urgent after January’s massive wildfires tore through Los Angeles County, destroying thousands of homes and exacerbating the state’s housing and insurance crises.

“We’re not supposed to have destructive wildfires in the middle of winter,” he told the committee. “And yet that is the new normal in California. And right now, who is paying for these climate disasters? Who’s paying for them? We’re paying for them.”

Wiener’s measure would have allowed victims to sue oil companies for damages, but they would have to prove in court that climate change was specifically to blame for their losses, which is not easy. While scientists have documented the connection between climate change and fossil fuels, the evidence is less definitive linking fossil fuels to specific extreme weather events such as floods, droughts or wildfires.

State Sen. Scott Wiener on the Senate floor at the state Capitol in Sacramento on April 29, 2024.

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Miguel Gutierrez Jr.

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CalMatters

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Two witnesses Wiener brought to testify in support of SB 222 had lost their homes to wildfires. They argued that it’s time for the fossil fuel companies to pay their fair share.

“Disasters like this are going to keep happening, but you can make the financial burden less awful for all of us,” Moira Morel, whose home burned in the Eaton Fire, told the committee.

After they spoke, representatives of more than 20 environmental and consumer attorney groups walked up the microphone urging the committee to pass the measure.

The California Federation of Teachers, which has given at least $2.5 million to legislators since 2015, was the only major political donor supporting it, according to the Digital Democracy database.

But that paled in comparison to what its opponents have spent on politics: at least $22.7 million to members of the Legislature since 2015, according to Digital Democracy.

They included major business groups such as the California Chamber of Commerce and the Civil Justice Association of California, whose board of directors includes representatives from major corporations including Amazon, Pfizer, Apple and Meta, which didn’t didn’t directly take positions on the bill. Those two advocacy groups alone have given nearly $2 million to legislators since 2015.

Michael McDonough, a lawyer who spoke on behalf of the business groups, told the committee the bill was likely unconstitutional and “retroactively punishes the legal production of fuel for this state, which has been critical for California’s growth since its founding, and which this Legislature has supported for nearly 150 years.”

Organizations representing fossil fuel companies that opposed the bill but gave no testimony during last week’s hearing also have donated at least $1.7 million to legislators since 2015.

Democrats find union argument persuasive

But the Legislature’s biggest donors that opposed SB 222 are the trade unions. The State Building and Construction Trades Council, the California State Association Of Electrical Workers and the California State Pipe Trades Council and their affiliate unions have given at least $12 million since 2015, according to Digital Democracy.

“SB 222 unfairly targets one industry, while ignoring the broader systematic factors that contribute to climate change,” the trade unions’ lobbyist, Keith Dunn, told the committee.

Dozens of rank-and-file union members – pipefitters, boiler makers, painters, iron workers and others – took the mic after Dunn to urge lawmakers to spike SB 222. Many of them looked fresh off the jobsite, wearing safety glasses and T-shirts emblazoned with their union logos. It was a striking contrast in the Capitol, where business wear tends to be the standard attire.

The measure needed seven votes to advance out of the Senate Judiciary Committee; it failed with just five votes in favor and eight recorded votes opposed. Yet only one Democrat on the committee actually voted “no.” The rest didn’t vote at all, which counts the same as a no vote. As CalMatters has reported, the widespread practice of dodging tough votes allows legislators to avoid accountability.

There are few groups more influential in state politics than unions in California, despite only representing one-sixth of the state’s workforce.

As CalMatters reported, labor groups regularly get their way on bills at higher rates than other prolific lobbying groups, due in part to their massive political donations. Around a quarter of the members of the current Legislature are current or former union members.

One of them is Sen. María Elena Durazo, a Democrat from Los Angeles and a member of the committee who didn’t vote on the measure. The long-time former labor activist told the committee that companies that cause climate change should be held accountable, but not at the expense of workers.

“I don’t want to let anyone off the hook, but I don’t want to let working people be on the hook for everything that happens,” Durazo told the committee.

Vapor is released into the sky at an oil refinery in Wilmington, California.

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Bret Hartman

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Reuters

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Her office didn’t respond to an interview request to ask why, if she opposed the measure, she didn’t cast a firm “no” vote. The four other Democrats on the committee who also didn’t vote for SB 222 – Aisha Wahab, Angelique Ashby, Tom Umberg and Jesse Arreguín – declined CalMatters requests to explain in an interview why they didn’t vote.

Sen. Anna Caballero, who represents Merced, was the one Democrat who voted “no.” Like Durazo, she found the union members’ arguments persuasive. She said the costs of the measure would be too high. She urged the Legislature to focus on promoting climate-friendly technologies such as “hydrogen, carbon capture, biogas, biomass.”

“Those are the kinds of jobs that will create a livable wage and also give us the opportunity to meet our climate goals,” Caballero told the committee. “And I think we’re all interested in the same goal ... but we’re not going to get that through this litigation.”

Sen. Henry Stern, a Democrat who lost his home in the 2018 Woolsey Fire, addressed the union workers directly before he voted to support the legislation.

He said the bill was about making multinational corporations accountable. He said the oil companies had been threatening “their workers that they’re going to fire them” if the Legislature passed SB 222.

“This is targeting those shareholders and those boardroom folks who are making the big decisions back at some corporate headquarters out in Houston or somewhere else, but not you,” he told the committee.

Wiener said in an interview that he wasn’t surprised the trades unions “are fighting to keep those jobs.”

“But it continues to surprise me that the California Legislature doesn't pass the oil accountability bills, with only a few exceptions,” he said. “I hope that the Legislature will start taking a much more proactive stance to hold the oil companies accountable for the huge harm that they have done and are doing to California and to the planet.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.