On January 8th in 2025, the sky was oppressive, swirling black and a blaring orange as the sun was coming up over east Los Angeles. I was driving away from the Eaton Fire in Altadena, California after getting an evacuation notice in the middle of the night. My friends and I watched the fire spread minute by minute on CalFIRE’s tracker the night before, and we prepared go bags with necessities. Even after a short dash outside to get gas for the drive north my breath was tightening with asthma as I drove with one hand and puffed on my inhaler with the other. Panic kicked in– my mind was cataloging all I had thrown in the car, trying not to cry as I realized I left behind irreplaceable family photos, anxious that my renter’s insurance may have expired, trying to plan out how I would manage if I lost my home.
In the end, my apartment was safe. But thousands in Los Angeles lost everything and have not been able to recover over a year and half after the fires burned. Estimated losses from the Los Angeles fires in 2025 are in the range of $75-168 billion, with many dropped from insurances and still unable to return home. The dust and debris from the destruction is toxic, still poisoning surrounding areas and homes, spreading lead and asbestos to communities hundreds of miles away in dust carried by the wind. This event continues to have long lasting, life changing impacts for so many, and will take decades if not longer for the communities impacted to ever fully recover from.
Events like the 2025 LA fires are becoming more frequent. California’s latest Climate Assessment Report, out at the end of October, makes it very clear that wildfires and other climate disasters will only get more common, more intense, and cause even greater harm to our health and property.
There is nothing natural about the frequency and growing intensity of these climate disasters hitting California and many other places across the country. Worsening fires, floods, hurricanes, and drought are all directly caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Fossil fuel companies knew for decades that burning coal, oil, and gas would cause the climate crisis, and still spent millions in disinformation campaigns to block climate policies aimed at curbing dangerous fossil fuel pollution.
Now, families are paying the price: having to bail themselves out when climate disasters take everything. Forced to pay skyrocketing insurance premiums if we want to attempt and save our family from financial ruin from these kinds of events – if you can even get insured at all. Our communities face more intense heat, destructive flooding, larger and more disastrous wildfires and hurricanes- all while costs to recover and rebuild balloons by the day. These disasters are directly caused by the choices of the richest industry in the world, and they should be held accountable to the trillions in damages across the country their negligence has already caused due to climate change. It is time to make polluters pay.
Instead of holding corporate polluters accountable, some state lawmakers are passing liability shield laws that would protect fossil fuel companies from paying for the damage they've caused.
That leaves taxpayers and communities footing the bill for climate disasters.
We can't let polluters write themselves a get-out-of-jail-free card. Communities deserve better.
Corporate polluters, and the politicians they fund, want the public to accept the consequences of their business model while protecting the companies themselves from accountability. We should reject efforts to create special liability shields for an industry whose products have contributed enormously to the climate crisis and pollution that harms people and damages property. It doesn’t have to be this way. Fossil fuel companies must pay for the damages they’ve caused, and our state and federal elected officials have a responsibility to hold them accountable to pay to clean up their mess. Take action and tell your federal representatives to block liability shields for fossil fuel companies today!