Senator Scott Wiener. (Photo: Sen. Wiener press conference)
Senator Wiener Proposes Oil and Gas Industry Pay for ‘Climate Driven Disasters’
By blaming ‘climate change’ for California’s disasters, there is no accountability for politicians
By Katy Grimes, January 27, 2025 4:28 pm
Californians are paying the price for climate change events and catastrophic wildfires happening in the middle of winter, said Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), as he announced his new bill, Senate Bill 222, “the Affordable Insurance and Climate Recovery Act.”
But Senator Wiener has a surprise waiting in his bag of tricks – he wants you to be distracted by the Big Oil boogey man instead of focusing on irresponsible lawmakers who have been passing ridiculous, ruinous laws for years: These “climate driven disasters…” these “climate fueled disasters…” according to Sen. Wiener, “are causing all kinds of harm in our state.”
“Who pays for them?” he asked. “It’s us, taxpayers and insurance policy holders.”
But says Senator Wiener, one industry is not paying for the disasters, and he wants them to pony up.
“The fossil fuel industry is fueling climate change,” Sen. Wiener said. “They [fossil fuel industry] knew it was leading to disaster for decades, and have incapacitated lawmakers” to make money, he said.
Senator Wiener says his bill, SB 222, “will ensure that the fossil fuel industry and those harmed by climate change disasters” will be made whole.
Wiener’s new bill will hold “Big Oil” responsible for natural disasters in California. And in doing so, will allow insurance companies and victims of fires, floods, rain and sleet, wind events, mudslides, and earthquakes to sue fossil fuel companies for damages.
As a political friend asked, “Will they hold a press conference tomorrow to sue Sees Candy for obesity?”
Do you see what Sen. Wiener is doing? He’s pitting the insurance industry against the oil and gas industry, hoping no one notices that it’s really dreadful laws and policies by the Democrats in power for decades who brought us to this latest disaster.
It’s a stunt. It will get Senator Wiener headlines. But it is also supposed to provide California’s politicians an alibi for their conspicuous role in California’s latest disaster in the Palisades and Los Angeles fires.
Wiener’s bill is in response to the Pacific Palisades fire, and ensuing LA fires, which have destroyed entire neighborhoods, businesses and schools, along with 28 fatalities.
In addition to blaming the oil and gas industry, his bill requires an evaluation of the state’s Fair Access to Insurance Requirements Plan, FAIR Plan, and would allow it to sue the oil and gas industry as well.
In response to Senator Wiener’s announcement Monday, the Western States Petroleum Association released a statement:
“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. We need real solutions to help victims in the wake of this tragedy, not theatrics. Voters are tired of this approach.
“Every day, consumers, including Sen. Wiener, rely on and choose to use gasoline-powered cars and purchase products made from fossil fuels. Our economy depends on oil and gas even as California looks to reduce its carbon footprint. The vulnerabilities in the existing oil and gas infrastructure must be addressed. Otherwise, technical realities will get in the way of aspirational goals if left ignored.
“The announcement of today’s proposal is the latest installment of an ongoing effort to scapegoat our industry — and the thousands of hardworking women and men who keep California running — for political gain, while complex problems continue to go unsolved.”
The California Independent Petroleum Association issued a statement regarding Senator Scott Wiener’s press conference today:
“We condemn the latest attempt by Senators Scott Wiener and Sasha Renée Pérez to divert attention away from the real reasons for the devastation in Southern California, including arsonists, environmental activist lawsuits preventing forest management and brush clearing, mismanagement by state and local officials including cuts to firefighting budgets, and lack of water resources that left brave firefighters without sufficient tools to do their job” – Rock Zierman, Chief Executive Officer of the California Independent Petroleum Association.
The Globe cautioned readers last week: Remember there is ‘NO Climate Crisis’ Says Coalition of 1,600 Actual Scientists, as we reported last year:
“There is ‘NO Climate Crisis’ says a coalition of 1,600 actual scientists” in a recent letter to the California Air Resources Board. In fact, the scientists find that “California is in no danger of unusual drought: The annual precipitation in California has fluctuated greatly over the last 150 years, with only a slight decrease.”
As one actual scientist reported, “objective science on climate has been sacrificed to politics.”
We just examined 20 years of fires via CalFire data and found that their data reinforced that California wildfires are historical. Modern fires appear more destructive as Californians have spread residential living into more rural areas. It is also evident that most of the recent fires are man-made – arson, utility related, and homeless-caused fires.
By blaming “climate change” for California disasters, there is no accountability for politicians, and they get to continue to pass meaningless bills, and hold long drawn-out hearings on it, while accomplishing nothing… when they should be examining the state’s dangerous policies preventing underbrush removal, controlled burns, creating fire breaks, severe water use restrictions, sending 80% of California’s water to the ocean in unimpaired flows for “environmental” purposes, resulting in entire Central Valley towns without water, farms drying up, and threats of rationing to urban water users.
“Pretty sure that’s not constitutional, but that’s never stopped them before. Absolutely ridiculous proposal,” Assemblyman Bill Essayli said Monday afternoon on X. Essayli is a former federal prosecutor.
As Edward Ring explained, “Year after year, environmentalists litigated and lobbied to stop efforts to clear the forests through timber harvesting, underbrush removal, and controlled burns. Meanwhile, natural fires were suppressed and the forests became more and more overgrown. The excessive biomass competed for the same water, soil, and light a healthier forest would have used, rendering all of the trees and underbrush unhealthy. It wasn’t just excess biomass that accumulated, but dried out and dead biomass.”
Senator Wiener is targeting an entire industry as blame for California’s natural disasters. Think about the ramifications of such a loathsome stunt.
- Judge Ursula Jones Dickson is New Alameda County District Attorney - January 28, 2025
- Sen Wiener’s Bill to Hold ‘Big Oil’ Responsible for Natural Disasters Includes ‘Disinformation’ Punishment - January 28, 2025
- CA Assembly Republicans Announce Wildfire Prevention, Response & Recovery Legislation - January 28, 2025
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Did this Senator really believe that, by installing a mic on a trash recepticle for a speech, it would appear to be anything different?
If the oil & gas industry is going to have to pay for climate warming, perhaps the state should pay for all the economic benefits that the oil & gas industry has provided to the citizenry over the last century. It could run into the $trillions. I can’t imaging all the ground and air pollutants from the horses and whales slaughtered for their oil to light and heat everyone’s house. Ah, the good old days.
this person is the source for so many of the horrible California policies. Brain dead democrats just go right along.
The only civilization they will allow is the one that they have complete control over.
Californians better wake up soon.
We need a political climate change in this state in the form of ridding all branches of the state government of Democrats. Democrats are the problem, not the solution. Maybe with voter ID we wouldn’t have so many idiot Democrats, like Senator Wieny, ruining the state
Can we PLEASE just sue him and any elected official that create laws that CAUSE HARM to their constituents,
like the many laws that he ushered in ( without putting it before voters) ?!?!
This man did not miss a day of work during the COVID lockdown ,
He wrote new laws almost daily.
Does Scott Wiener HEAR himself when he comes out with this stuff? Guess not, because here he is again, spouting nonsense and lies that couldn’t be more ridiculous, in the face of the suffering and loss of victims of these devastating fires. As Katy Grimes points out, it’s a stunt, another one, and trust me, it is NOT going to go over well. Is it possible for Scott Wiener to be a human being, ever?
Down here in the affected area of the Eaton Fire, those of us whose homes survived know many people whose homes did not. If Scott Wiener and those who think like him would grow up and stop playing games, this horrendous loss would not have happened in the first place. It’s bleak here. Altadena and parts of Pasadena look like a war zone. The local grocery store has one-quarter of its usual customers. We’re all walking around like zombies trying to process the destruction and loss and hellish personal experience and major life interruption that has happened to people we care about, through no fault of their own. A good friend, an elderly widow, lost the home where she had spent her entire adult life, along with the neighborhood and community she was a part of until this happened. She is a strong person, thank God. Our next door neighbors know TEN people, including their best friends, whose homes are now soot and ash and cinders. Whoever we talk to, similar stories.
Scott Wiener had better wise up and realize his usual lying patter and naked political opportunism is not going to be received well; that his preposterous nonsense will be met with real anger and resentment this time around. He needs to understand that the shock and trauma fire victims are experiencing has a tendency to entirely change a person’s perspective amidst the misery they are enduring and will completely remove the patience and tolerance they might otherwise have for foolish, cynical California politicians like him.
His suggestion is about as crazy as his leather collars and chaps ensemble! But we are to take him seriously at this point?
Wiener investigations are underway, arson may be the real culprit not your go to grift, Climate Change.
A woman on her YouTube channel accidentally recorded an attempted arson fire where she lives which is in the hills of Los Angeles. Check out the video, very interesting.
Investigators are on it!
The truth will come out and Wiener will look stupider than he already does whether in an ill fitting suit or leather chaps sans underwear.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkXL1GGAiPw&list=WL&index=1
It was recently reported that 1.5K of the federal prison inmate population WAS comprised of biologically male specimens with gender confusion.
No doubt failed virtue signalers of California government, who long for thier own brand of Early Times back in the Castro, are concerned that perfectly biological women in California institutions will demand Trump science based policy.
The tactic being used by this sociopath to sue oil companies is the same one tried against gun manufacturers – that is, allowing victims of gun violence to sue gun makers. Shifting the blame for political purposes is not surprising for this reprobate Wiener and it will fail again.
It’s mostly a publicity stunt but Wiener is dangerous. Too many of his bills get passed. I can’t wait until Trump weighs in on this bill.
Democrat Senator Scott Wiener is a deep-state Harvard trained lawyer from back east who looks like he climbed out of a crypt. He’s a calculating ingrate as Katy Grimes as previously pointed out who hides behind a Jewish identity while pushing the deep-state WEF globalist agenda. He has an extreme creepy and predatory obsession with vulnerable youth and probably has a dungeon in his home were all sorts of perversion is carried out?
While Senator Scott Wiener insanely blathers about suing oil companies for climate change like a typical Democrat WEF globalist stooge, President Donald Trump announced on Monday night that he sent the military to California and used his emergency powers to increase water flow from the Pacific Northwest. The announcement came after the president said he would assert more federal government control over water management in California in the wake of the devastating wildfires that burned over 15,000 structures in the Pacific Palisades, Altadena, and Pasadena – one of the most destructive fires in California history, rivaled only by the Camp Fire in 2019. President Trump is also directing meetings of a committee of cabinet-level officials that can green light ventures even when the survival of a species is at stake. The panel, known informally as the “God Squad,” has met only a handful of times over the past four decades.
“The days of putting a Fake Environmental argument, over the PEOPLE, are OVER” said President Trump.
(https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/01/28/trump-announces-military-to-california-uses-emergency-powers-to-turn-on-the-water-from-pacific-northwest/)
Yes and btw, that new water policy was reviewed in a real WH press briefing today.
Beautiful to behold the expressions on faces of dem media propagandists, as several important issues were explained thoroughly… as they are here.
With endless climate excuses, this “green” Dem. guy would raise fuel prices in California yet further, The green movement has finally been mugged by global economic ($) realities and failed Climate Fetishes.
Accordingly, the fading green movement will be sidelined as a political caudal, foreshadowed by global energy priorities.
Can you imagine the cost to consumers? Of course, that is the goal to make the cost so high we just cannot afford it anymore just like our natural gas bills.
This guy is brilliant.. All we need to do is ban all petroleum based products and the climate will stop changing, but only in California. Once the rest of the country see’s how successful this new law is, I’m certain it will soon become the law of the land. And we have the Wienerman to thank for this . It really is brilliant, blame someone else for the devastation you create… And as I say to my out of state friends who come to visit…. Welcome to the land of earthquakes, floods and fires, and now I’ll add one more greeting, it’s also the land of brain dead politicians… May God have mercy on that idiots soul…