Sorry, Dave Jones, Californians Can’t Afford Your Climate Crusade

Apparently, former California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones missed the memo: Californians are broke, burned out, and done footing the bill for elite climate fantasies that only make life more expensive.

In his latest appearance in the New York Times and Mercury News as California’s self-appointed “climate oracle,” Jones argues that oil and gas companies should be sued to pay for the state’s insurance crisis. Because obviously, what struggling Californians need right now is more lawsuits, longer court battles, and even higher energy prices.

Mr. Jones is the director of the Climate Risk Initiative at the University of California, Berkeley, was California’s insurance commissioner from 2011 through 2018.

Let’s get real, Dave.

Californians are already paying nearly $5 a gallon for gas, and two major refineries are shutting down. The road to $8-a-gallon gas is wide open. How much higher do you want it to go? How many working families need to flee the state before Sacramento realizes we need relief, not another ideological crusade masquerading as climate policy?

Jones calls climate change the “canary in the coal mine” for rising insurance rates. But he conveniently ignores the real culprits:

• California’s failure to manage its forests
• Lawsuits that block firebreaks and brush clearing
• Homeless starting fires
• Environmental policies that treat basic mitigation tools like they’re radioactive

Leadership doesn’t point fingers at oil companies from a Berkeley podium. It solves problems. And right now, everyday Californians are being priced out of insurance, housing, food, and fuel, while Sacramento fiddles with its climate virtue signals.

Jones touts “home hardening” and “defensible space” like it’s revolutionary. 

You know what else would help?

• A government that actually clears brush;
• A State Legislature that doesn’t let environmental activist lawsuits override public safety;
• A government that listens to the millions barely hanging on, not the climate lobbyists in the Capitol.

Oil company lawsuits might earn you applause in a faculty lounge. But for the rest of us, they mean fewer jobs, higher gas prices, and zero change to what’s really causing California’s wildfire and insurance disaster.

So no, Dave. Californians don’t need more finger-pointing, more lawsuits, or more costly stunts disguised as solutions.

We need leadership and accountability. And most of all, a break from this blind crusade that’s made this state unaffordable for millions of Californians.

If you really want to help Californians, Dave, sit this one out.