NY, HI, CA Propose Laws To Claw Back Skyrocketing Insurance Costs - Driven By Global Warming - From Oil & Gas Industry

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The climate crisis has already arrived for most Americans — not by battering down their doors but by entering people’s mailboxes in the form of higher bills and nonrenewal notices from their insurance companies. That’s how U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse put it at a March 12 news conference about climate change and home insurance organized by the Center for Climate Integrity. Given the known role that the climate crisis has played in driving home insurance costs up, a handful of states have begun considering bills aimed at shifting some of the costs of climate-related disasters from individuals over to big oil companies.

New York, California, and Hawai’i all introduced bills this year that backers say would let state attorneys general sue major oil and gas companies over the costs incurred from climate catastrophes. Any money recovered would go to reimbursing people hit by higher insurance rates while maintaining “last resort” property insurance programs run by the states including wildfire resiliency efforts in California. The oil and gas industry bears a special responsibility, backers of those bills argue, not just because burning fossil fuels is the biggest contributor to climate change — but because, for decades, the industry misled policymakers, sowing disinformation about their products and climate change itself in an effort to stall an energy transition.

With the Trump administration turning a blind eye to the climate crisis, the human and financial toll of the harms caused by climate denial continue to mount according to advocates of the bills. That means the potential liabilities faced by the companies responsible will continue to grow — unless something changes. “There are simply no longer any scenarios in which the fossil fuel industry gets to pollute for free and in which there’s a pathway to climate safety,” Sen. Whitehouse said at the news conference. “It’s as simple as that.”“ Fossil fuel companies knew decades ago that their products would lead to these disasters, yet suppressed those studies, manipulated policymakers, and obstructed the transition to clean energy,” California State Senator Scott Wiener, who in February sponsored that state’s Affordable Insurance and Recovery Act (SB 982) to hold Big Oil accountable for rising insurance rates due to climate hazards, said at the news conference. “Californians should not have to continue to pay the full cost of climate-driven disasters given the role the fossil fuel industry has played in getting us here.”

Oil industry groups have begun mobilizing to fight those state efforts.They scored an early success this year in Hawai’i. The state’s Senate Bill 3000 unexpectedly stalled out in committee earlier this month after legislators received public comments in opposition to that bill from the oil trade group American Petroleum Institute (API) and the local Chamber of Commerce.The API called the bill unconstitutional, arguing that the law would retroactively penalize the legal sale of fossil fuels and unfairly single out the oil industry.“‘Climate superfund’ laws in Vermont and New York are being challenged in federal court, including by the U.S. Department of Justice and national business groups, on the ground that these statutes improperly impose retroactive strict liability for global greenhouse gas emissions,” the API wrote.

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https://www.desmog.com/2026/03/24/climate-disasters-are-hitting-homeowners-through-insurance-bills-and-states-want-big-oil-to-pay/