Addis’ ambitious bill would force oil companies to pay for historic, and future, climate damage

Less than one month after Dawn Addis took the oath of office for her first term in the California Assembly, she was trudging through mud, surveying the flood damage sustained by a Soquel mobile home park. It was early January 2023, and what would become a historic and costly string of atmospheric rivers had only just begun. 

This past November, Addis went on to win reelection to represent Assembly District 30, which stretches from Capitola down past Pismo Beach. Like clockwork, the first week of January again brought a historic climate disaster as the Los Angeles wildfires flattened Altadena, burned the Pacific Palisades and threatened the country’s second largest metropolitan area. 

Addis, a former Morro Bay city councilmember, tells me those two experiences, mixed with the Trump administration’s clear vengeance against California, have ignited a sense of urgency in her work. This year, she has not shied away from the big swing.  

The defining trend among the 18 bills she’s introduced since February is a willingness to take on major industries and hold them accountable for their impacts on quality of life. Her 2025 legislative binder includes proposals to require transparency in the fashion industry’s supply chain, transfer the burden of proof for heat-related workplace injuries from farmworkers onto agricultural companies, and return to local governments the power to reject large battery storage facilities — a direct response to the fire at a Moss Landing battery plant in her district earlier this year. 

Addis’ most ambitious proposal, however, takes on the state’s oil and gas industry, and attempts to hold individual companies that operated in California accountable for climate-related damages in proportion to the greenhouse gases and pollution they’ve produced between 1990 and 2024, and into the future through 2045. 

The Polluters Pay Climate Superfund Act of 2025 started out with a miss. Los Angeles Sen. Caroline Menjivar’s original proposal last year advanced through early committee votes on the Senate side; however, it didn’t have a companion bill in the Assembly and eventually died on the vine. In 2025, Menjivar and Addis revived the legislation in their respective chambers, and the bills had some momentum after clearing their first rounds of committee votes. However, the authors postponed the next set of hearings in April to, as Addis puts it, continue conversations shaping the bill.

The Polluters Pay Act represents what Addis calls the “next frontier” of environmental policy in California: holding those who got us into this mess financially accountable in order to help fund ambitious climate projects. The Polluters Pay Act would require a complex set of equations to determine who is responsible and for how much. It is also estimated to potentially bring in hundreds of billions of dollars at a time when the state’s budget is ailing from federal cuts. 

If passed, California would be following the example set by Vermont and New York, who passed polluters pay laws in 2024. Both states are now facing legal challenges from the Trump administration. 

California’s version still has a few legislative ladders to climb, most immediately being brought back for votes in the Assembly’s and Senate’s judiciary committees. Addis did not provide a timeline on when that might happen, saying only that the conversations with supporters and opponents to shape the bill are continuing. 

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Lookout: Is taking these big swings against major industries something you imagined doing when you first ran for office, or have the issues of the moment pulled you into this direction? 

Dawn Addis: It’s important to me to take big swings because that’s what the people of the Central Coast elected me to do. They elected me to stand up for them and take a bold stance and to have a strong voice. What we do here in California is important, and I am working with an urgency because the times call for that. The Trump administration is one of the largest threats to California, and the people of the Central Coast, when it comes to attacking our environment, our clean energy goals, so that’s one piece of it. The other piece is that we are really living in a time where it’s become harder and harder for normal people to look at the future with optimism. All of my bills do have this theme of urgency because these are really, really tough times for people.

Lookout: I would argue your most ambitious bill this session is the Polluters Pay Act, which you are carrying with Sen. Menjivar. How does that sense of urgency inform this proposal? 

Addis: It is an ambitious and big bill because the taxpayers are paying the bill for all of this, year after year, while mega oil companies are profiting and getting billions of dollars in subsidies, both in tax breaks and also because the rest of us are paying for the environmental degradation. Living through those first floods in 2023, and then the Los Angeles wildfires happening, brings a new level of urgency to the table. Then, in the midst of all this, you have a president who is saying “drill, baby, drill,” right? It’s urgent that California stand up for the taxpayers and for regular working people in bringing oil to the table to pay their fair share. 

Lookout: So, if this bill passes, would oil and gas companies pay for something like the Los Angeles wildfires?

Addis: The way the bill works is that it would task the state’s Environmental Protection Agency with looking at who are the big oil polluters between 1990 and 2024 and who have operated in California, and what damages did they create in the state? It ends up being a pretty small group of companies that have created that level of damage. CalEPA would then assess a fee, and that money could be used for things like wildfire prevention and mitigation, infill housing development, electrification projects, you know, making sure the money is going into places that are going to build infrastructure and the projects that we need.  

CalEPA would use a form of modeling called attribution science, and it would look at the conditions before 1990 and the conditions post greenhouse gas emissions and assess whether certain climate disasters would have happened. It can be challenging at face value to figure out damages but there’s absolutely a verifiable way to do that – it’s similar to other laws that we have that address toxins, such as the federal superfund sites. What is the condition before toxin exposure, and what are the conditions after? 

Lookout: This is such a loaded bill with a lot of implications and complicated formulas, but it could be a real windfall for California during tough budget times. What is the reality that this gets passed this year? 

Addis: We’re continuing the conversations to build consensus around how we assess damages, what the money can be used for, and making sure we’re listening to any concerns that come forward. We had a really successful press conference last week where Jane Fonda made an appearance. There is quite a bit of support, but also some folks have expressed concern, so we’re continuing through those conversations. 

Lookout: Is there any concern about driving oil and gas companies out of California? The fees have the potential to be significant and the oil and gas industry represents hundreds of billions of dollars in California’s economy. 

Addis: The oil and gas industry has trillions of dollars in subsidies worldwide, and they don’t have to pay for their environmental damages. I would say they’re doing just fine financially. They will always say that no matter what we do, it’s not going to work for them, but history tells us that no matter what we do they always end up on the winning side, and the taxpayers end up on the losing side. And the taxpayers are really the ones we should be worried about right now, particularly in the face of all the economic damage the federal government is doing to us.

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