Hannah Soyer
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California’s Senate is introducing a bill known as “The Climate Science Truth and Accountability Act,” which would allow oil companies to be sued for deceiving the public about the link between gasoline use and climate change. This bill would allow these companies to be sued for environmentally damaging events or actions that took place as far back as 30 years ago.

Sen. Ben Allen, D-Santa Monica, who introduced the bill, said in a statement, “Given the environmental, health, and economic impacts that Californians are already paying for as a result of the fossil fuel industry’s many years of public deception and the efforts to block action on climate change, it is important to hold the industry responsible.”

There is no doubt whether the bill will face much opposition when it goes to the floor. However, it would be wise of the California government to overlook partisan disagreements and approve it. Various investigations have recently found that ExxonMobile and the oil industry were aware of fossil fuel’s negative effects on climate change nearly 40 years ago.

In July 1977, James F. Black, a senior company scientist for Exxon, told a gathering of the most powerful people in the company that carbon dioxide from the use of fossil fuels would eventually harm the planet and those living on it. In response to this, Exxon began to research even further the effects of carbon-dioxide emissions on the Earth. However, about a decade later, they completely switched sides and began propagating climate-change denial, probably because the conclusions they drew would spell danger for their business.

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Now, if California’s bill were to pass, California fossil-fuel companies could face similar investigations, and legal consequences. Hopefully, this bill is passed in California, and hopefully, other states or even the federal government will begin to follow suit.

Such legal measures will undoubtedly cause gas prices to rise due to potential lawsuits against these oil- and gas-producing companies, but this is just something that will have to be dealt with in a productive way. Ideally, other forms of fuel and transportation will become cheaper and easier to attain. In order for the use of fossil fuels to be effectively eradicated, the large oil companies need to be penalized, not individual consumers, and California’s proposed bill is a great place to start.