A world on fire in one hand and a big bag of cash in the other: This is how oil industry executives appear to young climate activists, if you base it on the “Make Polluters Pay” posters displayed by student protestors on Friday morning.
Around 60 teens from Santa Barbara High School walked out of class and marched down Anapamu Street looking like an oil spill. They donned hazmat suits covered in black handprints and chanted: “Hey hey, ho ho, fossil fuels have got to go!”
They joined 50 schools statewide that walked out to advocate for the Polluters Pay Climate Superfund Act (SB 684/AB 1243). This legislation would force responsible companies to pay for environmental damages attributed to fossil fuel production — such operations produced more than one billion tons of greenhouse gas pollution in California between 1990 and 2024, according to the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the bill’s sponsors.
Under the bill, the state would calculate these climate damages through 2045 and assess compensatory fees from producers and refiners, which would be proportional to their emissions over the last 35 years. Fees would go into a new fund for remedying damage and disasters tied to climate change — such as intensified wildfires, floods, drought, heatwaves, superstorms, and sea-level rise…