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Oil giant Chevron’s recent $13 million fine for more than 70 oil spills in California grabbed headlines and set a record for the biggest fine ever paid to the state Department of Conservation.

Yet this welcome example of polluter accountability falls far short in addressing Chevron’s devastating — and highly profitable — multi-million gallon spills. Yes, Chevron’s oil spills are profitable: The oil giant profits from sucking up and selling its spilled oil. It earned more than $11 million from one spill — almost matching that record fine. So why stop spills when they’re money-makers?

And that’s not to mention Chevron’s biggest offense: Spewing massive amounts of greenhouse gases to wreak havoc on our climate.

It’s well past time for polluters to pay up. And new legislation would make them do it.

Opinion:

First, let’s use Chevron as an example to consider how oil companies currently dodge accountability for their harm to people and our planet. The oil giant resolved more than 70 spills — including a months-long disaster of 1.2 million gallons — with a single check. The record-setting fine is a drop in the bucket given Chevron’s $2.3 billion fourth quarter profit.

Enforcement is uneven at best. Chevron hasn’t paid a dime for separate spills of 84 million gallons (and counting) in Kern County and 6 million gallons in the same area.

Although it’s easier to see and smell an oil spill, climate pollution is even deadlier and far more damaging. If Chevron gets fined for its oil spills, that same “polluter pays” principle should apply to the company’s spewing of millions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

After all, Big Oil’s role in the climate catastrophe is traceable, quantifiable and undeniable.

That’s why last year California launched the nation’s biggest lawsuit against Big Oil over climate deception. As Gov. Gavin Newsom said, “This climate crisis is a fossil fuel crisis.”

Now, new legislation would put commonsense corporate accountability into law. State Senator Caroline Menjivar, D-San Fernando Valley, has introduced the Polluters Pay Climate Cost Recovery Act. Senate Bill 1497, a “polluter pays” law for the climate, would require companies most responsible for climate pollution, like Chevron, to pay into a new fund directed toward achieving the state’s climate goals.

California isn’t the first to consider this idea. Similar bills have been introduced on the federal level and on the state level in New York, Maryland and Massachusetts. One in Vermont is on the brink of becoming law. Before that, we had similar funds for lead paint and tobacco to address harm caused by those products.

California can further its national climate leadership as the first major oil-producing state to impose a fee for climate damage — that is, if lawmakers are ready to cut ties with fossil fuel funding, ignore the army of industry lobbyists and, instead, put people and the planet first.

The alternative is to continue to foist the costs of climate disasters onto the public. In recent years California wildfire damages have well exceeded $70 billion. Just one climate-driven storm this year caused up to $11 billion in damages, and another extreme atmospheric river last year killed 22 people and cost as much as $34 billion.

Californians shouldn’t be paying the price with their lives and dollars while Big Oil strikes it rich off their own toxic oil spills.

Climate disasters are getting more severe and more costly. We can’t afford to keep paying for the aftermath while the companies responsible pay extravagant sums to their executives and enrich shareholders.

Instead of polluters lining their pockets with profit from their deadly products, let’s put those funds toward commonsense climate protections that will give current and future Californians and our wildlife the rich, healthy future we deserve.

(Hollin Kretzmann is an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute.)

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