Community members in wildfire-stricken state push for major change with new legislation: 'We need this bill'

In the aftermath of the California wildfires, the community mobilized at the Pasadena Community Job Center on March 11 for the Invest in Communities, Not Fossil Fuels rally.

According to Colorado Boulevard Newspaper, the group brought awareness to the state's new Polluters Pay legislation that would force dirty energy companies to pay for the damage their companies have done to the environment. The group also demanded that the CalPERS, the state's largest pension fund, divest from dirty energy and re-invest in a sustainable portfolio to help the community and planet.

The rally had a somber backdrop of the wildfires that have devastated the community. Eddie Aparicio, a local artist, even used ash from the fires to create a mural to raise awareness of what warming temperatures have done and to help the community heal.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a 2021 study that it supported concluded that rising temperatures have "been the main driver of the increase in fire in the western United States."

Center for Biological Diversity's Climate Law Institute Director Kassie Siegel said, "The L.A. fires show with heartbreaking clarity how much we need this bill to make the biggest climate polluters pay for the astronomical damage they've caused."

The most recent fires caused "more than $250 billion in damages," per the Center for Biological Diversity's Climate Law Institute. Twenty-nine people also died.

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Oil, coal, and gas emit polluting gases into the atmosphere that are not just harmful to the environment but to you, too. The Natural Resources Defense Council noted, "a 2017 study published in Environmental Health Perspectives, some 17.6 million Americans are exposed daily to toxic air pollution from active oil and gas wells and from transport and processing facilities."

If dirty energy companies were forced to pay for the damages caused by natural disasters, it could make them rethink their business models.

Calling for divestment is also a great way to gain awareness and build a social movement to adopt more sustainable energy sources.

Young people have been in on the divestment movement for a while now. For instance, New York University divested its interests in dirty energy companies in 2023 after the students had a decades-long campaign, starting in 2004.