Hawaiʻi lawmakers have revived a bill that would empower property insurers to collect payments from oil and gas companies to help cover the costs of cleaning up after major storms fueled by climate change.

The renewed legislative effort comes as residents on Oʻahu’s North Shore, Mānoa, Kāneʻohe and other parts of Hawaiʻi are digging out from catastrophic flooding this week after back-to-back Kona lows drenched the state.

Those local efforts have already gotten the attention of the national oil and gas lobby, which worked several weeks ago to help kill a similar bill in the state Senate that would have empowered the attorney general, rather than insurers, to pursue damages linked to specific events.

The end goal remains the same — to have the oil and gas companies whose emissions contribute to climate change ultimately bear the costs of such disasters instead of ratepayers.

“Given the climate disasters happening right now, we wanted some sort of vehicle moving to address those,” said Kāneʻohe Rep. Scot Matayoshi. “It’s worth a shot.” The Commerce and Consumer Protection Committee, which he chairs, passed the revived legislation, Senate Bill 1166, last week.

State leaders have worked in recent years to try and keep rising insurance rates affordable for local property owners, particularly condominium associations, as storms, floods and wildfires hit the islands with increased ferocity. 

Last year, they revived the long-dormant Hawaiʻi Hurricane Relief Fund, which was launched after Hurricane ʻIniki hit Kauaʻi in 1992 to give local condo associations a public insurance option when the private market isn’t feasible. Nearly 100 associations have since signed up for the program, Sen. Jarrett Keohokalole said, seeing an average premium savings of around $100,000.

Keohokalole introduced the bill that nine of his Senate colleagues in the powerful Ways and Means Committee voted to strike down during a joint hearing.

The bill now moving through the Legislature doesn’t include that hurricane insurance fund, Matayoshi said, because the attorney general can already pursue damages for those insurers. However, it would empower a host of other insurers who offer local coverage for floods, wildfires and other damages to go after oil and gas.

Lori Lum, a government relations executive with the Honolulu law firm Watanabe Ing and lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute, testified last week that the bill is unfair because oil and gas companies have operated for decades under permits and regulations approved by the state and federal governments.

However, bill supporters point out the companies represented by the institute, such as Exxon Mobil, were found to have misled the public for decades about what they knew about climate change and its potential impacts. The industry, they argue, should be liable for climate-related damages the same way the tobacco and opioid industries have been held to account for widespread health impacts.

“When you look at what happened with the big tobacco settlements or the opioid industry, it’s the same kind of thing,” said Evan Weber, a climate activist with the progressive political action committee Our Hawaiʻi. “These companies deceived the public and basically lied about their product and then, you know, other folks had to kind of bear the cost of that.”

Longer Droughts And Heavier Rains

As some lawmakers look to hold Big Oil accountable for future climate disasters, the state along with Honolulu and Maui counties have all separately filed lawsuits against those oil and gas companies for past damage climate change has already caused the islands. The suits remain pending.

It’s difficult to say precisely what role climate change played in the Kona low systems that hit Hawaiʻi during the past two weeks and the disastrous flooding they brought, said Tom Giambelluca, a retired University of Hawaiʻi professor who currently oversees the islands’ Mesonet System, a network of weather-monitoring towers.

The storms are consistent, he said, with trends climate scientists are seeing. Hawaiʻi has been getting drier in recent decades with longer lasting and more severe droughts and less rainfall. When the rains do hit, he said, the storms have been more severe and prone to cause flooding.

“It’s not like we never had extremes before. You know, something like this could have happened with no warming, probably,” Giambelluca said. “But these kinds of events seem to be getting more frequent.” 

Keohokalole said he’s heard lawmakers make similar arguments as Lum. “We’ve definitely got their attention,” Keohokalole said of the oil and gas lobby, “and I think that’s a good thing.”

“This is the third generational rain event we’ve had in the last four weeks,” he said of the recent storms. “Should the residents just consider it an act of God and open up their checkbooks whenever this happens when the record is clear about who knew what and when they knew it?”

Lum did not respond Monday to a request for comment.

The revived bill that Matayoshi’s committee heard last week already cleared the Senate last year, so it doesn’t have to go back to that chamber this session, which ends in early May. 

The next time the Senate will take up the measure — including those nine members who shot down a similar bill this year — will be during the pivotal conference sessions in April. That’s when members of both chambers meet at the end of the session to hash out differences in bills.

If the bill dies this year, Keohokalole said, he intends to reintroduce something similar next year.

“Part of the objective here is to start this conversation about who should pay when this stuff hits,” he said. “We’re going to make some trouble. This isn’t going away.”

Civil Beat’s coverage of climate change and the environment is supported by The Healy Foundation, the Marisla Fund of the Hawai‘i Community Foundation and the Frost Family Foundation.