Press Releases
August 29, 2025
CALIFORNIA - CSAA Insurance, the fifth largest home insurer in California, is asking the state’s insurance regulator to approve a 6.9% rate increase for their policyholders in response to “the increasing frequency and severity of wildfires and other natural disasters.” This follows similar requests this year from Mercury Insurance and State Farm.
“It’s not fair that everyday Californians are forced to pay higher insurance rates because of a relentless stream of climate disasters, while the Big Oil companies fueling the crisis rake in profits and pay nothing,” said Iyla Shornstein, Political Director of the Center for Climate Integrity. “Policymakers need to stand up for their constituents and fight to recover damages from the fossil fuel companies whose products and deception created this growing crisis.”
Extreme weather disasters are causing billions of dollars of damage — costs that insurance companies are passing onto their customers through higher rates and dropped coverage. The higher insurance costs are also reportedly driving up rents across the state.
A growing movement of lawmakers, nonprofits, and two former California insurance commissioners are calling for laws to protect working families from perpetual climate-driven insurance rate hikes, by making major oil and gas companies pay instead. A recently released report from the Center for Climate Integrity illustrates this nationwide climate-driven insurance crisis and highlights efforts in states across the country to make the fossil fuel industry help shoulder the financial burden of extreme weather disasters. These include Senate Bill 222 in California, which would empower the state’s insurers to take Big Oil to court for damages instead of raising rates on their customers.
Major oil and gas companies knew decades ago that their products would worsen extreme weather disasters that are driving the insurance crisis. But rather than change course, those same companies engaged in a decades-long campaign to deceive the public about the reality of climate change and their products’ role in exacerbating global warming. That campaign continues today, with Big Oil pitching false solutions to climate change while continuing to expand their production of fossil fuels.
A February poll from CCI and Data for Progress found that California voters widely support efforts to enable insurance companies to recoup extreme weather disaster costs from the fossil fuel industry.