Imagine getting a letter from your home insurance company explaining that your annual bill was going to be 10 times higher this year, even though you'd never made a claim for damages to your home.

Thousands of American homeowners—including many in my home state of Hawaii—don't need to imagine. Last year, insurers in our state drastically raised rates to reflect the increasing threat of extreme weather disasters and to recoup money they had to pay out after the deadly 2023 Maui wildfires.

But why should everyday people be asked to shoulder these costs, while an industry that actively made the problem worse pays nothing? Giant fossil fuel corporations predicted decades ago that the unchecked burning of their products could lead to out of control weather disasters, creating chaos in insurance markets. Don't they bear some of the responsibility for making this nightmare a reality?

Insurers shouldn't push the costs of climate change on to their policyholders while letting the companies causing it off the hook. That's why Hawaii is pursuing a fairer model that other states can emulate: make the fossil fuel industry help pick up the tab. Our state recently passed

As policymakers nationwide grapple with a growing insurance crisis, our first priority should be to protect consumers from extreme rate hikes and stabilize markets for insurers. When you make a mess, you clean up after yourself. It's time for the fossil fuel industry to do the same.

Chris Lee serves as president of the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators, a bi-partisan organization of 1,500 state legislators from all 50 states. He has served in the Hawaii State Legislature since 2008, where he authored the nation's first state laws transitioning utilities to 100 percent renewable energy, directing economy-wide carbon neutrality, and targeting zero-emissions transportation.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.