As climate-driven extreme weather events and rising sea levels devastate infrastructure and human health, costs to states are rising. Expensive but necessary measures to strengthen communities have been postponed because there is a lack of money or political will. At the same time, fossil fuel companies – whose decades of deceit and continued resistance to a clean energy transition are responsible for our climate emergency – continue to generate huge profits.
You don’t have to be a climate scientist or an economist to recognize that something is desperately wrong with this picture. Now Vermont – with a population of just under 650,000, the second smallest among states – has stepped up and accomplished what no other state or Congress has been able to do.
The Democratic-controlled General Assembly, with a handful of Republican votes, approved a measure requiring the world’s largest extractors and refiners of fossil fuels to pay for some of the damages and adaptation costs the state has incurred and faces due to the climate change. The state’s Republican governor allowed it to become law.
The measure has been described as “historic” and “pioneering”. Forks. But at its core, the idea behind the law is simple. Vermont seeks to reinforce one of the most basic rules that children learn in kindergarten, if not before: When you make a mess, you clean it up.
The federal government introduced this lesson in 1980, when Congress created the Superfund program to clean up thousands of sites contaminated by toxic and hazardous waste. That law requires companies responsible for the pollution to clean it up or reimburse the government for the work, regardless of whether they acted with fault or criminal intent.
That same principle will now apply in Vermont to the companies responsible for most of the greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the planet. Other states, including California, New York and Massachusetts, are considering similar legislation. (The Rockefeller Family Fund, which I direct, has spent approximately $200,000 since 2022 supporting environmental efforts in Vermont, including passage of the climate Superfund law.)
The law covers the period from 1995 to 2024 and empowers Vermont to evaluate companies based on their share of the emissions they produced during those years. The money will pay for damages caused by those emissions and also for measures to adapt to climate change by reducing exposure to floods, storms, crop damage, wildfires and other consequences.
Not all fossil fuel companies are subject to the law. It must have been responsible for more than one billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions globally during the period covered by the law. And the company must have some physical or economic connection with the State.
The law directs the state treasurer to estimate the damage to Vermont caused by climate change during that period and the costs the state faces in preparing for future impacts. Scientists can now more precisely determine the role climate change plays in specific weather events such as floods, storms, droughts and heat waves. The state will identify companies covered by the law and their respective shares of total greenhouse gas emissions, based on the companies’ own reports to federal agencies.
Assume, as a hypothetical, that climate damages and adaptation costs for Vermont total $3 billion and that Chevron’s share of greenhouse gas pollution during the measurement period is 3 percent of the global total. Chevron would be valued at $90 million, a small fraction of the more than $21 billion in profits the company made in 2023 alone.
The law does not restrict future production by fossil fuel companies. They can still drill to their corporate hearts’ content and pay nothing more to Vermont. An economic analysis of a similar proposal in New York state by the Institute for Political Integrity at New York University School of Law found that it was “unlikely to alter the price” of gasoline at the pump or the price of crude oil. In short, Vermont’s law is an elegant legal approach to making oil company shareholders bear their fair share of these costs.
That is, of course, if the law survives the inevitable legal challenges that will undoubtedly arise and delay the coming into force of this law. “Taking on Big Oil should not be taken lightly,” Gov. Phil Scott warned lawmakers even as he agreed to let the legislation become law.
Still, it is an important step forward against a powerful industry with a lot of money. Perhaps it will inspire other states to follow, or encourage Congress to pass a climate version of the Superfund law it pioneered 44 years ago. One of those federal bills was introduced by Sens. Chris Van Hollen, D-Maryland, and Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont.
State Sen. Dick Sears of Bennington County, the climate bill’s lead sponsor, died last weekend at age 81, less than a month after helping push the measure through the Legislature. He was adamant about making polluters pay for the damage they caused, a vision born of the fight to help constituents whose drinking water had been contaminated by a local company’s use of the perennial chemicals known as PFAS.
One of his legacies will now be his success in convincing his fellow legislators that the idea that “polluters must pay” should apply to reckless fossil fuel companies that continue drilling and refining, no matter what is happening. in Game.
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