{"id":34105,"date":"2024-06-01T11:49:28","date_gmt":"2024-06-01T18:49:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=34105"},"modified":"2024-06-01T11:49:29","modified_gmt":"2024-06-01T18:49:29","slug":"vermont-moves-to-hold-fossil-fuel-companies-liable-for-climate-change-damage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2024\/06\/01\/vermont-moves-to-hold-fossil-fuel-companies-liable-for-climate-change-damage\/","title":{"rendered":"Vermont Moves to Hold Fossil-Fuel Companies Liable for Climate-Change Damage"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Elizabeth Kolbert\/The New Yorker<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"VermontFlooding downtown Montpelier, Vermont, in July, 2023. (photo: The Washington Post)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

31 may 24<\/strong> (RSN.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

A new constituency is willing to stand up to Big Oil (and Gas and Coal): state government.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

On July 10, 2023, Vermont\u2019s state capital, Montpelier, was hit with more than five inches of rain. The city sits at the confluence of the main stream of the Winooski and its north branch; the former is considered to be at flood stage when the water level reaches fifteen feet. That day, the Winooski rose above twenty-one feet. The city\u2019s downtown business district was inundated. Cars were drowned, shops were ruined, and people canoed or paddleboarded past shuttered businesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the world warms, more and more of New England\u2019s rain is falling in extreme precipitation \u201cevents,\u201d so the downpour, though record-breaking, was still in keeping with recent trends. \u201cIt\u2019s definitely going to happen again,\u201d Lauren Oates, the director of policy and governmental affairs for the Nature Conservancy in Vermont, predicted a few weeks after what became known as the Great Vermont Flood of 2023. And, indeed, five months later, it did; in mid-December, the local rivers reached flood stage again, this time owing to a combination of heavy rain and snowmelt. \u201cClimate change is real,\u201d Vermont\u2019s governor, Phil Scott, a Republican, said after the second round of flooding. \u201cI don\u2019t think anyone should be surprised about this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recently, with memories of the floodings still fresh, Vermont lawmakers voted to assess a fee on fossil-fuel producers to pay for \u201cclimate-adaptive\u201d infrastructure projects in the state. The bill operates on the polluter-pays principle, the basis of the federal Superfund law\u2014it\u2019s been dubbed the Climate Superfund Act. Last week, the act was sent to Governor Scott, who, despite his December statement, is expected by many to veto it. It will then go back to the legislature, which is expected to override his veto in a special session, already planned for June. (The bill passed with super-majorities in both houses.) \u201cWe\u2019re confident,\u201d Paul Burns, the executive director of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, a key backer of the bill, said, referring to an override. \u201cOf course,\u201d he added, \u201cyou always want to be careful on this kind of thing.\u201d (VPIRG<\/em> lost years\u2019 worth of records in July\u2019s flood.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Climate Superfund Act doesn\u2019t specify how much money should be collected; instead, it directs the state treasurer to determine how much it has cost Vermont to deal with the impacts of climate change. (A 2022 study from researchers at the University of Vermont predicted that, in the next hundred years, the cost of property damage from flooding alone could top five billion dollars.) The Agency of Natural Resources is then to assess fees on fossil-fuel companies based on their greenhouse-gas emissions between 1995 and 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Assuming events play out as predicted, Vermont\u2019s climate superfund will be the first of its kind in the nation. The measure has been called \u201clandmark,\u201d \u201cpioneering,\u201d and \u201cgroundbreaking.\u201d \u201cI am proud that Vermont will go further than any other state in forcing the fossil fuel industry to pay for the destruction caused by the crisis of climate change,\u201d Bernie Sanders<\/a>, Vermont\u2019s senior U.S. senator, recently tweeted<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It will also, almost certainly, be the first of its kind to be litigated. As Martin Lockman and Emma Shumway, fellows at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School, observed, in a recent analysis<\/a>, fossil-fuel companies, \u201calong with sympathetic political and industrial organizations, states, and\/or municipalities, will inevitably challenge\u201d the measure in court. Lockman and Shumway listed many possible legal arguments that opponents of the act could raise, including that state governments lack the authority to enforce such sweeping measures, that the act unfairly imposes liability retroactively, and that the measure is pre\u00ebmpted by federal law\u2014in particular, the Clean Air Act. It\u2019s entirely possible, perhaps even likely, that Vermont\u2019s climate superfund will be struck down before it collects a penny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, even if Vermont\u2019s climate superfund never actually funds anything, the passage of the act is significant and deserves to be celebrated. It shows that there\u2019s a new constituency willing to stand up to Big Oil (and gas and coal): state government. Increasingly, states are being asked to foot the bill for climate change, and the costs\u2014of installing floodwalls, repairing washed-out bridges, re\u00ebngineering storm-sewage systems, opening cooling centers, and on and on\u2014are only going to grow. Meanwhile, in recent years, oil companies have racked up record profits<\/a>. (In 2023\u2014the warmest year on record by a significant margin\u2014ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and TotalEnergies collectively made more than a hundred billion dollars.) Jon Groveman, the policy-and-water-program director at the Vermont Natural Resources Council, put it this way, in testimony before the Vermont Senate Judiciary Committee: \u201cThe impacts from climate change are so vast and serious, we can\u2019t afford not to try to make the oil companies responsible for this harm\u201d to pay their \u201cfair share.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several other states are considering legislation similar to Vermont\u2019s, including Maryland, Massachusetts, and New York. Just the other day, in a strongly worded editorial<\/a>, the Los Angeles Times<\/em> urged California lawmakers to approve a climate-change superfund bill that\u2019s been introduced in that state\u2019s senate. The time has come for oil companies \u201cto sacrifice some of their huge profits to clean up the environmental mess they helped create,\u201d the Times<\/em> wrote. \u201cIt\u2019s not fair for taxpayers to shoulder such a staggering burden.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vermont, Massachusetts, and California are, of course, all blue states. But climate change is truly nonpartisan. Last week, as Vermont\u2019s Climate Superfund Act was wending its way toward the Governor\u2019s desk, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued its forecast for the upcoming hurricane season. The season is expected to be unusually busy, with up to twenty-five tropical storms\u2014an ominous prediction for red states such as Florida and Louisiana.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Governor Scott observed, climate change is real. Someone is going to have to pay to deal with the consequences\u2014either those who profited from selling fossil fuels or governments and individuals dealing with the damage. As that reality sinks in, perhaps the politics around climate change will finally\u2014belatedly\u2014start shifting. Where science hasn\u2019t convinced lawmakers, maybe \u201cstaggering\u201d costs will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Source: https:\/\/www.rsn.org\/001\/vermont-moves-to-hold-fossilfuel-companies-liable-for-climatechange-damage.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Elizabeth Kolbert\/The New Yorker Flooding downtown Montpelier, Vermont, in July, 2023. (photo: The Washington Post) 31 may 24 (RSN.org) A new constituency is willing to stand up to Big Oil (and Gas and Coal): state government. On July 10, 2023, Vermont\u2019s state capital, Montpelier, was hit with more than five… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34105"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34105"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34106,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34105\/revisions\/34106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}