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Vermont poised to become first US state to charge Big Oil for climate damage [The Guardian]

Don Fluffles

Don Fluffles

Member
Oct 28, 2017
7,123
Guardian Link

Vermont is poised to pass a groundbreaking measure forcing major polluting companies to help pay for damages caused by the climate crisis, in a move being closely watched by other states including New York and California.

Modeled after the Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund program, which forces companies to pay for toxic waste cleanup, the climate superfund bill would charge major fossil fuel companies doing business within the state billions of dollars for their past emissions.

The measure would make Vermont the first US state to hold fossil fuel companies liable for their planet-heating pollution.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/may/01/big-oil-danger-disinformation-fossil-fuels


"If you contributed to a mess, you should play a role in cleaning it up," Elena Mihaly, vice-president of the Conservation Law Foundation's Vermont chapter, which is campaigning for the bill, said in an interview.
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The state of Bernie Sanders is doing good.
 
Katbobo

Katbobo

Member
May 3, 2022
5,586
Love to see it. I'd love to see other states do this, and for states like PA to go after US Steel and others for the massive health toll their pollution has taken on the local population. They should be paying out the ass for the alarming cancer rates their smog causes.
 
Nepenthe

Nepenthe

When the music hits, you feel no pain.
Administrator
Oct 25, 2017
21,313
If this is what we have to do to make oil corporations fall in line, then sure. Sue the fuck out of them.
 
Netherscourge

Netherscourge

Member
Oct 25, 2017
19,137
I'm all for liability, but how do you directly correlate a specific company's past CO2 emissions output to any non-specific effect of climate damage?

Are there metered measurements of their past CO2 emissions? Even so, how do you connect the dots?

The EPA Superfund primarily deals with past chemical dumping and spills onto land and into water. You can identify exactly where those chemicals came from and where they were dumped to force the companies to pay for the cleanups.

But how do you narrow down CO2 emissions damage, and how do you clean it up? Or are they talking about some other kind of emissions?
 
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Kiyamet

Kiyamet

Member
Apr 21, 2024
581
I feel better about climate destruction now that the government may be able to tax it better
 
Sunster

Sunster

The Fallen
Oct 5, 2018
10,140
Slayven said:
States rights until it isn't
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A better system than a democratic republic where our elected officials make decisions that we can then respond to with our votes would actually be a supreme council of unelected, unaccountable high priests being allowed to override congress and the states and who base their decisions on communing with the spirits of the founders and determining what they may or may not have wanted. Best system ever. No notes.
 
Slayven

Slayven

Never read a comic in his life
Moderator
Oct 25, 2017
94,255
Sunster said:
A better system than a democratic republic where our elected officials make decisions that we can then respond to with our votes would actually be a supreme council of unelected, unaccountable high priests being allowed to override congress and the states and who base their decisions on communing with the spirits of the founders and determining what they may or may not have wanted. Best system ever. No notes.
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The founders would not recognize most the current population of America as citizens. Women and PoCs
 
kalindana

kalindana

Member
Oct 28, 2018
3,242
It's official:
Vermont has become the first state to enact a law holding oil firms financially responsible for climate damages, after the Republican governor, Phil Scott, allowed it to pass without his signature late on Thursday.

Under the legislation, Vermont officials will have until January 2026 to assess the total costs to the state from greenhouse gases emitted between 1995 and 2024, including the impacts on public health, biodiversity and economic development. They will then use federal data to determine how much to charge individual polluters for those harms.

Climate advocates celebrated the passage of the law, which won supermajority support in the state legislature from Democrats and some Republicans.
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But though he allowed the bill to pass, the governor said he was concerned about the costs of the bill to his small state.

"Instead of coordinating with other states like New York and California, with far more abundant resources, Vermont – one of the least populated states with the lowest GDP in the country – has decided to recover costs associated with climate change on its own," he wrote.

Edgerly Walsh, however, said the legislature took steps to accommodate those concerns, including by adding funding for state agencies to manage implementation. He said Vermont could not afford to pay the "absolutely enormous" costs of the climate crisis itself.
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www.theguardian.com

‘Game-changing’: Vermont becomes first state to require big oil to pay for climate damages

Climate Superfund Act compels oil companies to pay potentially billions of dollars for climate impacts caused by their emissions
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
 
Ripcord

Ripcord

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Oct 30, 2017
1,808
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