Climatic disasters are increasing. These states want to charge the oil companies – San Diego Union -Tribune

By Alex Brown, stateline.org

For many residents of California, Los Angeles forest fires earlier this year were the most recent and burning example of the devastating effects of climate change. Certain estimates have fixed the damage and economic losses of fires to more than $ 250 billion.

“We had a disaster after a disaster after a disaster,” said the Dawn Addis assembly, a Democrat. “It is the taxpayers and insurance taxpayers who bear the cost. It is not durable, it is not correct and it is not ethical. ”

Addis and Democratic legislators in nearly a dozen other states want to force the world’s largest fossil fuel companies to help pay the cost of collecting climate -related disasters. Last year, Vermont became the first state to adopt a law of “climatic superfundes”, followed shortly after by New York.

This session, 10 states have seen similar proposals, several of which have advanced in key committees. The defenders stressed that legislation in Maryland supported support in both chambers, as well as for a solid basic support in California after the Los Angeles forest fires.

Legislators say that the rapid increase in climatic disaster costs – from forest fires to flooding in sea level – is more than state budgets cannot bear.

“The climate superfund is the policy of the” computer girl “of the session (2025),” said Ava Gallo, responsible for the climate and energy program at the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators, a forum for state legislators. “There is a lot of popularity with the idea of ​​holding responsible polluters.”

The momentum for these invoices “Polloter Pays” is linked to the maturation of the science of allocation. This new field of research can help calculate the contributions of fossil fuels companies with historical total emissions, as well as the role of climate change played in the cause or aggravation of natural disasters.

Vermont’s law was the first attempt to use this science to charge transmitters for their role in causing devastating floods and other disasters.

The fossil fuel companies and their allies have retaliated hard. At the end of last year, the American Petroleum Institute and the Chamber of Commerce of the United States filed a complaint contesting the measure of Vermont. The groups argue that emissions are governed by the Federal Clean Act, preventing states from invoicing global pollution companies.

None of the two groups responded to a request for interview stateline. The Independent Association of America’s oil has also refused an interview request.

A separate trial, directed by 22 prosecutors general republican, challenges the law of New York. And a conservative group has targeted Rachel Rothschild, deputy professor by law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Michigan, who helped to write the legal justification for the climate -supervisory policy. The group, responsibility and surveillance of the government, sought to submit Rothschild to a deposition, reported the New York Times, a decision that certain experts consider as an intimidation tactic.

Meanwhile, oil and gas leaders asked President Donald Trump at a White House meeting in March to order the Ministry of Justice to join the legal fight against the superfund on climate, the Wall Street Journal reported. Industry leaders also push the congress to protect them from more than 30 proceedings brought by the governments of the states and premises which aim to make them pay for some of the results of climate change.

While experts expect a deadly legal battle on superfunding policies, the threat of prosecution has not dissuaded more legislators from supporting the concept.

“The states were wary a little; they wondered:” Is it a new radical plan? “” Said Cassidy Dipola, director of communications with the Make Pollers Pay campaign, a coalition of groups supporting such invoices. “Then, one of the smallest states passed it and this power plant, New York, passed it. It really rolled the ball. ”

Fossil fuel societies have doubted doubt about the science of attribution. They also note that their oil production and other products has been legally carried out under American and international regulations.

“Manufacturers will see this as a Shakedown of any industry that you do not like at some point in the future, even if in the past, they have been authorized and operated under government regulations,” said Brett Vassey, president and chief executive officer of the Virginia Manufacturers Association, during legislative testimonies concerning a superfundant climate proposal. “This will have a scary effect on the ability to develop your economy.”

Superfund’s supporters indicate legal regulations with large tobacco companies in the 1990s. Although these companies also sold their products legally, they were held responsible because they knew the harmful effects of these products and deceived the public. Most of the climatic superfundy proposals target companies for their emissions in the past 30 years, after leading experts had documented the dangers of greenhouse gases.

“There is a good documentation on how the fossil fuels industry knew the long -term probable impacts of its product,” said Oregon State, Jeff Golden, Democrat. “An industry that has made such historical profits over a period of time and has so many representations that we have had no problem with no costs?”

Golden and other legislators say that it becomes impossible for taxpayers to cover the costs of recovery of forest fires and other disasters. In the Rhode Island, the elevation of the sea level causes massive damage to coastal communities, said the representative of the Democratic State Jennifer Boylan, who sponsored a bill on the superfundant climate to help the State to adapt.

Some defenders also note that Trump’s return to the White House has reduced the possibility of relief from the federal climate.

“All states are affected by the disappearance of this federal funding,” said Gallo, of the group of state legislators. “Everywhere, states will seek a way to fill the void.”

This session, climatic superfundy bills were presented in California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Virginia.

Although the bills are structured differently, they all seek to target the largest polluters – often covering companies that have produced 1 billion metric tonnes of emissions in the past 30 years. Legislators say that this applies to around 100 companies.

The measures also adopt different approaches to award damage. Certain direct state agencies to carry out complex studies to determine the costs of the disaster caused by the climate over a certain period, the approach launched by Vermont. Others have set a fixed number which represents a conservative reference base for these damage. New York law set this figure at $ 75 billion over a period of 25 years.

Numerous bills also require that large funding amounts be directed to the hardest communities by pollution.

Defenders are particularly optimistic about the measures in California and Maryland.

Maryland legislators have changed their bills to order a study on the financial impacts of climate change. These measures have adopted both the Chamber and the Senate, and the legislators strive to reconcile the versions of each Chamber. The figures produced by the study would be the backbone of a climate superfundy policy in a future session.

“From a legislative perspective, it is a blow in the dark about costs,” said Democratic Del. David Fraser-Hidalgo, who sponsored one of the bills. “This will give us the factual data necessary to make a more educated decision on policy.”

In New Jersey, an assembly committee has advanced a superfunding bill in March. The Senator of the State Bob Smith, a democrat who chairs the Environment and Energy Committee and who sponsored the bill, said that he would help rebuild and strengthen the water treatment factories, schools and firefighters. He noted that Trump called for the dismantling of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“The end of the world is coming; it’s a bit difficult to ignore,” said Smith. “FEMA has been the safety net to help communities recover from disasters. If writing is not on the wall to all states, they have to face this, ashamed of them.”

Legislators in many states have heard mayors and other local government leaders than more climate takeover funding is essential.

“Municipal officials are delayed (climatic policies),” said Massachusetts State senator Jamie Eldridge, a democrat who spoke similar legislation. “They face the costs of floods, droughts, heat waves and really require relief.”

Stateline journalist, Alex Brown, can be reached at abrown@stateline.org.

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Originally published: April 4, 2025 at 10:59 a.m.