Make Polluters Pay for Climate Impacts

The first two months of Donald Trump’s second presidency have been marked by a whirlwind of dangerous climate-related executive orders and frightening, fossil fuel industry-friendly cabinet confirmations. Every day makes more clear what climate advocates have been warning us about: Trump is actively and deliberately destroying any hope of our federal government helping our planet. 

Trump and his supporters have laid bare what they want: unregulated corporations spewing pollution into our air, land, and water. Corporate oligarchs enriching themselves as our planet burns. Greed over people. 

It is clear that, for now, any real chance of protecting our communities from the increasingly destructive and devastating impacts of climate pollution will have to come from bold action by state and local leaders. The best way to do this is by supporting the growing movement to hold polluters accountable for their contribution to the climate crisis, against the inevitable industry pushback. Enter the climate change superfund movement.

For decades, Big Oil knew fossil fuels were contributing to climate change, but they engaged in a massive disinformation campaign to keep profiting from its pollution. Now, while they continue to make record profits and spend record amounts of money lobbying, we’re the ones footing the bill—in destroyed homes, ravaged communities, and lost lives. 

In May of last year, Vermont became the first state to pass a climate superfund act allowing the state to recover financial damages from polluting industries for their climate impacts. New York, where state residents have incurred more than $2 billion in climate-related costs in 2023, followed shortly after. 

A large, diverse coalition of activists, local government officials and environmental justice advocates pushed New York Governor Kathy Hochul to sign her state’s Climate Change Superfund Act into law in December. It is projected that the law will raise $75 billion over twenty-five years from the companies most responsible for the climate crisis to fund vital climate adaptation and resilience projects across the state, potentially saving New York taxpayers $825 billion.

The rest of the country has the opportunity to join in these efforts to hold polluters accountable. Similar bills have already been introduced in California, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Maryland; states including Minnesota and Oregon are crafting their own superfund bills as well.

Take New Jersey, which has experienced seventy-five severe weather events since 1980, with damages stretching into the billions of dollars. The recently introduced New Jersey Climate Superfund Act would empower the state to assess and collect on the damages caused by climate change over the past thirty years from the massive fossil fuel companies that do business in the state. This revenue would provide dedicated funding through a new state program for everything from recovering from extreme weather events to upgrading the transit system and electric grid. The bill is rapidly gaining grassroots support across the state, with several large cities such as Jersey City and Hoboken passing supportive resolutions in recent weeks.

In California, legislators have introduced a climate superfund bill of their own as the state continues to reel from January’s climate change-related wildfires that ravaged Los Angeles. And with calls from Trump and his fellow Republicans to place restrictions on California’s much-needed wildfire aid, it is more imperative than ever that the Big Oil companies, not taxpayers, absorb the cost of rebuilding.

Corporate polluters—and the politicians they’ve spent billions and billions of dollars lobbying—will increasingly fight efforts to hold their industries accountable for the decades of pollution they’ve profited from. Just weeks ago, a group of fossil fuel companies and twenty-two states filed a lawsuit alleging that New York’s superfund act is unconstitutional. 

These faulty lawsuits will come, but we urge leaders in these states and others that will soon be joining the movement to stand firm in holding climate polluters accountable. Know that doing so will not only save taxpayers money but send a powerful message to these industries that our water, our air, our homes, and our health are more precious than their profit margins.

This column was produced for Progressive Perspectives, a project of The Progressive magazine, and distributed by Tribune News Service.