Another day of being out here in Albany buying up as many politicians as we can-- It's just good business when you are in the business of Fossil Fuels.
We do Gaslighting, we do Greenwashing, and we delay planet-saving climate action.
After Vermont and New York passed "climate Superfund" legislation, 11 states have introduced similar bills this year.
"As climate disasters strain state budgets, a growing number of lawmakers want fossil fuel companies to pay for damages caused by their greenhouse gas emissions.
Last May [2024], Vermont became the first state to pass a climate Superfund law. The concept is modeled after the 1980 federal Superfund law, which holds companies responsible for the costs of cleaning up their hazardous waste spills. The state-level climate version requires major oil and gas companies to pay for climate-related disaster and adaptation costs, based on their share of global greenhouse gas emissions over the past few decades. Vermont’s law passed after the state experienced torrential flooding in 2023. In December [2024], New York became the second state to pass such a law.
This year, 11 states, from California to Maine, have introduced their own climate Superfund bills. Momentum is growing even as Vermont and New York’s laws face legal challenges by fossil fuel companies, Republican-led states, and the Trump administration. Lawmakers and climate advocates told Grist that they always expected backlash, given the billions of dollars at stake for the oil and gas industry — but that states have no choice but to find ways to pay the enormous costs of protecting and repairing infrastructure in the face of increasing floods, wildfires, and other disasters.
The opposition “emboldens our fight more,” said Maryland state delegate Adrian Boafo, who represents Prince George’s County and co-sponsored a climate Superfund bill that passed the state legislature in March. “It means that we have to do everything we can in Maryland to protect our citizens, because we can’t rely on the federal government in this moment.”
While the concept of a climate Superfund has been around for decades, it’s only in recent years that states have begun to seriously consider these laws. In Maryland, federal inaction on climate change and the growing burden of climate change on government budgets have led to a surge of interest, said Boafo. Cities and counties are getting hit with huge unexpected costs from damage to stormwater systems, streets, highways, and other public infrastructure. They’re also struggling to provide immediate disaster relief to residents and to prepare for future climate events. Maryland has faced at least $10 billion to $20 billion in disaster costs between 1980 and 2024, according to a recent state report. Meanwhile, up until now, governments, businesses, and individuals have borne 100 percent of these costs.
“We realized that these big fossil fuel companies were, frankly, not paying their fair share for the climate crisis that they’ve caused,” Boafo said.
Recent bills have also been spurred by increased sophistication in attribution science, said Martin Lockman, a climate law fellow at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. Researchers are now able to use climate models to link extreme weather events to greenhouse gas emissions from specific companies. The field provides a quantitative way for governments to determine which oil and gas companies should pay for climate damages, and how much.
Vermont’s law sets up a process for the government to first tally up the costs of climate harms in the state caused by the greenhouse gas emissions of major oil and gas companies between 1995 and 2024. The state will then determine how much of those costs each company is responsible for, invoice them accordingly, and devote the funds to climate infrastructure and resilience projects. New York’s law, by contrast, sets a funding target ahead of time by requiring certain fossil fuel companies to pay a total of $75 billion, or $3 billion per year over 25 years. The amount each company has to pay is proportionate to their share of global greenhouse gas emissions between 2000 and 2024. Both Vermont and New York’s laws apply only to companies that have emitted over 1 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions over their respective covered periods. That would include Exxon Mobil, Shell, and other oil and gas giants.
Maryland’s law is so far the only climate Superfund-related legislation to pass a state legislature this year, although Governor Wes Moore vetoed the measure late on Friday [May 16, 2025]. The original draft of the bill would have required major fossil fuel companies to pay a one-time fee for their historic carbon emissions. But over the course of the legislative session, the bill was amended...
Climate advocates decried the governor’s decision, calling it “an inexplicable reversal of a position that threatens to stymie Maryland’s climate progress for negligible budget savings.” In a joint press release by three environmental groups, Kim Coble, executive director of the Maryland League of Conservation Voters, said, “This veto is not fiscal responsibility, it’s a definitive step in the opposite direction of our climate goals.”
In California, environmental groups are optimistic about the chances of a bill passing this year. This is the second year a climate Superfund bill has been introduced in the state, and the sponsors of the new bill have focused on building a broad coalition of environmental, community, and labor groups around the proposal, said Sabrina Ashjian, project director for the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the UCLA School of Law. This year’s legislation was introduced shortly after the devastating Los Angeles wildfires in January, which could amplify lawmakers’ sense of urgency. The bill has now passed out of each legislative chamber’s environmental committee and is awaiting votes in their respective judiciary committees. If passed, the bill will next move to the full Senate and Assembly for a final vote.
In the meantime, legislators are keeping a close eye on ongoing legal challenges to Vermont’s and New York’s laws...
Climate experts told Grist that with huge amounts of money and liability at stake, lawsuits from the fossil fuel industry weren’t unexpected. Boafo said that given how much financial and political support the Trump campaign received from oil and gas corporations, it’s not a surprise that the Justice Department has sued New York and Vermont. Pursuing these laws invites inevitable opposition — but avoiding the growing costs of climate devastation is even riskier, advocates said.
Lawmakers are “passing these bills because in writing budgets, in dealing with the day-to-day operation of their states, they’re facing really serious questions about how our society is going to allocate the harms of climate change,” said Lockman. “I suspect that the lawmakers who are advocating for these bills are in it for the long haul.”"
Finally, people are starting to appreciate that the dinosaurs at companies like Shell and Exxon and British Petroleum have ALWAYS wanted you to go extinct. These legislators should also appreciate that these dinosaurs want to line their expensive crypts fallout bunkers with as much of their worldly cash and financial holdings as possible.
A major new study has confirmed that Earth’s global temperature and climate are driven naturally by sunlight and clouds, not by so-called “carbon emissions.”
Top Study Confirms Sunlight and Clouds Drive Earth’s Climate, Not ‘Carbon Emissions’
A major new study has confirmed that Earth’s global temperature and climate are driven naturally by sunlight and clouds, not by so-called “carbon emissions.”
No one will put in the effort to mitigate the effects of climate change for us! To put a stop, everyone must make it loud and clear our desires to put an end to the main drivers of climate change! A global effort is needed so,
and if we keep up the hard work and worship the great mighty Profit-O-Meter and caviar pool parties (that's swimming pools filled with caviar to the uninitiated), you too can become one of us!! extinction for me AND extinction 4 thee!!!
and whatever you do, please do NOT educate yourself or take the advice in this article! :3c rawr teehee XD
germany will always remain a very morbidly funny concept to me. large land of sweaty numbers-obsessive woodland beasts who, when given enough resources, make really good cars and, when given more resources, invariably start killing a lot of people
it is worth noting that basically every white american, regardless of preexisting cultural ties, has had the soul of a small german pervert implanted in their cerebellum. this is the source of most archetypically american neuroses. sometimes the small german insists on doing product research for 3 weeks before purchasing a new smartphone (it will get you nowhere, you will buy Something and hate it for 3 months before it becomes a new techno-appendage; you will mourn its loss). sometimes the small german insists on obeying no trespassing signs. sometimes the small german makes one start trying to categorize certain demographics as indefinably undesirable.
it is your duty to excise this bavarian imp from your neural folds as expediently as you can.
other western euro nations are somewhat similarly predisposed to the behavior described in the original post, but the chain of cause and effect is a little more fickle and moody; it's a statistical correlation. however, you could raise a prussian in a plain white box bereft of external stimuli and it'd naturally start using its own various secretions to scrawl cave paintings of a new-model BMW MonsterJamming a crowd of climate protestors
it's kind of crazy climate change has occurred at such a remarkable pace that I and everyone else around my age can remember a completely different climate in our childhoods. I truly watched winter gradually disappear in my life.
"You're too young to remember this, but there used to be so many insects outside that you would have to clean them off the windshield after a long car ride" is the kind of sentence that would have been in a cheesy scifi short story earlier in my life, perhaps submitted to a literary magazine and accepted to show support for its environmentalist message - now it's something I've said in earnest.
Ah, an unexpected ally to our fossil fuel-driven cause enters the ring! I wonder if it was Exxon or Eni's marketing team that wanted to make *looks at smudged writing on claw* "noticing climate change" "cringe" and "cheesy". Way to stick it to those Zillenials!
