You flood it, you pay for it.

States are considering 'climate superfund' laws to hold Big Oil accountable

Vermont’s capitol city, underwater in epic July flooding that wrecked most of Montpelier’s retail district

One prong of the climate fight involves installing so much renewable energy that fossil fuel use actually declines dramatically—a few places are finally showing that’s possible, like sunny Germany which last week said emissions in 2023 dropped more than ten percent.

But if that’s going to happen everywhere, and fast enough, it’s going to require the other prong: holding back the fossil fuel industry. The problem is that the politics of oil-producing countries don’t allow it—that’s why the Inflation Reduction Act was all carrots/no sticks. And it’s not just DC—in Lula’s progressive Brazil the national oil company, already Exxon-sized, said last week it plans on outproducing all its peers except Saudi Arabia and Iran by 2035.

So you need a mechanism for places where there is no oil in the ground to inflict some hurt on Big Oil—and get some justice at the same time. Like, Vermont. And New York, and Maryland, and Massachusetts.

In a just world, Big Oil would be criminally prosecuted, since investigative reporting has made it abundantly clear that it knew what it was doing (Aaron Regunberg and David Arkush last week laid out an excellent argument as to why these companies could be charged with homicide). In civil court, jurisdictions can simply sue the fossil fuel industry, and that’s actually been happening more and more often (on Wednesday a Belgian farmer sued French energy giant Total for making his life harder). Suits like that—many premised on the fact that Big Oil clearly knew about the dangers they were causing—are wending their way through the American courts, but our justice system is a) slow and b) bent in the direction of the powerful.

So legislators are opening up another front—”climate superfund” laws that treat disasters like Vermont’s summer flooding as if they were a toxic dump whose cleanup can be charged to the corporation that caused them. That would have been hard even a few years ago, but “climate attribution” science is now robust: it’s increasingly easy to prove that absent global warming we wouldn’t have the endless downpours/droughts/fires. If a chemical company pollutes a site, the superfund law has been a way to make it pay for the remediation—so if Vermont’s flooding cost its taxpayers $2.5 billion to repair, why should they be on the hook?

I’m talking about Vermont because it might be the first state to adopt such a law, as it was the first to abolish slavery or allow civil unions—the legislature and the governor will decide in the next few weeks. And I’m talking about it because I live here, in a town that is struggling to pay for the repairs to its roads after last summer’s record flooding. We heard the sobering litany at town meeting earlier this month; every culvert makes it that much harder to keep our school open. New York is also close to passing such a law, and perhaps Maryland and Massachusetts, as Katie Meyers pointed out in Grist recently—all of them states without significant hydrocarbon production, and all of them states with a lot of climate damage.

Campaigners led by the Vermont Public Research Interest Group launched the campaign last summer, accompanied by a twenty-foot-long inflatable pig. VPIRG’s executive director Paul Burns, and Lauren Hierl, a member of the selectboard in flood-devastated Montpelier, explained the logic in an oped:

The biggest oil companies in the world made more than $200 billion in profits last year, while Vermonters were forced to pay record prices at the pump — and got stuck with the costs of climate change cleanup in our communities. That shouldn’t be the case. Big Oil knowingly made a mess of the climate. They should help pay to clean it up.

It’s a lesson we all learned in kindergarten: If you make a mess, you clean it up.

The argument has obviously appealed to legislators. Here’s the state’s news website, VTDigger, describing one of the more conservative Democrats

Sen. Dick Sears, D-Bennington, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he would have “absolutely opposed” such a bill 20 years ago. Chemical contamination in the Bennington area, which has permanently altered the lives of some of his constituents, changed his mind. 

“Who’s going to pay for the damage done?” Sears said. “Is it going to be the taxpayer? Is it going to be the homeowner or the small business? Or is it going to be the company that contributed to the problem? I say it should be the company that contributed to the problem.”

It will be fascinating to see what the state’s governor, Phil Scott, does with the bill. He is a Republican, but a remnant one, harkening back to the state’s Yankee past. (For a hundred years until the 1960s Vermont was the most reliably GOP state in America). He brought the state through covid with fewer deaths per capita, and less division, than any other; and since he’s a contractor by profession he understands viscerally how much it costs to repair a road or rebuild a bridge. If he signed this bill, he’d be reflecting the clear consensus of the state’s voters. And the great marker of those Yankee Republicans was frugality—cheapness, but the good kind. It’s hard to imagine that he wants Vermont taxpayers on the hook here.

The oil industry (in between insisting that all of this is a plot by the Rockefellers) has hinted that paying these damages could raise prices for consumers, but that’s silly—the price of oil is set on a world market. And they’ve of course promised to go to court if they are charged for their damage. Vermont’s got good lawyers—it’s got one of the best environmental law schools in the nation. And New York State has lawyers upon lawyers, as Donald Trump is finding out. Massachusetts governor Maura Healy used to be AG, and she’s taken on big oil in the past. It’s a fight, but a winnable one.

Yes, it would be best to do this at the federal level (and Vermont’s Senators Bernie Sanders and Peter Welch have introduced legislation to do just that). But the Senate filibuster means that oil states will have enough clout to block those laws, at least while they could still do some good. So for a while it’s going to be a coalition of the oil-less (you can ask your state to get involved here)

It’s been a great blessing to Vermont that there’s nothing much of value beneath the soil (well, granite, but a few quarries are enough to produce an eternity of tombstones). And now that geological fact may prove to be of great value to the planet.

In other climate and energy news:

+Yet another study indicates European demand for natural gas is going to keep declining, robbing Big Oil of its biggest argument for building more export terminals along the Gulf.

As gas demand declines in key markets such as the EU and Asia, expanding gas export infrastructure and entering new long-term gas supply contracts will pose significant financial risks for the US LNG sector.  

While European companies currently shoulder most of the burden, the growing involvement of US companies exposes the American economy to this risk. 

The upcoming EU-US Energy Council presents a strategic opportunity to shift focus.  

Collaboration on accelerating clean energy in developing countries and championing a diversified, equitable clean energy supply chain can be a win-win for energy security and climate leadership. Additionally, the Council can champion crucial such as implementing the methane regulation, and supporting the G7 commitment to decarbonise power systems by 2035.

+Stanford’s Mark Jacobson has a new study in Science showing that clean energy, with battery and hydrogen storage, by 2035 could provide all the energy we’re using now, just much more cheaply. Says Jacobson: "The results provide countries with concrete evidence and the confidence that 100% clean, renewable grids not only lower costs but are also just as reliable as the current grid system."

And I do mean everywhere. The Washington Post has a nifty story about how Dartmouth researchers are bringing a combined wind/solar system to the remote Greenland hamlet of Qaanaq, the second most northerly town on earth. (The first is on Svalbard).

The effort is in its infancy, with local leader Toku Oshima’s Dartmouth partners still developing the equipment they hope to install. To succeed in such an isolated and harsh environment, they are leaning on the expertise of those who thrived in this landscape for generations. Each prototype is designed specifically for conditions in Qaanaaq and tested by the residents themselves.

Dartmouth College engineer Mary Albert, the U.S. co-leader for the project, sees it as a potential model for sustainability efforts the world over. “It’s cogeneration of knowledge,” she said, “so they can continue to live where they want to live and how they want to live.”

To Oshima, the initiative is her “gift to the next generation” — an investment in Qaanaaq’s future that makes space for the traditions of its past.

“If we want to keep more people, we have to make more energy,” she said. “It’s our culture. We’re trying to keep our culture.”

+Last week I described Kenneth Pucker’s essay on the almost inconceivable world of fast fashion, and this week J.A. Ginsburg has a follow up. Clothes from China—especially the fast-growing company Shein—already takes up a third of global cargo aircraft space, and that’s just the start

For a sense of scale, Shein alone ships 5,000 tons per day, which is roughly five times as much as Apple. The number is only going up. Quickly. By 2025—next year—Shein’s revenue target is close to $60 billion dollars, which is all the more astonishing given that only six years ago revenues came to $1.6 billion, a figure that now sounds positively modest.

Not only can shipping products by plane emit as much as 47 times the CO2 of shipping by boat, but emissions are injected directly into the upper atmosphere where greenhouse gases accumulate. This astonishing transportation carbon footprint does not include last-mile delivery by trucks, or returns. “Free shipping” comes at a price.

+Lots of colleges, looking to cut carbon emissions, are deciding geothermal power works on the medium scale they need.

"Our default is now geothermal," Mark Primoff, associate vice president of communications for Bard College, told ABC News.

Yale University is adding about half a million square feet to its physics, science and engineering complex, which has prompted a geothermal project that will power about 2 million square feet of space, replacing its steam infrastructure, Hermantin said.

Brightcore also has projects in the works at Columbia University, Princeton University, Brown University, setting a sustainable example for other schools to follow.

"The Ivies, when they do something, everyone kind of listens in that space," Hermantin said. "So we've been speaking to several universities about their decarbonization plans, and we're forecasting that there's going to be work in this particular space for at least the next 10 years.

+A San Diego man was arrested for “smuggling greenhouse gases”—in this case, chlorofluorocarbons used for cooling—over the Mexican border in his pickup truck.

Michael Hart faces 13 separate charges, including conspiracy, importation contrary to law, multiple counts of selling imported merchandise contrary to law and criminal forfeiture. He could face decades in prison if convicted on any one of the charges related to illegal importation. 

"It is illegal to import certain refrigerants into the United States because of their documented and significantly greater contribution to climate change," said Assistant Attorney General Todd Kim, of the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division, in a statement issued after Hart's arrest. "We are committed to enforcing the AIM Act and other laws that seek to prevent environmental harm."

+Some good news: the gas industry was working hard to derail new building codes that pushed developers toward electrifying homes, but as Alexander Kauffman reports, their efforts ended in failure

In November, trade associations representing gas utilities and furnace manufacturers launched a last-ditch effort to gut the provisions, which will be released this year.

The International Code Council, the nonprofit organization that works with industry groups and local governments to write the generic codes enshrined into law across most of the country, even bent its own rules to grant players like the American Gas Association and the American Public Gas Association extra time to file appeals, HuffPost reported last month. The fossil fuel groups challenged codes that would make it cheaper for homeowners to opt out of gas, arguing that the proposals either fell outside the bounds of what the energy code was meant to do or were forged through improper procedures.

But the ICC’s appeals board this week rejected all nine challenges to the latest energy codes, ruling that the “appellants have not demonstrated a material and significant irregularity of process or procedure.”

+Drax—a company as ugly as its name—is attempting to expand its wood pellet business into the forests of California. As Phoebe Cook documents

The British energy company has partnered with Golden State Natural Resources, a government-linked nonprofit which plans to build two industrial plants in rural California counties that would produce one million tonnes of compressed wood fiber pellets a year.

One plant would be in Tuolumne County in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and the other in Lassen County in the state’s far northeast. From there, pellets would be shipped by rail to the city of Stockton, exported internationally, and burnt as biomass fuel to create electricity.

This is insanity at its highest level. Burning trees to create electricity not only produces huge amounts of carbon, it also takes down those carbon-sequestration machines we call…trees.

+The Solar Energy Industry Association put out its summary of 2023, with some shiny numbers:

In 2023, the US solar market installed 32.4 GW of capacity, a remarkable 51% increase from 2022. This was the industry’s biggest year by far, exceeding 30 GW of capacity for the first time.

• Solar accounted for 53% of all new electricity-generating capacity added to the US grid in 2023, making up over half of new generating capacity for the first time.

• The residential segment set another annual record at 6.8 GW installed in 2023, growing 13% over 2022. However, installations declined both quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year in Q4 as the large pipeline of California projects sold under more beneficial net metering rules in early 2023 was built out. Excluding California, the residential segment remained flat quarter-over-quarter.

+Third Act—the nation’s premier group for organizing progressive older folks—endorsed Biden for president, in part because of his willingness to pause the permitting of new LNG terminals.

Donald Trump pulled America out of the Paris climate accords; Joe Biden not only put us back into the international talks but instructed every agency to consider the climate in its work, passed the Inflation Reduction Act to build clean energy across the nation, and just weeks ago ignored the shrieks from Big Oil and paused the granting of new permits for liquefied natural gas, as big a blow as any president has ever delivered to dirty energy.

Meanwhile, Third Act stalwart Lawrence MacDonald asks, in book form, Am I Too Old to Save the Planet? No, as it turns out! “I know from my own experience that facing the reality of a looming global catastrophe can cause anxiety, grief, even depression,” MacDonald writes. “Working with others helps to overcome these feelings, bringing renewed hope, courage, and joy.”

Meanwhile, younger climate voters may be demanding more wins before they cozy tp to Biden. Here’s Noa Greene-Houvras writing in Common Dreams

This week, the OECD is meeting in Paris to discuss groundbreaking proposals to stop export credit agency support for oil and gas. It’s one of Biden’s last chances to prove himself as a climate leader, and the U.S. will play a critical role. Biden can either support the proposals and put a stop to [Export Import Bank financing of fossil fuels], or choose to continue plunging public money into coal, oil, and gas.

+Rebecca Burns offers a comprehensive account of how the fossil fuel industry and its various shills are doing their best to scare people about renewable energy.

Last July, a small group of rabble-rousers boarded a trio of powerboats, banners and bullhorns in hand. They were headed for the massive floating construction site of an offshore wind farm 35 miles from the eastern tip of Long Island, New York. As the boats motored through the swells, the self-styled activists broke into a chorus of pleas for the wind farm construction to cease—chants likely intended less for the still-faraway workers than for the camera there to capture footage. "Hear this message: We're here to save the whales!" called out a man in a black polo shirt. "If you were a fossil fuel project, you would have been shut down long ago."

That apparent conservation activist was, in fact, an infamous climate change disinformation artist: Marc Morano, who's done more than perhaps any other person to manufacture doubt about global warming. From his perch at Climate Depot, the blog he's run since 2009, Morano has elevated fake climate experts, encouraged the harassment of real climate scientists, and promoted the myth of "global cooling."

+A new study says ice-free Arctic summers are coming as early as 2035.

Meanwhile, scarce rain in the, um, rainforest is producing huge Amazon fires. As Ana Ionova reports from Rio de Janeiro:

By this time of the year, rain should be drenching large swaths of the Amazon rainforest. Instead, a punishing drought has kept the rains at bay, creating dry conditions for fires that have engulfed hundreds of square miles of the rainforest that do not usually burn.

The fires have turned the end of the dry season in the northern part of the giant rainforest into a crisis. Firefighters have struggled to contain enormous blazes that have sent choking smoke into cities across South America.

A record number of fires so far this year in the Amazon has also raised questions about what may be in store for the world’s biggest tropical rainforest when the dry season starts in June in the far larger southern part of the jungle.

Oh, and Brazil is also experiencing a record outbreak of dengue fever, with a million cases so far this year.

Oh, and on the other side of the world, another huge bleaching event on the Great Barrier Reef

The bleaching event appears likely to be the worst on record in southern sections of the 1,400-mile-long reef, and could bring the first significant coral fatalities observed there. In other sections, what is the fifth major bleaching event in nine years could serve as a test of how resilient the world wonder will be going forward.

Water temperature data suggests the toll could approach that of 2016, when some 30 percent of the reef’s corals died after suffering through what were then unprecedented levels of heat stress.

+Jonathan Porritt has been doing great climate work in the UK for many decades. He’s running out of patience

I would be the first to acknowledge some kind of continuing denial sort-of makes sense. It can be very painful to have to properly embrace an understanding of what is actually happening in the climate today. And it can get even more disheartening when we take account of the constraints of human psychology and behaviour, let alone today’s political reality.

I get all that. But mainstream scientists, NGOs and commentators have been “holding back”, on those very grounds, for a long time. And it certainly hasn’t worked as a way of enlisting the huge numbers of people required to force our politicians to start getting serious.

Simple conclusion: we have to see off this patronising, manipulative, self-serving deceit (about needing to protect people from the truth of climate change) ONCE AND FOR ALL.

+Elizabeth Kolbert documents the “obscene” energy demands of AI: “if Google were to integrate generative A.I. into every search, its electricity use would rise to something like twenty-nine billion kilowatt-hours per year. This is more than is consumed by many countries, including Kenya, Guatemala, and Croatia.”

+The government has underestimated how much methane is leaking from fracking wells—but only by, hmm, a factor of three

The same issue is happening globally. Large methane emissions events around the world detected by satellites grew 50% in 2023 compared to 2022 with more than 5 million metric tons spotted in major fossil fuel leaks, the International Energy Agency reported Wednesday in their Global Methane Tracker 2024. World methane emissions rose slightly in 2023 to 120 million metric tons, the report said.

Meanwhile, Oil Change International offers an excellent account of how efforts to “certify” clean gas are turning into an embarassing greenwashing episode

Field investigations by optical gas imaging experts at Earthworks documented nearly two dozen instances in which Project Canary and similar monitoring technologies failed to capture significant pollution events. This evidence calls into question the degree to which gas certification process is misleading gas markets, giving consumers and investors a false sense of security about the environmental impacts of methane gas.