As extreme climate-driven weather events and rising seas savage infrastructure and human health, the costs to states grow. Expensive but necessary measures to fortify communities have been put off because money or political will is lacking. At the same time, fossil fuel companies — whose decades of deception and continued resistance to a clean-energy transition bear responsibility for our climate emergency — continue to generate enormous profits.
It does not take a climate scientist or economist to recognize that something is desperately wrong with this picture. Now Vermont — with a population just under 650,000, the second smallest among the states — has stepped up and accomplished what no other state or Congress has been able to do.
The Democratic Party-controlled General Assembly, with a handful of Republican votes, approved a measure that requires the world’s biggest fossil fuel extractors and refiners to pay for some of the damages and adaptation costs the state has incurred and faces because of climate change. The state’s Republican governor allowed it to become law.
The measure has been called “landmark” and “pioneering.” And it is. But at its core, the idea behind the law is simple. Vermont is seeking to reinforce one of the most basic rules children learn in kindergarten, if not before: When you make a mess, you clean it up.
The federal government introduced this lesson in 1980, when Congress created the Superfund program to clean up thousands of sites contaminated by toxic and hazardous wastes. That law compels companies responsible for the contamination to either clean it up or reimburse the government for the work, regardless of whether they acted with fault or criminal intent.
That same principle will now apply in Vermont to the companies responsible for the biggest shares of the greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the planet. Other states, including California, New York and Massachusetts, are considering similar legislation. (The Rockefeller Family Fund, which I direct, has spent roughly $200,000 since 2022 in support of environmental efforts in Vermont, including passage of the climate Superfund law.)
The law covers the period between 1995 and 2024 and empowers Vermont to assess companies based on their share of the emissions they produced over those years. The money will pay for damages those emissions caused and also for measures to adapt to the changing climate by reducing exposure to floods, storms, crop damage, wildfires and other consequences.
Not every fossil fuel company falls under the law. It must have been responsible for more than one billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions globally over the period covered by the law. And the company must have some physical or economic connection to the state.
The law directs the state treasurer to calculate the damage to Vermont caused by climate change over that period and the costs the state faces to prepare for future impacts. Scientists can now pinpoint with increasing accuracy the role that climate change plays in specific weather events like floods, storms, droughts and heat waves. The state will identify the companies covered by the law, and their respective share of the total greenhouse gas emissions, based on the companies’ own reporting to federal agencies.
Assume, as a hypothetical, that the climate damages and adaptation costs to Vermont total $3 billion and that Chevron’s share of greenhouse gas pollution during the measuring period is 3 percent of the global total. Chevron would be assessed at $90 million, a tiny fraction of the more than $21 billion in profits the company made in 2023 alone.
The law does not restrict future production by fossil fuel companies. They can still drill to their corporate hearts’ content and pay nothing more to Vermont. An economic analysis of a similar proposal in New York State by the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University’s law school found that it “was unlikely to alter the price” of gasoline at the pump or the price of crude oil. In short, Vermont’s law is an elegant legal approach to make oil company shareholders foot their fair share of these costs.
That is, of course, if the law survives the inevitable legal challenges that no doubt will arise and delay this law from taking effect. “Taking on Big Oil should not be taken lightly,” the governor, Phil Scott, warned lawmakers even as he agreed to let the legislation become law.
Still, it is an important step forward against a powerful and deep-pocketed industry. Perhaps it will inspire other states to follow, or embolden Congress to pass a climate version of the Superfund law it pioneered 44 years ago. One such federal bill has been introduced by Senators Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland, and Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont.
State Senator Dick Sears of Bennington County, the prime sponsor of the climate bill, died last weekend at 81, less than a month after helping steer the measure through the Legislature. He felt strongly about making polluters pay for the damage they caused, a view born from fighting to help constituents whose drinking water had been polluted by a local company’s use of the forever chemicals known as PFAS.
One of his legacies will now be his success in convincing fellow lawmakers that the “polluters must pay” idea should apply to reckless fossil fuel companies that keep drilling and refining, no matter what the stakes.