I spent two days in mid-December sitting with dozens of other activists in the War Room (that’s its actual name) outside New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office, pressing her to sign the Climate Change Superfund Act into law.
It had been sitting on her desk since both chambers passed the bill last June. On December 27, she signed it. Could we get a similar bill in Connecticut?
Our action was organized by two New York chapters of Third Act, which is a group of Americans over age 60 that works on climate and democracy, and Fridays for Future NYC, an international climate group for youth started by Greta Thunberg. The sit-in, sing-in, teach-in and die-in was followed by the arrests of 19 elders who declined to leave the building after it closed. They were charged with misdemeanors rather than lower-level violations, and must return to court early in January.>
The action put “an exclamation point” on a two-year effort to pass the bill, led by other state environmental organizations, said lead organizer Michael Richardson of Upstate Third Act.;
The legislation would require the largest fossil fuel companies to pay $3 billion a year for 25 years in compensation for the pollution they’ve emitted since 2000, in proportion to their products’ contribution to global heating. Economists across the political spectrum agree that this will not raise New Yorkers’ energy prices, because the price of oil is set by global markets. The money will help pay to repair damage from past climate-fueled storms and harden the state’s infrastructure to prepare for future catastrophes. The law also provides funding to address public health issues, such as asthma, which is exacerbated by fossil fuels’ toxic emissions.
The law is commonly known as Make Polluters Pay, and is the second one of its kind passed, after Vermont’s. However, New York’s massive economy and huge carbon footprint (which comes to Connecticut in the form of toxic air pollution) makes its law a game-changer and a beacon for the several other states currently considering similar legislation.
Connecticut is not yet among them, but it could be. The CT Sierra Club lists this as one of its 2025 policy priorities: “establish a funding stream, paid for by climate polluters, to pay for climate mitigation, resilience, and adaptation efforts with priority funding for Environmental Justice communities.” And the CT Coalition for Climate Action, a broad-based group that includes Sierra Club CT and many others, lists this point: “Hold climate polluters accountable for climate impacts.”
The Climate Change Superfund Act does not do anything to reduce greenhouse gases. It addresses past harms that the big oil companies have unleashed on New Yorkers and that the $75 billion will only partially offset. “This is about playing fair,” says Richardson, adding, “We could really call this the Municipal Taxpayer Relief Act.”
Conservative groups and oil companies plan to fight the new law in court. I find it almost amusing that they insist this law will somehow end up making consumers pay the $75 billion. The fact is, consumers are already paying 100% of the costs of this deadly pollution — this law will take some of the burden off them. In opposing the Climate Change Superfund Act, they claim that transitioning off their products will cause massive economic disruption, when the truth is that continuing to burn these forms of energy is what is creating intolerable economic as well as social disruption and climate chaos. Just ask my friends who live in Asheville, NC, after Hurricane Helene came through.
I’m reading a book called The Triumph of Doubt. Each chapter describes how scientists, bought and paid for by the tobacco industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the fossil fuel industry, and many more, sow doubt about peer-reviewed science conducted by those without a conflict of interest, often delaying many necessary changes to protect the public’s health. This is what the fossil fuel industry (oil, gas and coal) has been doing for more than half a century – sowing doubt about the deadly impact of their products on earth’s climate and its inhabitants, even when their own scientists have been telling them that’s exactly what’s happening.
Sitting around the governor’s beautifully decorated Christmas tree (which we enhanced with some banners of our own), singing holiday songs with climate-focused lyrics, learning from the many excellent teach-in presenters and getting to know other elders and the passionate high schoolers who spoke about their terror and their determination to stop runaway climate chaos all fulfilled another goal of the action — building our movement for the challenges yet to come.
Melinda Tuhus lives in New Haven.