Dear Editor:
When you’ve spent as much time in Albany as I have, very few things come as a surprise. But I will admit that I was surprised to see John Ravitz of the Business Council of Westchester advocating for local businesses and taxpayers to pay the entire cost of cleaning up from and defending against climate change-driven extreme weather events. Because they are the ones paying right now, and they will continue to pay if we don’t pass the Climate Change Superfund Act (S.2129/A.3351).
First, it’s important to clarify one point. The costs that the Climate Change Superfund will cover have nothing to do with New York’s Climate Law, the CLCPA, or with our many vital programs to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and fight climate change. The Superfund will not be paying for things like solar panels, EV chargers, or heat pumps – those things are referred to as climate “mitigation.”
Rather, the Superfund addresses the climate change-driven costs that we are already facing and will continue to face long into the future regardless of whether we reduce our emissions going forward. These are the costs of repairing from and preparing for thousand-year flooding, deadly blizzards, drenching rains, scorching heat, rising seas, and other impacts of the climate crisis. These are non-negotiable expenses for things like stormwater drainage systems or rebuilding roads and bridges, what is called climate “adaptation.”
There is no question that these adaptation costs must be paid – estimates for statewide climate adaptation costs range into the hundreds of billions of dollars, impacting every corner of the state. The only question for legislators is who will foot the bill. Right now, it’s you, the taxpayer and local business owner.
Under the Climate Change Superfund Act, around forty of the largest multinational oil, gas, and coal companies – the ones responsible for creating the climate crisis – will collectively be assessed $75 billion, or $3 billion per year over 25 years, for damages in New York State caused by their past activities. To put this amount in context, just one of those companies, ExxonMobil, made $36 billion in profits last year alone.
The idea behind the Superfund is so simple a kindergartner can understand it: when you make a mess, you clean it up. Just like in the traditional federal and state superfund programs, the companies that caused the environmental damage will be on the hook for contributing to the cost of remediation. When GE was dumping PCBs into the Hudson River, they were doing so legally, and the public was buying the products they made. But when we learned just how harmful that dumping was, the traditional superfund program was used to require GE to help pay the clean-up costs. Just like with GE and the Hudson, the Climate Change Superfund is not a punishment, it simply requires companies to take financial responsibility for the damage they caused through their actions, and from which they profited.
Economists agree that the design of these backward-looking, one-time assessments ensures the costs will not be passed on to consumers. The oil companies know this – that’s why they and their local surrogates strongly oppose the Superfund while supporting carbon pricing schemes like Cap & Invest that allow them to easily pass the costs along to you.
I expect to see the worn-out playbook of deny, deflect, and delay from Big Oil. But it’s disappointing to see the Business Council of Westchester carrying water for Exxon when actual Westchester businesses are already burdened with the costs of a climate crisis caused by Big Oil’s actions.
The State Senate has demonstrated that we have the backs of taxpayer’s and small businesses, by passing the Climate Change Superfund Act this month. Now it’s up to the Assembly and the Governor to decide whose side they’re on – Big Oil’s, or yours.
Sincerely,
Liz Krueger
State Senator
28th District
