A small tractor clears water from a business as flood waters block a street, July 12, 2023, in Barre, Vermont. Vermont has become the first state to enact a law requiring fossil fuel companies to pay a share of the damage caused by climate change, Thursday, May 30, 2024, after the state suffered catastrophic summer flooding and damage from other extreme weather.
It’s a polluter-pays model affecting companies engaged in the trade or business of extracting fossil fuel or refining crude oil attributable to more than 1 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions during the time period.
The American Petroleum Institute, the top lobbying group for the oil and gas industry, has said it’s extremely concerned the legislation “retroactively imposes costs and liability on prior activities that were legal, violates equal protection and due process rights by holding companies responsible for the actions of society at large; and is preempted by federal law.
“Instead of coordinating with other states like New York and California, with far more abundant resources, Vermont – one of the least populated states with the lowest GDP in the country – has decided to recover costs associated with climate change on its own,” Scott wrote. But he said he understands"the desire to seek funding to mitigate the effects of climate change that has hurt our state in so many ways.