Make polluters pay, activists tell Schumer
New York’s Sen. Chuck Schumer should step up efforts to make greenhouse gas-causing energy companies pay for infrastructure to protect the country from climate change, a swath of local activist groups are urging.
They want the Senate majority leader to advance the “Polluters Pay Climate Fund Act” in tandem with the Democrats’ huge infrastructure and budget bills in Congress.
“It’s the most important rule that we learn: You make a mess, you clean it up,” Blair Horner, executive director of the New York Public Interest Research Group, said in a statement Sunday.
“It’s up to Sen. Schumer to make sure that lesson is applied to the oil industry.”
Under the legislation, 25 to 30 of the biggest polluters in the country would pour up to $500 billion into a fund for climate resiliency efforts, according to Sen. Chris Van Hollen, the Maryland Democrat who introduced the bill in the Senate. New York’s Democratic Rep. Jamaal Bowman introduced it in the House.
Schumer, a Democrat, has voiced support for the bill.
“Sen. Schumer has always believed that polluters who made a mess should be the ones to pay and clean it up,” spokesman Angelo Roefaro said, also in a Sunday statement. “Polluter pays has been the senator’s long-held mantra, and something he will continue to push at the federal level.”
Democrats are already battling over a $1 trillion infrastructure bill and a proposed $3.5 trillion package covering child care, health care and other programs. Throwing the Polluters Pay Climate Fund Act into the mix may be unlikely at this stage.
But NYPIRG, New York Communities for Change and other groups rallied outside Schumer’s Manhattan office on Friday, delivering what they said were 100,000 petition signatures in support of the bill.
“Sen. Schumer, the Congress and the president must make sure that it’s the oil and gas industries — not the taxpayers — that are on the hook for the growing costs to roads, bridges, mass transit and other infrastructure, caused by a rapidly warming planet,” Horner said.