N.Y. State can make polluters pay

Across the country, previously once-in-a-generation weather events are devastating lives and homes on a regular basis. And it’s costing us. Here in New York, taxpayers may be on the hook for $100 billion for storm clean up — and that cost is expected to grow, while the oil companies responsible for one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions rake in record profits.

It’s not right — which is why we have championed a federal proposal to make those polluters pay, with the support of more than 40 of our colleagues in the House of Representatives. But if there’s one thing that unites the Republicans who now control the House, it’s their refusal to hold Big Oil accountable. That’s why we need Albany to step up and pass the Climate Change Superfund Act.

The $75 billion Superfund will force the fossil fuel companies most responsible for climate destruction to clean up the mess they’ve made, by paying into the fund over a 25 year period. As early as 1977, scientists working for Big Oil predicted that burning fossil fuels would lead to global warming, but the companies put profits first and the planet last. And for them, it paid off handsomely.

Exxon, the largest oil producer in the world, is projecting $58 billion in profits for 2022 — more than double their 2021 earnings. By blaming the war in Ukraine, these corporations exploited a human rights crisis to price-gouge everyday consumers at the pump and further enrich their investors in the process. The rest of us have been saddled with the burdens of escalating climate chaos.

If enacted, the New York fund will cover climate resilient projects across the state, making necessary improvements that will protect our neighbors — especially in low income communities of color, where New Yorkers are most at risk for freezing or drowning in their own homes.

With this $75 billion, we’ll be able to prepare the power grid to handle extreme weather, improve hospitals and expand quality health care, electrify and install proper HVAC systems in public schools, create systems to keep people safe during heat waves, and protect neighborhoods and critical transportation infrastructure from rising sea levels, and more.

We need these improvements as soon as possible. The last eight years were the hottest on record, and each of the past four decades was warmer than the one that came before. Temperatures are rising faster than our efforts to slow them down, and current research shows that climate change has made deadly storms more frequent and at least 10% stronger. In September 2021, Hurricane Ida brought catastrophic destruction to our state, killing 43 New Yorkers and people in surrounding states. In 2011, Hurricane Irene killed five. Superstorm Sandy killed 48 in 2012. Just this past December, 40 people died in the Buffalo blizzard.

We’re all suffering from the deadly impacts of climate change, but Black, Brown, and low-income New Yorkers bear the worst of them Already, 370 New Yorkers die each year from heat-related deaths, and Black New Yorkers are disproportionately affected. The people who lost their homes and family members to Hurricane Ida weren’t wealthy New Yorkers living in fancy high-rises — they were working people in basement apartments in Queens, trying to make ends meet.

Instead of investing in developing clean and renewable energy sources, fossil fuel companies continue to double down on killing us. They fund climate science denial while pushing greenwashing advertising, manipulating New Yorkers into believing they have our wellbeing at heart. It’s criminal. At the very least, we shouldn’t be stuck with the massive bill for the mess they’ve made.

Understandably, making polluters pay is popular with a large majority of the American people, who believe that the companies responsible for this mess should be the ones to clean it up. That number holds strong here in New York, too, where 89% of us support fossil fuel companies covering at least some of the cost for climate damages.

This year, Gov. Hochul and the Legislature have the world-changing opportunity to make polluters pay and show the nation how to do it. The fossil fuel giants plan on New York taxpayers continuing to foot the bill. They privatize trillions in shareholder profits and socialize the cost of climate destruction. That arrangement needs to end now, and passing a climate polluters pay bill is the best way to do so. If we want to safeguard our communities and planet for future generations, we can’t afford not to.