2024-12-27 01:18:57 :
NEW YORK, Dec 26 (Reuters) – New York state will fine fossil fuel companies a total of $75 billion over the next 25 years to redress climate damage, under a bill signed into law on Thursday.
The law seeks to shift some of the recovery and adaptation costs of climate change from individual taxpayers to the oil, gas and coal companies that the law holds responsible. Funds raised will be used to mitigate the effects of climate change, including retrofitting roads, transportation, water and wastewater systems, buildings and other infrastructure.
“New York has fired a shot that will be heard around the world: The companies most responsible for the climate crisis will be held accountable,” New York Senator Liz Krueger, a co-sponsor of the bill, said in a statement. ”
Fossil fuel companies will be fined based on the amount of greenhouse gases they emitted into the atmosphere between 2000 and 2018, with payments to the Climate Super Fund starting in 2028. It would apply to any company whose global greenhouse gas emissions exceed 1 billion tons, as determined by the New York Department of Environmental Protection.
New York becomes the second state to pass such a law, after Vermont passed its own version this summer. The laws, modeled on existing state and federal Superfund laws, require polluters to pay to clean up toxic waste.
Krueger said in a statement that repairing damage caused by climate change and adapting to extreme weather will cost New York more than $500 billion by 2050. Major oil companies have made more than $1 trillion in profits since January 2021, and it has been known since at least the 1970s that the extraction and burning of fossil fuels causes climate change, she said.
Energy companies are expected to mount a legal challenge to the new law, arguing it supersedes federal laws regulating energy companies and polluters.
(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Editing by Leslie Adler)
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