Make Polluters Pay?

The Climate Crisis is already costing the public billions of dollars a year. And the full effects have barely even begun. Who should pay for this?

There is a precedent: the law that created the Superfund for chemical cleanup. Before the Superfund was created, massive chemical spills had to be cleaned up at public expense. Love Canal in New York famously made news in 1977. Love Canal was originally conceived as a bypass to Niagara Falls to facilitate shipping. (Promoted by railroad lawyer William Love in 1890.)

The canal was never built, but Hooker Chemical dumped about 20,000 tons of chemical waste there from 1942 to 1953. Hooker Chemical went out of business in 1968. But the waste later caused serious health problems in the community. The resulting outrage helped pass the Superfund law in 1980 and was called the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA).

Every chemical company was obliged to pay a tax into the Superfund to pay for cleaning up existing and future chemical waste. The law has expired and been renewed several times. Biden’s Inflation Recovery Act included making this Superfund permanent.

Given this precedent, why not create a Climate Crisis Superfund? To be funded by the industry that has the greatest responsibility for creating the crisis? The fossil fuel industry.

Well, this is starting to happen at the state level. New York and Vermont have passed Climate Superfund laws for exactly this purpose. The New York law will raise $3 billion per year for 25 years. Eight more states are following their lead, including California.

The California bill is AB1243 (Assembly)/SB684 (Senate): The “Polluters Pay Climate Superfund Act of 2025.” This money would fund projects to protect communities against fossil fuel caused climate disasters. Such disasters already include floods and fires, events which have caused insurance prices to spike or even have made insurance impossible to obtain in some places.

The money also would be used to invest in sustainable energy and transportation projects to reduce fossil fuel use.

But won’t the fossil fuel industry just pass these Superfund taxes on to consumers? First, it is important to grasp the scale of fossil fuel industry profits. ExxonMobil’s profits in 2024 were around $35 billion. Their CEO Darren Woods received about $37 million. They can absorb the taxes.

But it is also important to remember that fuel prices are set by markets. Adding a tax just means that some of the price is diverted to the public instead of to private profit. As long as all polluters have to pay the same tax, none is at a competitive disadvantage.

But is it fair for these polluters to pay a tax to clean up a problem that was unknown in the past? Well, I have been talking about the Climate Crisis since 1981 when it was already widely known. Internal documents show that ExxonMobil was well aware of the climate effects of their pollution by 1977 and maybe even earlier than that.

A Climate Superfund is actually much more fair than the chemical cleanup Superfund. In that case, companies have been taxed to pay to clean up after polluters that are long gone. And chemical companies that have played no part in pollution still have to pay. In the case of a Climate Superfund, all fossil fuel companies are to blame. There are no innocents.

The California bill would also only tax companies that have emitted at least a billion tons of climate changing emissions.

It is worth comparing climate legal action with tobacco legal action. Some of the same lawyers are even involved. It took many rounds of lawsuits for the public interest to prevail. In both cases the corporations knew of their public harms. They sowed doubt rather than providing evidence against the harms.

Can you be sure this cancer was caused by this cigarette? That this storm was caused by this barrel of oil? Of course not. But Climate Attribution Science actually can identify that a storm was likely caused by fossil fuel burning.

Please contact your state legislators and ask them to support this bill AB1243/SB684. To make Polluters Pay.