New York is on the Verge of Passing Law to Make Big Oil Pay for Climate Change Costs

NY would be the second US state (following VT) to enact a “climate superfund” bill. Climate activists are holding a three-day sit-in demanding Gov. Kathy Hochul sign the bill into law.

Climate activists demonstrate inside the New York capitol building on December 10, 2024. Credit: Dana Drugmand

This week, climate activists from across New York state and neighboring New England states are converging at the New York state capitol building in Albany for a three-day sit-in demonstration urging New York Governor Kathy Hochul to sign the state’s climate superfund bill into law before time expires on the legislation at the end of the year.

This potentially game-changing legislation is designed to make major fossil fuel producers and refiners help foot the bill for climate damage and adaptation costs. New York legislators passed it in late spring, but the bill has since sat on Governor Hochul’s desk for the past six months. If the governor does not act upon it by January 1, the bill will die and state lawmakers will have to start the process over again to advance the policy.

But should Hochul sign on, New York would become just the second state in the nation to enact a law requiring Big Oil to pay for a share of climate change expenses incurred by state governments. Earlier this year Vermont made history (and news headlines) by passing its version of this polluter pays or ‘climate superfund’ bill into law – a first-in-the-world move by a government entity to establish by law that large fossil fuel extractors are liable for the climate pollution stemming from their extraction. Modeled after the 1980 federal Superfund law that makes polluters liable for shouldering the costs of cleaning up contaminated sites, the climate superfund legislation attempts to hold corporate climate polluters like ExxonMobil and Chevron responsible for paying for some of the damage communities are experiencing because of climate breakdown.

Whether that is extreme flooding as Vermont has seen over the last two years, or horrific storms like Hurricanes Helene and Superstorm Sandy, or raging wildfires not just out west but in the Northeast recently, the destructive impacts of the fossil fueled climate crisis are inescapable and undeniable. The question of who pays for this destruction and for measures to build resilience lies at the heart of the climate superfund concept, which is grounded in the polluter pays principle.

“These final weeks are an opportunity for our governor to make a commitment to our generation, to establish a new model for how we deal with climate disasters that makes polluters pay and not taxpayers,” Helen Mancini, a 17-year-old climate activist with Fridays for Future NYC, said at a Tuesday press conference in Albany at the demonstration supporting the New York climate superfund bill.

The New York legislation requires fossil fuel companies responsible for generating over 1 billon tons of climate pollution between 2000 and 2018 to pay into a newly created fund to help pay for things like storm water drainage system upgrades, coastal wetlands restoration, and responding to extreme weather events. The state would collect $3 billion each year over 25 years, or $75 billion in total.

“This money could not be more important,” said Keanu Arpels-Josiah, a 19-year-old organizer with Fridays for Future NYC. With New York facing upwards of $150 billion in climate adaptation costs in the coming years, he and other climate activists argue that the companies that have profited from selling the fuels causing climate change should be compelled to help pay for the devasting consequences.

“It is fair and just that those who have reaped enormous profits for selling products that they knew were harming the environment should shoulder the responsibility and the cost of repairing the damage,” Reverend John Paarlberg of New York State Council of Churches said at the Tuesday press conference.

The demonstration at the New York capitol building, which continues Wednesday and Thursday this week, brings together faith leaders, environmental advocates, local government officials, scientists, youth activists, and concerned senior citizens to call on Governor Hochul to sign the climate superfund bill. Chanting “do your job!” and “make polluters pay!”, demonstrators on Tuesday kicked off a three-day sit-in outside the governor’s office, some planning to risk arrest by refusing to leave at the end of the day.

At around 7pm Tuesday evening, state capitol police arrested about a dozen elder activists and charged them with a misdemeanor offense of criminal trespass, a more serious charge that is part of a concerning pattern of increasing state crackdown and criminalization of peaceful acts of protest and civil disobedience by climate activists.

The three-day sit-in also includes “teach-ins” or presentations from experts on certain topics, as well as singing of climate change-themed Christmas carols and a symbolic “die-in” with demonstrators lying on the floor to represent the human lives lost and at stake from the climate crisis. The action is the culmination of months of rallies demanding action from Hochul following the bill’s passage by the legislature in June.

Arpels-Josiah said it is “very frustrating” that Hochul has not yet acted. “This is her opportunity,” he said. “Our future is on the line, and that’s what the bill is about.”

Avalon Akashi, a youth climate activist with Sunrise NYC, told me she has seen climate change impacts “hitting closer to home,” from wildfires torching Brooklyn’s Prospect Park last month to major flooding in New York City last year. “Shifting the burden and responsibility of paying for climate change onto fossil fuel companies is an important first step in the fight for climate justice,” she said.

Vermont has shown that it can be done, and if New York – the world’s tenth largest economy – follows, it would set a powerful example, activists say.

Steve Crofter with Third Act Vermont came to Albany to show his support for New York taking on big polluters. He was thrilled to see Vermont take the lead in enacting this legislation. “Now I’m excited about a larger state doing it,” he told me.

New York has demonstrated climate leadership before when it banned fracking ten years ago, and now it has the opportunity to be at the forefront of the fight against the fossil fuel industry once again, said Sandra Steingraber, a scientist and co-founder of Concerned Health Professionals of New York.

“Like our fracking ban, [the climate superfund] will become a model all around the world, and a really powerful hedge against what’s going to happen in the White House over the next four years,” she told me.

Several other speakers at Tuesday’s demonstration referenced the return of Donald Trump to the presidency and the expected reversal of climate policies and environmental protections at the federal level. “More than ever, we need state leadership,” said Mancini. Fred Kowal, president of United University Professions, said that New York’s climate superfund bill “must be signed, because in the face of Donald Trump, New York must show the way.”

What happens next?

Hochul has reportedly proposed changes to the bill, opening up last-minute negotiations between state lawmakers and the governor’s office.

Activists demonstrating in Albany, along with over 400 organizations, are calling on Governor Hochul to withdraw any proposed amendments that would weaken the legislation, which has been met with opposition from some business groups.

According to reporting from POLITICO, some changes requested by Hochul’s office include extending the so-called “covered period” during which companies would be held responsible from 2000-2018 to 2000-2024, and allowing more time for the New York Department of Environmental Conservation to implement the policy.

“We're hearing that we're getting very, very close to final bill language and are feeling hopeful,” Cassidy DiPaola, communicators director with Fossil Free Media, an organization supporting efforts to make Big Oil pay for climate damages, told me.

DiPaola said that there is strong momentum for other states to advance their own versions of this legislation, especially if, or perhaps when, New York gets its bill enacted. “Most of the folks we're working with say that New York passing the bill would really pave the way for their state to do the same.”

A group of climate activists from Massachusetts are joining the demonstration in Albany today. The Bay State is among a handful of states that have seen climate superfund or polluters pay climate bills introduced, and even more states could soon follow.

“States won't keep asking their residents to foot the bill for a crisis they didn't create,” DiPaola said. “As federal support grows uncertain, dozens of state legislators are waiting to see if New York will prove that a different path is possible - one where corporate accountability becomes the foundation of climate action.”