L.A. Fires Revive Calls for a ‘Climate Superfund’ Law in California

Vermont and New York recently became the first states to create “Climate Superfund” laws, which will require energy companies to help pay for the costs of dealing with extreme weather and climate change.

As wildfires devastate the Los Angeles area, some are asking if California could become the third.

“Taxpayers are shouldering 100 percent of the burden of climate-fueled disasters,” said Kassie Siegel, director of the Climate Law Institute at the Center for Biological Diversity, adding that this kind of legislation would “take some of the burden off Californians.”

But whether these new laws can survive what are expected to be fierce legal challenges from the oil industry and its allies is an open question. The first salvo was filed last month in Vermont federal court by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute. The suit called on the court to block Vermont’s law, arguing that it was unconstitutional and would impose “irrational and arbitrary punishment” based on flawed calculations.

“Vermont is not home to any of the energy producers it hopes to regulate,” the lawsuit said. “Nevertheless, it seeks to impose significant monetary penalties on those producers, potentially subjecting other states to increased energy costs, while reaping the financial benefits.”

The new state laws are modeled after the decades-old federal Superfund program, which requires companies to pay for cleaning up hazardous waste. That was a fairly straightforward approach to remediation: Specific sites — say, an old factory or a waste dump — could be identified, investigated and individually addressed.

By contrast, the climate superfund laws rely on emerging fields of science to more broadly quantify economic losses that can be attributed to climate change, and to determine which companies are most responsible.