Last spring, both the New York state Senate and Assembly passed what is known as the Climate Change Superfund Bill, which would hold major fossil fuel company emitters of CO2 accountable to pay to mitigate the costs of their pollution and climate change adaptation. The legislation takes a cue from the federal Superfund law of 1980 and the tobacco settlement of the 1990s that’s funneled billions of dollars into state coffers. It’s estimated that the climate superfund bill would raise $75 billion from oil, coal and gas companies over 25 years.
The bill has been sitting on New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s desk for the past six months and she has until the end of this year to sign it or advocates must start the process over again. The issue is drawing attention as President-Elect Trump has pledged to eliminate most federal programs and funding to address the global climate crisis.
Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Sheldon Pollock, a retired professor at Columbia University and an activist with Third Act, a national group for people over 60 who take action on climate and democracy issues. Here, Pollock explains what the bill would do and describes Third Act’s plan for a sit-in and teach-in at the state Capitol in Albany Dec. 10-12, to encourage the governor to sign the bill.
SHELDON POLLOCK: We see that in the past 50 years there have been several judicial judgments that polluters must pay for the harms that they cause. And the Climate Change Superfund bill is a recent avatar, if I may, of this kind of thinking. So what does it actually do? The CCSB requires that the big companies that have polluted the air and water of New York state, should pay for the harms they have caused. The harms are principally climate disasters, which are a result of the climate change produced by the products sold: Superstorm Sandy and all the other lesser but equally damaging examples of climate disasters caused by climate change produced by Big Oil.
The total value of the Climate Change Superfund bill, the penalties, only amounts to $75 billion. That is the most modest possible cost of the harms that Big Oil’s product has produced, because the climate change impacts on New York state over the coming 30 years are going to be orders of magnitude greater than $75 billion. Just to rehab New York Harbor is going to cost $50 billion, to say nothing of costs to towns and villages and cities, whose entire tax burden would be encumbered by climate catastrophe costs.
Who are the big climate criminals who are being assessed damages? They’re the usual suspects: Saudi Aramco, Exxon, Shell, Chevron and on down the list. Their contributions have been very carefully assessed by the best scientists and scholars around to apportion blame to these companies. And in fact, as I mentioned, their profits vastly exceed $75 billion. It’s really a slap on the wrist.
The second most important part of this bill is the people it protects. If this bill is not signed, then who’s going to make up the $75 billion in costs? It’s going to be the people of New York state – everyday people, small people – who are going to be taxed to death to cover the climate catastrophes that Big Oil has produced. We can’t let that happen.
MELINDA TUHUS: So, now tell me what are the plans for action next week?
SHELDON POLLOCK: My dear comrade, Michael Richardson, who is one of the co-facilitator of Third Act Upstate New York, and I, who am a member of Third Act New York City, we looked at the lay of the land about six weeks ago, we saw the clock ticking, we heard rumblings that the bill might be in trouble. We, Michael and I felt that this was a fundamental violation by the governor of the will of the people.
The people have spoken through the Senate and the Assembly; they have expressed their will. The use-by date, so to put it, is Jan. 1, 2025. If the bill is not signed by then, it’s dead. And we decided we needed to have some demonstration of the commitment of the people of New York to this bill and to the democratic process that produced this bill. We decided on Dec. 10th, 11th and 12th. We had to give the governor enough time to sign the bill – she hasn’t so far. She called up 50 bills yesterday and the Superfund bill was not among them. So, our judgment was correct. She has not signed the bill.
We were walled in between Thanksgiving and Christmas. We knew that there would be some Democratic Caucus of the Assembly in Albany around the 10th of December. It’s not the most propitious time, but this is the hand we were dealt.
What do we do then? How do we express the will of the people in an unambiguous way? Well, we take over the Capitol. The plan is to assemble in Albany at the state Capitol at 10 o’clock in the morning of Dec. 10, and we will start a sit-in. We will start a sit-in that will not end until the governor signs the bill. Now, life being what it is and people’s obligations being what they are and so on and so forth. We’re not entirely sure how long the sit-in is gonna last. At the same time as we have our sit-in, we’re going to have a teach-in. We want all of the people in the room to get a good sense of why we’re there. The science behind the bill, the politics behind the bill, the place of the bill in the big long march towards climate safety.
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