‘Game-changing’: Vermont becomes first state to require big oil to pay for climate damages

 

Vermont has been pummeled by climate disasters in recent years, including flooding last year that cost more than $1bn in damages. Photograph: Charles Krupa/AP

 

 Climate Superfund Act compels oil companies to pay potentially billions of dollars for climate impacts caused by their emissions

 

Vermont has become the first state to enact a law holding oil firms financially responsible for climate damages, after the Republican governor, Phil Scott, allowed it to pass without his signature late on Thursday.

Modeled after the Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund program, the Climate Superfund Act directs the state to charge major fossil fuel companies potentially billions of dollars to pay for climate impacts to which their emissions have contributed. It is expected to face legal challenges from the industry.

Under the legislation, Vermont officials will have until January 2026 to assess the total costs to the state from greenhouse gases emitted between 1995 and 2024, including the impacts on public health, biodiversity and economic development. They will then use federal data to determine how much to charge individual polluters for those harms.

 Climate advocates celebrated the passage of the law, which won supermajority support in the state legislature from Democrats and some Republicans.

“It’s not every day you get to be part of something that’s both historic and potentially game-changing for all the citizens of your state,” Ben Edgerly Walsh, an advocate at the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, said.

Supporters hope the bill can serve as a model for the rest of the country as Maryland, Massachusetts and New York are considering similar measures, and as federal lawmakers weigh proposals submitted by Senators Bernie Sanders and Chris Van Hollen.

Vermont is among the most quickly warming states in the US, and has been pummeled by climate disasters in recent years; last year, floods wreaked more than $1bn in damages. In a note to the state senate’s secretary on Thursday, Scott said he understood “the desire to seek funding to mitigate the effects of climate change that has hurt our state in so many ways”.

But though he allowed the bill to pass, the governor said he was concerned about the costs of the bill to his small state.

“Instead of coordinating with other states like New York and California, with far more abundant resources, Vermont – one of the least populated states with the lowest GDP in the country – has decided to recover costs associated with climate change on its own,” he wrote.Edgerly Walsh, however, said the legislature took steps to accommodate those concerns, including by adding funding for state agencies to manage implementation. He said Vermont could not afford to pay the “absolutely enormous” costs of the climate crisis itself.

The American Petroleum Institute, the largest oil and gas lobby group in the US, sent a letter in March to Vermont lawmakers opposing the bill, claiming it “retroactively imposes costs and liability on prior activities that were legal” and “violates equal protection and due process rights by holding companies responsible for the actions of society at large”.

Advocates say they are prepared for the court battles ahead.

“We know that big oil will fight this in the courts,” said Martin LaLonde, chair of the state’s house judiciary committee. “But, as an attorney myself, and having worked closely with many legal scholars in shaping the bill, I believe we have a solid legal case”

The law’s passage indicates an increased demand for climate accountability, said Cassidy DiPaola, spokesperson for the Make Polluters Pay campaign, which is backing climate superfund bills across the country.

“Vermont is just the beginning,” she said. “The tide is turning, and the fossil fuel industry’s reckoning is on the horizon.”

 

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LONDON – Climate change could be about to alter life in the sea, according to new research in Nature Geoscience.

By Tim Radford, Climate News Network

Researchers at the University of Southern California have been experimenting with common microbes, hoping to predict which will flourish in a warmer and more carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere.

The microbes are two genera of cyanobacteria. These tiny creatures – blue-green algae responsible for huge occasional “blooms” in the sea – are life’s bottom line: they fix nitrogen from the atmosphere and they photosynthesize atmospheric carbon to release oxygen, so they deliver staples for survival both for all plants and for all animals.

These microbes are everywhere. U.S. researchers recently charted the predicted change in cyanobacteria populations in the arid soils of the North American continent over the next century: now this second team has begun to look at life in the sea.

Fishing boats in Thailand. How will rising CO2 in the oceans affect their future?
Credit: apes_abroad via Wikimedia Commons

David Hutchins and colleagues studies two groups of nitrogen fixers; Trichodesmium andCrocosphaera: the first forms vast and often visible colonies, the second is harder to see, but is found everywhere.

They tested seven strains of the two microbes, from different locations in both the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans, under laboratory conditions in artificial atmospheres that mimicked the predicted carbon dioxide concentrations under various climate scenarios.

The researchers found that as carbon dioxide levels rose, nitrogen-fixing productivity rose too, by up to 125 percent. But the responses varied according to the strain under test: some did better under pre-industrial conditions; some flourished as they neared the levels predicted for a “greenhouse” world.

The research demonstrates what any evolutionary biologist would have predicted: that environmental conditions “select” for particular species with the appropriate adaptations, and that as conditions change, so do populations. What it means in practical terms for the rest of the planet is less certain.

This is basic research which exploits the university’s large “library” of marine microorganisms, and establishes a baseline of data that will give some guide to ocean productivity in the future, but quite how it will affect the marine food chain – and oceans cover 70 percent of the planet, so it is a big question – is still to be established.

“Our findings show that CO2 has the potential to control the biodiversity of these keystone organisms in ocean biology, and our fossil fuel emissions are probably responsible for changing the types of nitrogen fixers that are growing in the ocean,” said Professor Hutchins. “And we’re not entirely certain how that will change the ocean of tomorrow.”

Tim Radford is a reporter for Climate News Network. Climate News Network is a news service led by four veteran British environmental reporters and broadcasters. It delivers news and commentary about climate change for free to media outlets worldwide.

Prepare for 5°C Warmer World

Preparen-se para um Mundo 5 graus mais quente.

LONDRES - Pelo cientista, Sir Robert Watson | O mundo perdeu a chance de manter as emissões de gases do efeito estufa abaixo do nível necessário para evitar que a temperatura suba acima de 2 ° Celsius. De acordo com o cientista britânico, que usou para presidir o IPCC, o Painel Intergovernamental sobre Mudança do Clima. ( a perspctiva hoje, segundo o cienista é  de 5 graus Cº)

Um mundo de 5 ° C mais quente do que hoje poderia esperar-se colheitas caindo em países desenvolvidos (observe  seca de 2012 nos EUA) e em desenvolvimento, o aumento do nível do mar ameaçando muitas grandes cidades (New York, Santos, Rio, Balneário caboriú etc...)....







By Alex Kirby, Climate News Network

LONDON — The world has missed the chance to keep greenhouse gas emissions below the level needed to prevent the temperature climbing above 2° Celsius, according to the British scientist who used to chair the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The scientist, Sir Robert Watson, chaired the Panel from 1997 until 2002, when he was
ousted after U.S. pressure for his removal. Watson said there is a 50-50 chance of preventing global average temperatures rising more than 3°C above their level at the start of the industrial age, but a 5°C rise is possible.

That would mean the Earth warming more than it has since the end of the last Ice Age. Speaking at a symposium at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Watson said:
"All the promises in the world, which we're not likely to realize anyway, will not give us
a world with only a 2°C rise. All the evidence, in my opinion, suggests we're on our way to a 3°C to 5°C world.

"Some people are suggesting that we try to geo-engineer our way out of the problem,
intervening in the climate system to moderate warming.

"I'm very, very nervous about that," he said "It shows a level of arrogance that we know how to manage our environment. It certainly needs a lot of research."

Watson concluded: "There are cost-effective and equitable solutions to address climate
change, but political will and moral leadership is needed, and the changes in policies,
practices and technologies required are substantial and not currently under way."

Watson told the Climate News Network: "We're going to have more people in the world and they'll be wealthier, so energy demand is bound to rise.

"We look like having huge quantities of gas from shale. That can be a useful transitional tool: it emits half the carbon you get from coal. But it's not a long-term solution, unless you can use it with carbon capture and storage, CCS. I'm optimistic that CCS can work, but it's got to be shown to work, and what costs and energy penalties it will entail.

"We now know we can't rule out a possible 5°C temperature rise, and we need to start
preparing for it.

"When I was chairing the IPCC we were all very optimistic that we'd have a global agreement to limit emissions, though we knew it would be difficult. But we were hopeful that emissions would not go up at the tremendous rate they are rising now."

A world 5°C warmer than today could expect falling harvests in developing and developed countries, sea level rise threatening many major cities, and significant water shortages. More species would be facing extinction (10 percent of species are thought to be at risk for every 1°C of warming), there would be more (and more intense) extreme weather, and a growing risk of abrupt and major irreversible changes in the climate system.

Watson was voted out as the IPCC's chair in 2002. The weekly New Scientist reported that the year before, shortly after the inauguration of U.S. president George W. Bush, an ExxonMobil executive wrote to the White House asking: "Can Watson be replaced now at the request of the U.S.?"

Watson is now science director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia, UK, and chief scientific adviser to the UK Government's

Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Sir Andy Haines, former director of the London School of Hygiene, told the Climate News Network: "We're not making much progress on climate change at the moment. We need more arguments combining environment and health – cutting coal-burning, for instance, improving access to clean energy, walking and cycling instead of using cars.

"We need to look not just at population, but at consumption in the developed countries. A lot of vested interests don't want to go down that road. We can change by paying for
externalities, like the adverse effects of air pollution.

"We can address the inequalities which are evident in areas like heart disease rates and diet. And we need to influence the UN's new sustainable development goals to include both health and environment indicators."

Alex Kirby, a former BBC environment correspondent, is a founding journalist of Climate News Network. Climate News Network is a news service led by four veteran British environmental reporters and broadcasters. It delivers news and commentary about climate change for free to media outlets worldwide.

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