Red states sue New York for punitive climate change bill

In what could find itself deemed a new “war of Northern Aggression,” West Virginia and twenty-one other states are looking to defend themselves against New York for what they allege are climate-related crimes.

A new lawsuit targets New York’s recently passed “Climate Change Superfund Act.” ABC27 reports the law requires polluters “to pay for environmental damage based on how many tons of fossil fuels they emitted during a specific period of time.” States could be on the hook for as much as $75 billion in fines for emissions going back years.

At the time of the act’s passage, State Senator Liz Krueger, co-sponsor of the bill, said, “The Climate Change Superfund Act is now law, and New York has fired a shot that will be heard round the world. The companies most responsible for the climate crisis will be held accountable.”

“We refuse to let the entire burden of climate change fall on the backs of our taxpayers while Big Oil reaps record profits at the expense of our future,” said state Representative and bill co-sponsor Jeffrey Dinowitz.

West Virginia’s attorney general John “J.B.” McCuskey filed the suit, and said:

We live at a time in this world where the amount of electricity that we are making is not nearly as much as our country is going to need to be secure. The AI revolution, the data revolution, the computing revolution is creating a delta between the amount of electricity that we can create as a country and the amount of electricity that we need to stay ahead of countries like China, India and Russia as they move forward with their coal and gas-fired power plants where we are trying to slow that growth. Well, that ends today.

The plaintiffs (Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina and West Virginia, together with the West Virginia Coal Association, the Gas and Oil Association of West Virginia, America’s Coal Associations and Alpha Metallurgical Resources) accuse “the state of New York,” its attorney general Letitia James and other state officials named as defendants in the case, as believing they can “seize control over the makeup of America’s energy industry.

“In an unprecedented effort,” the suit says, “New York has set out to impose tens of billions of dollars of liability on traditional energy producers disfavored by certain New York politicians… the Climate Change Superfund Act is an ugly example of the chaos that can result when states overreach. It imposes retroactive fines on traditional energy producers for their purported past contributions to greenhouse gas emissions, which were lawful operations endorsed by both federal and state regulators.

“Rather than focusing on greenhouse-gas emissions released in New York, the Act punishes a small group of energy producers for global greenhouse gases emitted from all sources into the atmosphere from 2000 to 2018. Yet coal, oil and natural gas were helping New York during that time. They helped keep the lights on in Albany, manufacture the steel that supported New York City’s iconic skyscrapers and fuel the industry that keeps New York ports humming.”

Steve Milloy, former director of external policy and strategy at Murray Energy Corp and publisher of junkscience.com, says it’s doubtful New York’s “absurd” Climate Change Superfund Act “will survive its first brush with a court.” Nonetheless, he adds, “Big Oil should stop selling gasoline in New York for a week and watch New York Democrats get wiped out in the next election.”

The debate over how much of an effect greenhouse gases have on global temperatures, if any, is still a matter of debate. And Milloy points out “some inconvenient truth” regarding the act: “The new law is meant to punish Big Oil for emissions from 2000 to 2018. But there was no warming in New York during that period. New York’s average temp in 2000 was 45.7°F. In 2018, it was 45.7°F — despite eighteen years of emissions.”

Fossil fuels, it’s worth noting, still account for “84 percent of total US primary energy production in 2023,” per the US Energy Information Association. They’re also responsible for a whole bunch of neat stuff the people of New York probably like having around, such as heat and electricity, asphalt, tons of medicines and anything made with plastic. Depriving constituents of such items may just be the wakeup call blue voters need to deprive themselves of Democrat lawmakers.