Vermont set to become first state in the nation to ‘make big oil pay’

Vermont has seen more frequent and intense flooding in recent years, and climate change is expected to cause increased flooding in the state. Photo by StoryWorkz for VTDigger

Gov. Phil Scott has allowed two of the session’s most consequential bills related to climate change to become law without his signature. One holds big oil companies accountable for the damage climate change has caused in Vermont, and another is designed to protect Vermonters from the impacts of more frequent flooding as a result of a warmer atmosphere. 

The first, S.259, named the “Climate Superfund Act” and modeled on federal Superfund law, requires the world’s biggest oil companies to pay for damages that their products have caused in the state by way of climate change. 

The law directs money owed to Vermont to be calculated based on those damages and the corresponding percentage of emissions that the company was responsible for between 1995 and 2024. Then, the money would be deposited into a Climate Superfund Cost Recovery Program Fund, designed to pay for projects that protect Vermonters from climate change and help the state adapt to it. 

While several other states have introduced similar legislation, Vermont is the first in the country to enact such a law. 

Scott has said he would prefer that Vermont only move forward in the company of other states, rather than setting precedent and inviting almost-certain legal action from oil companies with deep pockets. The litigation process is likely to be expensive.

“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 in a letter to lawmakers on Thursday explaining his decision. 

“Taking on ‘Big Oil’ should not be taken lightly,” he wrote. “And with just $600,000 appropriated by the Legislature to complete an analysis that will need to withstand intense legal scrutiny from a well-funded defense, we are not positioning ourselves for success.”

Still, he said he understood “the desire to seek funding to mitigate the effects of climate change that has hurt our state in so many ways.” He noted that Attorney General Charity Clark and state Treasurer Mike Pieciak have “endorsed this policy and committed to the work it will require.”

He also found “comfort” in a measure that requires the Agency of Natural Resources to report back to the Legislature in January 2025 on the process, “so we can reassess our go-it-alone approach.”

Vermont’s effort to move forward on its own has brought the state national attention. Publications including The Guardian, The New Yorker and the The New York Times have covered the bill’s…