The Perversity and Unconstitutionality of Climate Superfund Laws: When Political Myopia Reigns Supreme
April 9, 2025
By: Benjamin Zycher
The unconstitutionality of climate superfund laws shows that they are more the product of political myopia than an attempt to help the environment.
Money grabs by politicians and ideological interest groups are nothing new, but the spate of recent proposals for climate “Superfund” laws — attempting to blame and tax the fossil energy producers for many billions of dollars for the purported adverse effects of anthropogenic (caused by emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG)) climate change — truly are in a class by themselves. Vermont and New York already have such laws on the books, and similar ones have been proposed in California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, and Rhode Island. The New York law, for example, will require fossil energy producers to pay about $75 billion over the next twenty-five years to pay for “the cost of climate adaptation,” according to New York Governor Kathy Hochul.
Let us begin with the obvious truth that, for at least a century, the production, sale, and use of fossil fuels have been and remain legal. Such economic activities are subject to an array of federal and state environmental laws and regulations, and no one argues that the fossil energy industry has failed systematically to comply with those requirements. GHG emissions related to fossil fuels primarily are the result of consumption rather than production, but the various Superfund laws and proposals ignore the role of consumption, instead for obvious political reasons blaming the producers for the asserted effects of GHG emissions. Surprise! The Superfund penalties are a tax; there is no plausible argument to the contrary, and such taxes imposed upon producers will be borne by consumers to a substantial degree in the immediate term, and entirely over the longer term.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/energy-world/the-perversity-and-unconstitutionality-of-climate-superfund-laws-when-political-myopia-reigns-supreme
