The Governor of the State of New York, Kathy Hochulha signed approval of a new legislative package requiring oil companies to contribute billions of dollars to create a Climate Superfunda fund that will be dedicated to cover eventualities that may arise from the climate emergency that they have contributed to generating over the years.
The ley allowأ، raise seventy-five billion dollars in twenty-five years from major oil companiesdemanding that they pay for the damage caused by increasingly severe climate events and that they are, scientifically and without any doubt, your responsibility.
The law considers, more than reasonably, that the development of the science of climate attribution Over the last few years, it has allowed us to carry out rigorous studies of Cause-effect relationships between climate change and extreme eventsy use them to estimate the corresponding responsibilities.
From ahأ, states like Vermont, firstand now New York have decided to apply these studies to require oil companies to provide funds to finance the problems derived from extreme climate events and the preparation for them, from the restoration of coastal wetlands to the protection of the coastline to the installation of energy-efficient cooling systems in buildings (including new schools and homes) to avoid further emissions, or improvements to stormwater drainage. The states of Maryland, Massachusetts y California They are also considering such laws to manage the rising infrastructure costs resulting from climate disasters.
The law estimates that preparing for and repairing extreme weather events caused by climate change will cost more than half a billion dollars statewide in 2050, which is more than $65,000 per household, combined with problems, injuries and deaths that the climate crisis is causing. The law aims to provide billions of dollars each year to ease the burden on the state’s citizens.
Additionally, the law normalizes emissions linked to fuel produced by companies: for every million pounds (about 450,000 kilograms of coal), the program allocates more than 942 metric tons of carbon dioxide, and for every million barrels of crude oil, an entity is considered to have produced 432,180 metric tons of carbon dioxide. From there, a scale is established from which the companies’ contributions result. The largest oil company in the world, Saudi Aramco, will have to pay 640 million dollars a year for having emitted 31,269 million tons of greenhouse gases between the years 2000 and 2020.
The American Petroleum Institute, which represents some six hundred members of the industry, has reacted, as it could not be otherwise, condemning the law and stating that this type of legislation represents nothing more than a new punitive energy tax. American, while they say they are evaluating their legal options in this regard. These types of laws, which will probably spread quickly among other states and the rest of the world, and serve to deter those who invest in the destruction of the planet because they will anticipate enormous losses, it is very possible that they will generate litigation on the part of fossil fuel companiesthe results of which will determine whether, in fact, the “polluter pays” principle prevails, and we begin to apply the logic that will lead us to the definitive decline of fossil fuels and the decline of the era, the Pyrocenein which human beings dedicated themselves to incessantly burning things to obtain energy. We will have to pay attention to what the judges say about it.
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