The Vermont Legislature is advancing legislation requiring big fossil fuel companies pay a share of the damage caused by climate change after the state suffered catastrophic summer flooding and damage from other extreme weather.
The state Senate is expected to give final approval this week to the proposal, which would create a program that fossil fuel companies would pay into for climate change adaption projects in Vermont. It will then be considered in the House.
“In order to remedy the problems created by washed out roads, downed electrical wires, damaged crops and repeated flooding, the largest fossil fuel entities that have contributed to climate change should also contribute to fixing the problem that they caused,” Sen. Nader Hashim, a Democrat from Windham County, said to Senate colleagues on Friday.
Maryland, Massachusetts and New York are considering similar measures, but Vermont’s bill is moving quicker through the Legislature.
How is this enforceable? What marginal increase in a hurricane’s destructivness is attributable to climate change versus how destructive it’d be otherwise. And how much did that cost in damage? It’s impossible to figure out
We know how much damage natural disasters cause. Take the percentage increase of those disasters caused by climate change, make them pay the corresponding percentage multiplied by the total damage numbers.
Probably not perfect but this is just a way I thought of in 5 seconds, I bet they can think of something.
This is the problem. What’s the increase? What’s the baseline? The 1800’s? Just because a storm is more powerful, does that necessarily mean it does more damage? Maybe so but maybe not. Maybe a stronger storm misses land altogether. Is the increase in damage proportional to the increase in power or does it go up by the square or cube?
It’s impossible to calculate.
Is it though? Just because you cannot figure it out doesnt mean they won’t be able to find a close enough approximation for this to work
Exactly. Economists have already posted all kinds of calculations about who has caused how much damage to the environment. Pick one, figure out which parts of the calculation affect your area, and set the rates.
Taxes, while commonly passed with some justification for their existence, aren’t required to have any justification. States can tax companies in just about any way they see fit.
Taxes don’t even need to be “fair”. They can tax entities for any reason they want in just about any fashion they can dream up.
Who cares how much or what percentage of damage a hurricane caused is attributable to a specific corporation’s behavior? The state has decided this class of corporation, as a condition of doing business in the state is to pay into this fund. Take it, or leave.
Seriously. We already have the legal concept of “acts of God” in every form of insurance. Great idea, but you’d have to uproot centuries of legal standards, and I just don’t see the opposition allowing that. It would open the door to so many more lawsuits.
Great idea, but I’ll wait to hear if it passes and what actual teeth it has.
I mean, God doesn’t exist, so it shouldn’t be hard. When a natural disaster has a man-made component it ceases to be a natural disaster.
you can probably point to the 3rd 100 year storm in a year and say that one for sure is attributable to climate change
We have economic and environmental models for that.
In economics these extra effects are called externalities because the price we pay for a good doesn’t reflect the true cost to society that other people have to pay due to the production of that good (healthcare, disaster insurance and management, etc.)
Here’s one report that lists methodologies of calculating true costs of pollution
Another method is assign an equivalent monetary value to what averting one death would cost, so if pollution, floods are killing X people then the monetary costs to human life are that which can be levied collectively on to oil firms.
This paper tries to calculate the global costs of extreme weather that are attributable to climate change. This is what you were asking for.
Just split up this unpaid cost to the state caused by fossil fuel firms by their annual global revenue on emissions causing products.
Exactly, this bill is nothing hut virtue signaling.