I still maintain that all the fossil fuels companies should have refused to sell their products to the state government of Vermont
US Chamber, oil industry sue Vermont over law requiring companies to pay for climate change damage
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a top oil and gas industry trade group are suing Vermont over its new law requiring that fossil fuel companies pay a share of the damage caused over several decades by climate change.
The federal lawsuit filed Monday asks a state court to prevent Vermont from enforcing the law, which was passed last year. Vermont became the first state in the country to enact the law after it suffered catastrophic summer flooding and damage from other extreme weather. The state is working to estimate the cost of climate change dating back to Jan. 1, 1995.
The lawsuit argues the U.S. Constitution precludes the act and that the state law is preempted by the federal Clean Air Act. It also argues that the law violates domestic and foreign commerce clauses by discriminating “against the important interest of other states by targeting large energy companies located outside of Vermont.”
The Chamber and the other plaintiff in the lawsuit, the American Petroleum Institute, argue that the federal government is already addressing climate change. And because greenhouse gases come from billions of individual sources, they argue it is impossible to measure “accurately and fairly” the impact of emissions from a particular entity in a particular location over decades.
Well, they’re doing this with all sorts of legalese, rather than saying “let the state prove that the whopping 1.6F increase in the global temperature is the fault of fossil fuels, especially when the state had been using them and is still using them. They should provide photos and video of the government and members of the general assembly traveling in fossil fueled vehicles, as a start. But, this is a start.
Next up, will they go after NY and their similar law?
Petroleum and petroleum products alone are responsible for the current standard of living on earth. The legislature of the People’s Republik of Vermont are responsible for the high cost of living there.
Of the two entities, who should have to pay?
Also, if “fossil” fuels like crude oil and natural gas are made up of decomposing plants and animals, how come there are hundreds of times more of both on Titan, one of Saturn’s moons, than on Earth?
Every whale alive today owes their very existence to the petroleum industry.
I thankfully escaped from Vermont after watching the PTB there spend 30 years ruining it while tripling my cost of living.