State of Vermont now being sued by both sides of the climate change war
By Paul Bean
The US Chamber of Commerce and the Petroleum Institute have jointly filed a lawsuit against the State of Vermont for a 2024 first in the nation Superfund Law seeking damages on Big Oil corporations for their alleged contribution to climate change.
“This law, known as the ‘Climate Superfund’ does not limit its regulations to greenhouse emissions released in Vermont,” says the lawsuit. “Rather, it seeks to punish a narrow set of energy producers for global greenhouse gases emitted from all sources in the atmosphere over the course of three prior decades that allegedly caused damage to the state.”
The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court, with decisions subject to appeal in a federal appeals court and, potentially, the U.S. Supreme Court.
This news comes after an announcement by the Conservation Law Foundation last fall that it had “filed a lawsuit against Vermont’s Secretary of the Agency of Natural Resources [Julie Moore] for not fulfilling her legal obligations under the Global Warming Solutions Act (GWSA), which is critical for keeping the state on track to reduce harmful emissions contributing to climate change.”
Vermont’s Secretary Agency of Natural Resources is now being sued on ‘both sides’ of the political spectrum for a law seeking to recover billions from Big Oil. Lawsuits against the state of Vermont are typically defended by the Vermont’s Attorney General’s Office. The state funding needed for legal costs and Agency of Natural Resources staff resource time is as yet undetermined.
The lawsuit continues, “Vermont has thus exceeded the bounds of its authority, inserting itself into an arena that is and has been historically controlled only by federal law, upsetting the careful regulatory balance the Clean Air Act establishes, violating the extraterritorial restraints of our federal system, and transgressing the bounds of due process and other constitutional protections.”
The Clean Air Act of 1963 is the detailed federal law that “regulates air emissions from stationary and mobile sources. Among other things, this law authorizes the EPA to establish National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) to protect public health and public welfare and to regulate emissions of hazardous air pollutants.”
The complaint document explains their argument on why Vermont is overstepping its regulatory bounds and cites examples of other cases around the country to support their argument. “The Act’s punishment targets only a select number of largely domestic energy producers, pinning the blame for climate change impacts on those selected producers who were lawfully operating while ignoring the the myriad of end users across the globe world who emit the majority of greenhouse gasses (and many of whom fail to mitigate their own emissions).”
The suit does not specify the damages it seeks. VDC will be following this suit, stay tuned for updates.