The confidence artists doing business as Vermont’s Democratic majority legislature have crafted a bill it thinks will make Big Oil pay for environmental damage which it claims is the result of years of detrimental emissions.
It’s a polluter-pays model affecting companies engaged in the trade or business of extracting fossil fuel or refining crude oil attributable to more than 1 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions during the time period. The funds could be used by the state for such things as upgrading stormwater drainage systems; upgrading roads, bridges and railroads; relocating, elevating or retrofitting sewage treatment plants and making energy efficient weatherization upgrades to public and private buildings.
I’m no lawyer, but I don’t think this will work. It is ex post facto and, therefore, unconstitutional. The actual emissions are the result of Vermonters (and everyone else, including the government and its lawyers) choosing to pay for and use fossil fuels for their own productivity, comfort, and enjoyment.
I’d go so far as to suggest that there is evidence the government (in some cases) demanded – under some earlier iteration of what we today call social justice – that utility companies ensure customers can use their products (electricity, gas, oil) to (in their current view) pollute the planet.
Isn’t that a little bit like suing Jack Daniels because a bartender didn’t take an “overserved” customer’s keys at the State House office party in 1972?
Under the legislation, the Vermont state treasurer, in consultation with the Agency of Natural Resources, would provide a report by Jan. 15, 2026, on the total cost to Vermonters and the state from the emission of greenhouse gases from Jan. 1, 1995, to Dec. 31, 2024.
The assessment would look at the (sp) affects on public health, natural resources, agriculture, economic development, housing and other areas.
Did Vermont not regulate equipment to burn fossil fuels or license its installers? Were there state inspections or fees to affirm and abet the proper burning of fossil fuels, or – and this is a fun one – didn’t the state make bank on the practice, thereby approving it? And if the government is so much smarter than anyone else, why didn’t they know better? How is this the energy companies’ fault and not the regulators and politicians in government who allowed it?
And if extraction and processing justify a fine for enviro-malfeasance leading to a global state of weather-related harm, shouldn’t Vermont fine China for not just burning dirty coal but all of its environmentally catastrophic Rare Earth Metal and mineral Mining in Southeast Asia and Africa, to replace fossil fuels. India, Africa, the oil emirates, Iran, and Russia too.
Why wait another 100 years? We know the mining for metals needed to make “green” energy is as bad or worse for the environment as are the end-of-life leftovers from wind, solar, and EVs.
Vermont’s Kobayashi Maru
The Kobayashi Maru was an infamous no-win scenario test for command-track cadets at Starfleet Academy in the Star Trek series. It measures character under pressure, and this is just a guess, but Vermont’s Democratic Legislature is not only going to fail theirs but look bad doing it.
If you were the type to take advice (and you are not), I’d avoid specifically making claims about the 2023 flooding. Vermont gets a rainwater beatdown every ten to twenty years, going back more than a century. As in, before you invented the emissions scam and long before CO2—your alleged evidence—was anywhere near a level you currently associate with the damage for which you seek restitution. Related: Vermont Warns Residents About Flood-Related Scams, Fails to Mention Its Own Fraud
The Environmental lawyers seem to think they’ll win, and they will. Vermont will spend a fortune paying them to defend this, possibly up to the US Supreme Court, where their odds are almost nil they win—assuming it gets that far. This sort of lawsuit—and Vermont will get sued—will bring forth all manner of discovery, which—despite their tunnel-vision confidence in their serial fraud—is not in their favor.
If emissions are harming people, it can’t just be in Vermont. This means you need to explain not only the frequency of similar events long before modern-era emissions but also any absence of similar effects in places elsewhere on Planet Earth. Good luck, but why not just tell the truth? This is about your incompetent stewardship of the people and their hard-earned dollars.
Vermont’s legislative con artists are only interested in finding a way to bilk someone else to pay for things they want, and they’ve so overtaxed their own citizens that asking for more might start a revolt.
