Last year, the Vermont Legislature wrote and passed a law, S.259, the “Climate Superfund Act.” Its stated purpose is to fiscally fine fossil fuel companies for damage caused by “climate change.” Its actual purpose is to grub about for money to fill holes in mismanaged budges created by big-spending Democrats.
I’ve said plenty about how bad the bill is, not least because of how poorly the 2023-2024 legislature writes legislation.
They have no idea how they will execute it, or if they can, what it will look like, and how much … you get the idea. And in the interest of helping bring this closer to the planet Earth they claim to be saving, I think what The Week meant was that they are the first state to say they are going to try to do it.
Do What? If you are familiar with Vermont, you’ve got a handy string of unflattering references and colorful metaphors suggesting the political/bureaucratic equivalent of erectile dysfunction. If you know anything about Vermont’s Clean Heat Standard (for example), you are probably giggling and pointing or shaking your head. While Vermont has the votes to pass any climate legislation it can imagine (as much science fiction as climate change itself), it increasingly lacks any ability to craft language or rules its government can make work.
That aside, everything is against them. If they had more sense than a pencil box or the intellectual agility of a soap dish, they’d have worked it out and never passed the bill. This isn’t even throwing spaghetti at a wall.
The state has benefited financially from taxing and regulating fossil fuels.
The climate for which they likely intend to fine them has been occurring for millennia, during which, with only recent exceptions, there were no fossil fuels.
The damage results from Vermont putting things where nature has been working since before there was a Vermont.
Vermont and Vermonters have benefitted significantly from the use of fossil fuels in terms of health and productivity, which the state has also taxed and regulated for its mutual benefit.
There are so many contradictions that the American Petroleum Institute and the US Chamber of Commerce have sued the state. And how ironic is that? Vermont was the first state to pass a law to try and make fossil fuel companies for climate change, and they were the first state to be sued for passing a law about it.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont, includes the claim that the state’s law is unconstitutional and in violation of federal law.
It claims the law is preempted by the Clean Air Act, which was enacted in 1963, because it “seeks to impose liability for global greenhouse gas emissions from sources well beyond Vermont’s borders.”
The plaintiffs wrote that the state is not home to any of the energy producers it seeks to fine, saying this could lead to increased energy costs in other states while Vermont could “reap” financial benefits.
“Vermont has thus exceeded the bounds of its authority, inserting itself into an area of law that is and has historically been 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,” says the lawsuit.
Vermont’s government has proven itself grossly incompetent and incapable of regulating how it punishes its own emitters, crafting Rube Goldbergian standards incapable of execution. S.259 is thus little more than a Veruca Salt tantrum—a demand that others kowtow as cover for what amounts to fiscal misfeasance or malfeasance.
Vermont Democrats want to be California all the way around, but they lack the population or resources to support the crushing financial burden. Their legislative pyramid scam is running out of rubes to shakedown, and the rubes are starting to take note.
It will not be successful at trying to bilk fossil fuel companies this way, but if they are looking for easy money, the Wind and solar factions have been lying about “emissions.” Their products create as many or more, and last I checked, you’ve got Wind and sun. Sue them for offshoring the pollution to Asia, India, and Africa.
It’s not like Vermont is going to sue China.
While we’re in a litigating mood, perhaps the citizens of Vermont should sue the state for mitigating their lifestyles back into the Bronze Age while making them pay more for electricity that does little more than offshore emissions to distant foreign lands.
