New York taxpayers are paying billions of dollars to combat the effects of global warming, with municipalities spending more than half their budgets on climate change, according to a state estimate released last month. This is while the largest producers of greenhouse gas emissions, fossil fuels companies, continue to post record-breaking profits.
In a letter sent Friday to Gov. Kathy Hochul and elected officials, city Comptroller Brad Lander is calling on state leaders to support the Climate Change Superfund Act, a bill currently in committee in the state legislative process.
If passed, this legislation would shift some of the responsibility from taxpayers and onto the producers by requiring the largest greenhouse gas emitters to pay $3 billion annually for the next 25 years for the state’s climate change impacts, such as upgrades to drain the floodwaters from the city. That’s less than 2% of the 2022 profits of Saudi Aramco — the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter. The concept pulls from already-established federal and state Superfund programs, which make producers of land and water pollution pay for cleanups.
“We can’t keep supporting the oil and gas corporations driving this crisis,” Lander’s letter reads.
By the end of this decade, climate change will cost New York state $55 billion, and that’s on top of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ $52 billion proposal to protect New York Harbor from sea level rise and storms.
“For the oil companies, $3 billion a year is lunch money,” said Blair Horner, executive director of NYPIRG, a nonpartisan and nonprofit research organization. “But for the state of New York it helps offset a staggering cost that otherwise taxpayers will have to pay.”
The monies collected from the biggest climate polluters would fund infrastructure improvements, upgrade stormwater and sewage systems, and improve grid stability and public health. Supporters of the bill are confident it will pass this year.
“I don’t think…
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