The aftermath of a tornado from Hurricane Ida in Mullica Hill on September 2, 2021. New Jersey is among the states considering bills that would force fossil fuel companies to pay recovery costs for climate disasters. (Photo by Daniella Heminghaus for New Jersey Monitor)

For many California residents, the Los Angeles wildfires earlier this year were the latest and most searing example of the devastating effects of climate change. Some estimates have pegged the damages and economic losses from the fires at more than $250 billion.

“We’ve had disaster after disaster after disaster,” said Assemblymember Dawn Addis, a Democrat. “It’s the taxpayers and the insurance ratepayers that are bearing the cost. It’s not sustainable, it’s not right and it’s not ethical.”

Addis and Democratic lawmakers in nearly a dozen other states want to force the world’s largest fossil fuel companies to help pay for the recovery costs of climate-related disasters. Last year, Vermont became the first state to pass a “climate Superfund” law, followed soon after by New York.

This session, 10 states have seen similar proposals, several of which have advanced in key committees. Advocates point to legislation in Maryland that has drawn support in both chambers, as well as to strong grassroots support in California after the Los Angeles wildfires.

Lawmakers say the rapidly increasing cost of climate disasters — from wildfires to floods to sea level rise — is more than state budgets can bear.

“Climate Superfund is the ‘it girl’ policy of the [2025] session,” said Ava Gallo, climate and energy program manager with the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators, a forum for state lawmakers. “There’s a lot of popularity in the idea of holding polluters responsible.”

The momentum for these “polluter pays” bills is tied to the maturation of attribution science. That new field of research can help calculate fossil fuel companies’ contributions to historic emissions totals, as well as the role climate change played in causing or worsening natural disasters.

Vermont’s law was the first attempt to use that science to charge emitters for their role in causing devastating floods and other catastrophes.

We've had disaster after disaster after disaster. It's the taxpayers and the insurance ratepayers that are bearing the cost. It's not sustainable, it's not right and it’s not ethical.

– California Democratic Assemblymember Dawn Addis

Fossil fuel companies and their allies have fought back hard. Late last year, the American Petroleum Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce filed a lawsuit challenging Vermont’s measure. The groups argue that emissions are governed by the federal Clean Air Act, precluding states from charging companies over global pollution.

Neither group responded to a Stateline interview request. The Independent Petroleum Association of America also declined an interview request.

A separate lawsuit, led by 22 Republican attorneys general, is challenging the New York law. And a conservative group has targeted Rachel Rothschild, an assistant professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School, who helped draft the legal justification for climate Superfund policy. The group, Government Accountability and Oversight, has sought to subject Rothschild to a deposition, The New York Times reported, a move that some experts view as an intimidation tactic.

Meanwhile, oil and gas executives asked President Donald Trump during a White House meeting this month to direct the Justice Department to join the legal fight against climate Superfund laws, The Wall Street Journal reported. Industry leaders are also pushing Congress to shield them from more than 30 lawsuits brought by state and local governments that aim to make them pay for some of the results of climate change.

While experts expect a bruising legal battle over climate Superfund policies, the threat of lawsuits hasn’t deterred more lawmakers from backing the concept.

“States were a little bit wary; they wondered, ‘Is this some new radical plan?’” said Cassidy DiPaola, communications director with the Make Polluters Pay campaign, a coalition of groups backing such bills. “Then one of the littlest states passed it and this powerhouse, New York, passed it. That really set the ball rolling.”

Fossil fuel companies have cast doubt on attribution science. They also note that their production of oil and other products was done legally under U.S. and international regulations.

“Manufacturers will see this as a shakedown of any industry you don’t like at some point in the future, even though in the past they were licensed and operated under government regulation,” Brett Vassey, president and CEO of the Virginia Manufacturers Association, said during legislative testimony about a climate Superfund proposal in that state. “It will have a chilling effect on Virginia being able to grow its economy.”

Proponents of Superfund legislation point to legal settlements with large tobacco companies in the 1990s. Although those companies also sold their products legally, they were held responsible because they knew about the harmful effects of those products and deceived the public. Most climate Superfund proposals target companies for their emissions over the past 30 or so years, after leading experts had documented the dangers of greenhouse gases.

“There’s good documentation of how well the fossil fuel industry knew the probable long-term impacts of their product,” said Oregon state Sen. Jeff Golden, a Democrat. “Should an industry that made such historic profits over a period of time and made so many representations that we had no problem not bear any of the costs?”

Golden and other lawmakers say it’s becoming impossible for taxpayers to cover the costs of recovery from wildfires and other catastrophes. In Rhode Island, sea level rise is causing massive damage for coastal communities, said Democratic state Rep. Jennifer Boylan, who has sponsored a climate Superfund bill to help the state adapt.

Some advocates also note that Trump’s return to the White House has cut off the possibility of federal climate relief.

“All the states are affected by the disappearance of this federal funding,” said Gallo, of the state lawmakers group. “States everywhere are going to be looking at some way to fill the gap.”

This session, climate Superfund bills have been introduced in California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Virginia.

While the bills are structured differently, they all seek to target the largest polluters — often covering companies that produced 1 billion metric tons of emissions over the last 30 or so years. Lawmakers say that applies to roughly 100 companies.

The measures also take different approaches to assigning damages. Some direct state agencies to conduct complex studies to determine the costs of climate-caused disasters over a certain period, the approach pioneered by Vermont. Others set a fixed number that represents a conservative baseline for those damages. New York’s law set that figure at $75 billion over a 25-year period.

Many of the bills also require that significant amounts of the funding be directed to the communities hit hardest by pollution.

Advocates are particularly optimistic about the measures in California and Maryland.

Lawmakers in Maryland modified their bills to commission a study about the financial impacts of climate change. Those measures passed both the House and Senate, and legislators are working to reconcile the versions from each chamber. Figures produced by the study would be the backbone of a climate Superfund policy in a future session.

“From a legislative perspective, it’s a shot in the dark as to what the costs are,” said Democratic Del. David Fraser-Hidalgo, who sponsored one of the bills. “This will give us the factual data needed to make a more well-educated decision on policy.”

In New Jersey, an Assembly committee advanced a climate Superfund bill this month. State Sen. Bob Smith, a Democrat who chairs the Environment and Energy Committee and who sponsored the bill, said it will help to rebuild and fortify water treatment plants, schools and firehouses. He noted that Trump has called for the dismantling of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“The end of the world is coming; it’s kind of hard to ignore,” Smith said. “FEMA has been the backstop to help communities recover from disasters. If the handwriting isn’t on the wall to all the states that they’ve got to deal with this, shame on them.”

Lawmakers in many states have heard from mayors and other local government leaders that more climate recovery funding is essential.

“Municipal officials are getting behind [climate Superfund policies],” said Massachusetts state Sen. Jamie Eldridge, a Democrat who has sponsored similar legislation. “They’re facing the costs of flooding, of droughts, of heat waves, and really asking for relief.”

Stateline reporter Alex Brown can be reached at abrown@stateline.org.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.