Every passing year, we’re seeing more extreme and intense climate-related disasters and weather events. Those crises are exacerbated by their costs. Taxpayers who are already feeling the effects of climate change are also footing the bill. Between 1980 and 2024, New York State experienced 95 weather or climate-related disaster events costing more than $1 billion each.

Climate change is expensive, and someone has to pick up the tab — but it shouldn’t be us. It’s only fair that the financial burden falls on the fossil fuel companies that got us into this mess.

As part of a broad coalition in 2024, we helped pass a law in New York State that starts to do just that. New York’s historic Climate Change Superfund Act requires fossil fuel companies that profit the most from — and bear the most responsibility for — climate change to pay $75 billion over 25 years to fund climate change adaptation in the state.

However, Donald Trump and his Big Oil allies are not content with allowing this essential legislation to stand. The Trump administration has filed a legal challenge seeking to overturn the law. We and our allies have moved to intervene in the case to defend the law alongside New York State.

A New Way to Deal with the Costs of Climate Change

The New York Climate Change Superfund Act is a novel approach to dealing with the effects of climate change. The law institutes a fee on major fossil fuel companies that rake in profits while contributing most to the greenhouse gas emissions that are wrecking our climate. 

The Act creates a climate change adaptation fund that would go towards projects for repair, resilience, and community protection programs. The Act pays particular attention to climate change devastation in locations that meet the State’s disadvantaged communities criteria, often communities of color and low-income communities. These communities often face the worst effects of environmental injustice. 

The law is modeled after the federal Superfund law, which implements the “polluter pays” principle that requires companies to pay to clean up their messes of hazardous substances that endanger people and the environment.

Scientific advancements are clarifying just how much climate change contributes to disasters’ growing destruction. For instance, researchers have calculated that climate change added $8 billion to the cost of Hurricane Sandy’s damage, compared to a world without rising sea levels and more intense floods. 

Scientific developments are also allowing us to determine just how much climate pollution can be attributed to fossil fuel companies. The text of the act does not shy away from calling out the fossil fuel industry. It characterizes the actions of some of these companies as “unconscionable,” and likens their strategies to suppress scientific information about climate change to the Big Tobacco industry strategies of yesteryear.

Trump Comes for New York’s Climate Change Superfund Law

Fundamentally, this law is about fairness. It’s one of the first state laws to hold the companies driving climate change responsible for sharing in the financial burden of its consequences, taking some of the load off regular New Yorkers. It’s another tool in the toolbox for corporate accountability. Trump wants to take that away.

In April, he signed an executive order attacking any potential state climate superfund laws, and specifically mentioned New York’s. He ordered the Department of Justice to go after and stop the implementation of these laws.

It’s a desperate move — but unfortunately, a predictable one from this administration. Trump’s first months in office rained gifts onto the oil and gas industry. His administration has propped up coal and oil, while railroading renewable energy.

The Trump administration is stuffed full of former fossil fuel executives and lobbyists. And while hard to pin down due to the prevalence of dark money donations, one estimate put Big Oil donations to Trump’s reelection near $100 million, and total spending in the election cycle near half a billion dollars.

Now, these oligarchs are getting just what they wanted: a flood of deregulation, the ability to pollute with impunity, the opening of new land to drilling and mining, and, now, attacks on state climate superfund laws.

Working with New Yorkers to Hold Big Oil Accountable for Climate Costs

The New York Climate Change Superfund Act became law against the backdrop of one climate-fueled disaster in New York after another. New Yorkers had endured Hurricane Ida, which caused more than a dozen deaths in the state in 2021. Then, in 2023, Tropical Storm Ophelia flooded New York City and other parts of the state. In 2024, as groups pushed for Governor Hochul to sign the bill, extreme heat gripped the region. 

In the coming years, climate disasters and their monumental costs will only continue to grow. New Yorkers knew it was past time for climate superfund legislation. Many local officials — already overburdened by climate costs — agreed. 

Food & Water Watch helped lead a coalition of activists across the state to enact the New York Climate Change Superfund Act. With allies including Fridays for Future NYC (a group of student activists advocating for action on climate change) and Third Act Initiative’s NYC and Upstate NY working groups (comprised of people 60 and older committed to a better world for future generations), we organized to get the bill signed into law. 

In a time of growing climate catastrophe, rising costs of living, and egregious Big Oil profits, it’s essential that New York’s Climate Change Superfund Act stands. We’ve reunited with our allies from the campaign to take on the Trump administration’s attempt to overturn the Act. And our success in enacting the law is a key reason we should be allowed into court to defend it.

We’re committed to fighting Trump’s attacks and holding Big Oil accountable, and we intend to do just that.