Vermont passed it first. New York followed with a $75 billion price tag attached. Now Minnesota wants in, and at least nine more state legislatures have similar bills in the queue.
The “climate superfund” concept, which imposes retroactive penalties on energy producers for emissions stretching back decades, is no longer a one-state experiment; it’s a coordinated effort to reshape American energy policy not through Congress but through an expanding web of state-level liability laws.
That is what makes it a federal problem, one we’re all paying for each month in our utility bills.
The premise of these laws is akin to a blindfolded monkey throwing a dart at stock picks. A state legislature picks a lookback period (Minnesota chose 1995), assigns a share of global emissions to specific energy companies, and demands billions in fees to fund future “climate resilience.” It’s a shockingly bold scheme.
