Vermont lawmakers want fossil fuel companies to pay for damages caused by weather events: 'Climate Superfund'



The Vermont Senate voted 21-5 on Friday to advance the Climate Superfund Act, which would force fossil fuel companies to pay into a fund covering weather event-related damages.

If passed into law, Senate Bill 259 would create a "Climate Superfund Cost Recovery Program" to finance "climate change adaptive or resilience infrastructure projects" in Vermont.

"Under the Program, an entity or a successor in interest to an entity that was engaged in the trade or business of extracting fossil fuel or refining crude oil between January 1, 2000 and December 31, 2019 would be assessed a cost recovery demand for the entity's share of fossil fuel extraction or refinement contributing to greenhouse gas-related costs in Vermont. An entity would only be assessed a cost recovery demand if the Agency determined that the entity's products were responsible for more than one billion metric tons of covered greenhouse gas emissions," the bill read.

The fund would be used to "avoid, moderate, repair, or adapt to negative impacts caused by climate change," such as "implementing nature-based solutions and flood protections; upgrading stormwater drainage systems; making defensive upgrades to roads, bridges, railroads, and transit systems; preparing for and recovering from extreme weather events; undertaking preventive health care programs and providing medical care to treat illness or injury caused by the effects of climate change."

Additionally, the program would cover the costs of relocating sewage treatment plants, installing cooling systems in public and private buildings, upgrading that state's electrical grid, addressing toxic algae blooms, and managing the loss of topsoil.

The legislation is sponsored by Sens. Anne Watson (D), Dick Sears Jr. (D), Christopher Bray (D), and 17 other Democratic senators.

According to Sears, the legislation is "built on the long-standing principle that the polluter pays," Mountain Times reported.

"The damage that fossil fuels are causing in our communities continues to grow, with flooding in the last year alone resulting in massive costs to our state," Sears claimed.

Sen. Nader Hashim (D) told lawmakers on Friday, "In order to remedy the problems created by washed out roads, downed electrical wires, damaged crops and repeated flooding, the largest fossil fuel entities that have contributed to climate change should also contribute to fixing the problem that they caused."

"We can place the burden on Vermont taxpayers or we can keep our fingers crossed that the federal government will help us or we can have fossil fuel companies pay their fair share," Hashim said.

Under the legislation, the Vermont state treasurer would provide a report detailing the cost imposed on residents as a result of the "emission of greenhouse gases for the period that began on January 1, 2000 and ended on December 31, 2019." The report would assess the impact of fossil fuels on public health, natural resources, agriculture, economic development, and flood preparedness.

The American Petroleum Institute stated that it opposes the bill and shared objections to the legislation in a letter to the state Senate last week, the Associated Press reported.

The group is concerned that the bill "retroactively imposes costs and liability on prior activities that were legal, violates equal protection and due process rights by holding companies responsible for the actions of society at large; and is preempted by federal law."

"Additionally, the bill does not provide potentially impacted parties with notice as to the magnitude of potential fees that can result from its passage," the API added.

Similar bills have also been introduced in Maryland, Massachusetts, and New York.

ExxonMobil did not respond to the AP's request for comment.

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America Needs Oil or We All Die | Ep 548

America Needs Oil or We All Die | Ep 548

California city council votes unanimously to outlaw new gas stations — and new pumps at existing stations. Expect more bans, Axios warns.



The city council in Petaluma, California, voted unanimously Monday night to permanently bar the construction of new gas stations as well as ban adding more gas pumps to existing stations, The Drive reported. According to local officials, the city already has enough places to fuel up internal combustion engine-bearing polluters.

What's going on?

This new prohibition — which also includes language to streamline the process to add charging stations and possible hydrogen fuel cell stations — is part of the city's attempt to push residents to shift to electric vehicles and get the city to hit its target of zero emissions by 2030, Gizmodo said.

According to the outlet, the bill is effective immediately for the city of 61,000 people that currently has 16 gas stations, with another one approved for construction later this year.

The bill claims, "Based on this inventory, there are multiple stations located within a 5-minute drive (2.1 miles at 25 mph) of every existing residence as well as all areas planned for residential development by the 2025 General Plan but not yet constructed."

And the existing stations are not allowed to add more pumps, so if the city grows in population and gas becomes more in demand, well, people are just going to be out of luck.

Environmentalists are getting their way

Stand.earth, an environmental nonprofit group whose Stand Against Fossil Fuel Expansion Cities program pushed for the bill, celebrated the win, calling the ban "a massive step forward in the fight to protect communities and the climate from fossil fuels."

Matt Krogh, the U.S. oil and gas campaign director at Stand.earth, told Axios that the current stations are providing all the fuel the community could need.

"This is not a ban on the existing gas stations, which are providing all the gas currently needed," Krogh said. "The problem with allowing new gas stations is we don't really need them and they're putting existing gas stations out of business."

“In California in particular, where state climate targets are required by law, new gas stations will have a short shelf life, and could be abandoned before they make enough money to pay for their own shut down and clean up," he added in an email to Gizmodo. "This gas station ban is a common sense step to not get further bogged down by fossil fuel infrastructure."

Krogh went on to praise Petaluma's leadership for their bravery in being the first city to institute such a ban, noting that some 30 cities and counties have been instituting policies that imposed the Stand.earth agenda, Axios said.

The Petaluma effort has inspired more groups pressure local governments to ban gas stations, according to Axios, which added that the movement is spreading quickly.

Oil to the rescue: President Biden sends dozens of diesel generators to Texas amid continued power outages



President Joe Biden's Federal Emergency Management Agency announced Thursday afternoon that it is taking steps to help Texas as it continues to grapple with power outages across the state in the midst of a deep freeze.

Included in the FEMA assistance, The Hill reported, are "60 generators to support critical sites like hospitals and water facilities, 729,000 liters of water, more than 10,000 wool blankets, 50,000 cotton blankets and 225,000 meals."

Sixty generators? What do those power providers run on?

Diesel. A fossil fuel.

Considering how frequently Biden and his party like to trash the industry, it's notable that when the chips are down, the federal government — under Democratic control — turns to oil to save the day, the Wall Street Journal pointed out in an editorial posted Thursday night.

Critics have gone after the state's reliance upon wind power in such an oil-rich state, but the entire grid was impacted — not just wind turbines that were created to withstand Texas heat and not a once-in-a-lifetime cold snap.

Regardless of the state's use of renewables like wind or solar, when there was an emergency need for power, oil was the answer — despite the fact that the left seeks to ban fossil fuels, the Journal noted.

In fact, Democrat-run governments continue to be reliant upon their least-hated fossil fuel, natural gas — as well as oil for backup.

"Liberals blame gas plants for not covering wind's you-know-what when turbines froze amid surging demand," the paper said. "This is ironic since they seem to be acknowledging that fossil fuels are necessary, though they still want to banish them."

The Journal pointed out that left-wing states like California and New York continue their "love-hate relationship" with oil and gas.

The Golden State's electric utilities commonly deploy diesel generators when they have to cut power during heavy winds, the Journal said. And Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom suspended emissions rules and relied heavily on diesel generators over the summer during a heat wave that pushed California's grid to the limits "and renewables were MIA."

And then there's the Empire State, home of Green New Deal author Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, where the government's anti-fossil fuel moves have made it increasingly more likely that people will burn oil instead of clean natural gas:

As for New York, its gas plants can switch to oil. So if there is a shortage of gas due to weather or pipeline constraints, power plants can continue to run by burning oil. One irony is that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's natural gas pipeline blockade, which has limited gas shipments from Pennsylvania, has reinforced the state's reliance on less-clean-burning oil for heating fuel.

If we can learn anything from Texas' current power problems, it's that the environmentalists' positions and policy proposals don't work, the paper said. And fossil fuels will have to be used to fix the problems caused by their failed adventures.

The Journal editorial concluded:

Climate activists want to replace gas in homes and buildings with electric heating and stoves, but Texas is showing the problems with this policy. If the power goes out, people don't have heat or hot water. Electric batteries aren't a solution because they can't provide backup power for entire homes including appliances.

The harder the climate absolutists strive to banish fossil fuels, the more Americans learn they can't live without them.

'Fossil fuels are the only thing that saved us': Dan Crenshaw replies to leftists mocking massive electric grid failure in Texas



Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas drafted a refutation of what he said were "leftists" on social media mocking his state for the massive electric grid failure in the face of a historically brutal snow storm.

Crenshaw addressed the mockery made by some who blamed the infrastructure failure on Republican policies.

"With blackouts across Texas, many are wondering: what happened? Leftists are cheering a 'red state' having energy problems. Here's the truth about what happened," Crenshaw tweeted.

With blackouts across Texas, many are wondering: what happened? Leftists are cheering a “red state” having energ… https://t.co/3oH7sTvncJ
— Dan Crenshaw (@Dan Crenshaw)1613515883.0

"A mix of over-subsidized wind energy and under-investment in gas power means we didn't have enough base load energy for a massive spike in demand. Also, Texas infrastructure isn't designed for once-in-a-century freezes," he explained.

Crenshaw said that power regulators had planned on energy coming in from wind turbines in West Texas, but they had frozen under the extreme weather conditions. Making matters worse, the batteries that were supposed to store energy were losing 60% of their efficacy because of the cold.

To make matters worse, existing storage of wind energy in batteries was also gone, because batteries were losing 60% of their energy in the cold.

Bottom line: renewables don't work well in extreme weather. Never will.
— Dan Crenshaw (@DanCrenshawTX) February 16, 2021

"Bottom line: renewables don't work well in extreme weather. Never will," he added.

Crenshaw said that four existing nuclear power plants near Houston and Dallas were also knocked out because of the unexpected cold. "On another note, this shows how safe nuclear is. Lots of safety precautions," he added in a parenthetical.

Natural gas lines also suffered from freezes that undermined energy delivery the state depended upon.

"Gov. Abbott made the right call in diverting all natural gas to home heating fuel and then electricity for homes. Gas and coal brought a stable supply of energy, but still not enough," said Crenshaw.

Bottom line: fossil fuels are the only thing that saved us. They are *base load* energy.

If we were even *more* reliant on the wind turbines that froze, the outages would have been much worse.
— Dan Crenshaw (@DanCrenshawTX) February 16, 2021

Crenshaw concluded that the energy disaster proved that the state would need to rely on fossil fuels in the future and not renewable energy sources.

"Bottom line: fossil fuels are the only thing that saved us. They are *base load* energy. If we were even *more* reliant on the wind turbines that froze, the outages would have been much worse," he said.

Crenshaw might have been responding to his detractors who drudged up an old tweet from his timeline where he mocked Democratic energy policies for the rolling blackouts in California. As a result, "Dan Crenshaw" was trending nationally on Tuesday.

Millions of Texans were left without electricity in frigid temperatures from the massive snow storm afflicting the greater region. Officials reported 5 fatalities so far from the storm on Tuesday.

Crenshaw added that he and his colleagues in Texas would work on getting to the bottom of what caused the disaster.

Here's more about the snow disaster in Texas:

Millions in Texas lose power during major winter storm and record low temperatureswww.youtube.com

Chip Roy to Biden: You want to kill Texas' energy jobs? 'Come and take it'



Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) on Friday delivered an impassioned speech on the House floor slamming Democrats and the Biden administration for waging war by executive fiat on the oil and natural gas industries.

Among the flurry of executive actions President Joe Biden has taken in the weeks since he took office, Biden signed several orders on climate change, directing the secretary of the interior to pause granting new permits for oil and natural gas leases on public lands or offshore waters. Biden also canceled the Keystone XL oil pipeline project on his first day as president, a move that eliminated an estimated tens of thousands of jobs related to the completion of the pipeline.

In his remarks, Roy accused Democrats of attacking the natural resources that are "the very great strength that the United States of America has to set us apart from the rest of the world to be independent."

Noting that CO2 levels in the U.S. have decreased in recent years and as of 2018 were at levels not seen since the mid-1990s, Roy argued that new technology like fracking and natural gas, which Democrats oppose, is responsible for lowering emissions, which Democrats claim to support.

"We have vastly exceeded what my leftist friends on the other side of the aisle want to follow, the social welfare state of Europeans down the road of fancy gatherings in Davos," Roy said. "They fly on their expensive jets to go preach to the world about global warming. Spare me your preaching as you're riding around in these jets, spewing out CO2, when we, through innovation in the great state of Texas and in our country, are creating clean-burning natural gas and are creating jobs powering the world."

Roy slammed the Biden administration, accusing the president's policies of "want[ing] to come in and destroy jobs, destroy our leadership in the world, turn us over to Russia and Iran, and oh by the way, empower China to roll right over us while they spew out whatever they want to spew out because darn if they're going to actually do anything like agree to whatever is in the Paris agreement."

"It is an absolute joke, it's a laughingstock what the Democratic Party is doing saying they're standing up for the little guy in this country, when you're going to drive up the price of energy, increase CO2, empower China, empower Iran, empower Russia, and harm jobs," Roy roared.

"You're going to kill hundreds of thousands of jobs in this country even as we're coming out of the negative effect of the pandemic."

He ended his remarks with a declaration to his Democratic colleagues: "You roll in here thinking that we're going to just fundamentally alter our entire economy through executive order?

"We're gonna say no. We're gonna say come and take it."

Watch:

WATCH: Rep. Roy's floor speech on the Biden administration's attacks on American oil and gas:"You roll in here th… https://t.co/eeqkgMpgDg
— Rep. Chip Roy Press Office (@Rep. Chip Roy Press Office)1612545028.0

Native America tribe torches Biden admin over oil, drilling order: 'A direct attack on our economy, sovereignty'



A federally recognized Native American tribe is demanding President Joe Biden's administration immediately rescind or amend a new policy that temporarily suspends new oil and natural gas leases and drilling permits on federal land.

What are the details?

The Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation, which is located in Utah, blasted acting U.S. Interior Secretary Scott de la Vega for issuing the two-month moratorium, claiming the order violates the tribe's sovereignty.

The Biden administration's action is particularly personal for the Ute Indian Tribe because they produce a significant amount of oil.

From Reuters:

The tribe produces about 45,000 barrels of crude oil per day in the Uintah basin, along with about 900 million cubic feet per day of natural gas, according to a document it filed with the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 2017.

"The Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation respectfully requests that you immediately amend Order No. 3395 to provide an exception for energy permits and approvals on Indian lands. The Ute Indian Tribe and other energy producing tribes rely on energy development to fund our governments and provide services to our members," Luke Duncan, chairman of the Ute Indian Tribe Business Committee in Utah, wrote in a letter to de la Vega.

The letter continued, "Your order is a direct attack on our economy, sovereignty, and our right to self-determination. Indian lands are not federal public lands. Any action on our lands and interests can only be taken after effective tribal consultation."

"Order No. 3395 violates the United States treaty and trust responsibilities to the Ute Indian Tribe and violates important principles of tribal sovereignty and self-determination. Your order was also issued in violation (of) our government-to-government relationship. Executive Order No. 13175 on Consultation and Coordination with Indian Tribal Governments, and Interior's own Policy on Consultation with Tribal Governments," the letter added.

"The order must be withdrawn or amended to comply with Federal law and policies. Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter. We look forward from hearing from you," Duncan concluded.

The Ute Indian Tribe does not mince words in their response to Interior’s order restricting federal energy developm… https://t.co/dxZvd72K8V
— Megan Barnett Bloomgren (@Megan Barnett Bloomgren)1611358730.0

The Interior Department defended the order, explaining on Thursday that it "does not impact existing ongoing operations under valid leases."

Anything else?

The Biden administration's order reflects Biden's priority on enacting a progressive climate agenda.

In fact, Biden's climate plan includes prioritizing "environmental justice." Biden's website also declares that the far-left Green New Deal "is a crucial framework for meeting the climate challenges we face."

On his first day in office, Biden signed an executive order rejoining the Paris climate agreement and another order canceling the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline.

New Mexico leaders bash Biden admin's order targeting oil, drilling on federal land: 'How does that bring us together?'



The Biden administration's 60-day pause on new oil and natural gas leases and drilling permits on federal land, signed by Acting Interior Secretary Scott de la Vega late Wednesday, could result in devastating consequences to state economies that rely on proceeds from oil sales.

The order, which appeased progressive environmentalist groups, has significant immediate effects.

From the Associated Press:

Industry groups said the order effectively brings all regulatory activity to a halt, from routine requests that arise during the normal course of business to requests for rights of way for new pipelines designed to gather more natural gas as part of efforts to reduce venting and flaring — practices that Democrats have targeted in their fight against climate change.

What about the economic impact?

Leaders in New Mexico say the impact of making permanent the temporary moratorium would be "economically devastating."

New Mexico is one of the top oil-producers in the nation — third behind Texas and North Dakota, thanks, in part, to the Permian Basin — yet it is also one the most-impoverished states in the U.S., leaving the Land of Enchantment more economically vulnerable to what one local leader called "knee-jerk" decisions by President Joe Biden's Cabinet.

"During his inauguration, President Biden spoke about bringing our nation together. Eliminating drilling on public lands will cost thousands of New Mexicans their jobs and destroy what's left of our state's economy," Carlsbad Mayor Dale Janway told the Associated Press.

"How does that bring us together?" Janway added. "Environmental efforts should be fair and well-researched, not knee-jerk mandates that just hurt an already impoverished state."

The Biden administration's order has New Mexican leaders concerned, in particular, because about half of their oil production occurs on federal lands, producing hundreds of millions of dollars in royalty revenue each year, the AP noted.

New Mexico Republican Party chairman Steve Pearce voiced another significant concern. He fears that the Biden administration's order could be a job killer.

"I think we're going to see companies choosing not to invest in New Mexico and take their jobs and drilling to Texas just 3 miles away," Pearce said, the AP reported. "They can just scoot across the border where they don't have federal lands."

Anything else?

New Mexicans, ironically, supported Biden over now-former President Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential contest by a significant margin — 54.3% to 43.5%, or 100,000 votes.