Make Polluters Pay

Full title: An Act establishing a climate change superfund and promoting polluter responsibility (H.872 / S.481)

Lead Sponsors: Rep. Steve Owens; Sen. Jamie Eldridge

Committee: Joint Committee on Environment and Natural Resources

The Issue

Massachusetts is already facing the impacts of climate change, and it will only get worse. The increased incidence of storms will damage coastlines and increase inland flooding: the state has projected that inland property damage due to climate change will increase by almost 50% by mid-century, with a disproportionate impact on low-income communities. Additional rail repair costs from extreme temperatures could reach $6 million per year by 2050 and a striking $35 million by the end of the century, and repair costs for electric transmission and utility distribution infrastructure alone are projected to increase by almost $100 million by 2050, with power outages disproportionately impacting low-income communities again. Not to mention the impact on human health and lives.

Meanwhile, major fossil fuel companies are seeing record profits. The very companies who lied to the public for decades about climate change are benefiting while all of us, especially the most vulnerable, bear the cost.

A long-standing strategy to address polluting industries is the “polluter pays” principle: industries that produce pollution should have to pay for the costs to public health and the environment that arise as a consequence of their pollution. This principle is employed in all of the major US pollution control laws: Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (solid waste and hazardous waste management), and Superfund (cleanup of abandoned waste sites).

The Solution

The Polluters Pay bill would embrace the success of the superfund model by establishing a climate change adaptation cost recovery program. It would require companies that have contributed significantly to the buildup of climate-warming greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere to bear a share of the costs of needed infrastructure investment, based on their historic emissions. 

This bill would raise an estimated $75 billion over 25 years from the 20 largest polluting companies to provide funding for climate resiliency efforts such as the following:  

• restoring coastal wetlands and developing other nature- based solutions and coastal protections
• upgrading roads, bridges, subways, and transit systems

• preparing for and recovering from hurricanes and other extreme weather events

• installing energy efficient cooling systems and other weatherization and energy efficiency upgrades and retrofits

• upgrading the electrical grid and supporting the creation of self-sufficient clean energy microgrids

• addressing urban heat island effects through green spaces and urban forestry

To center equity and justice in the sustainability transition, the bill would require that at least forty percent of the funds go to climate change adaptive infrastructure projects that directly benefit environmental justice populations, that projects funded by the new climate change superfund abide by prevailing wage laws, and that larger projects establish apprenticeship agreements to create pathways into the green economy.