Hochul Signs Law That Penalizes Companies for Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Gov.Kathy Hochul of New York on Thursday signed a law that requires companies that are big fossil fuel polluters to help pay to repair damage caused by extreme weather, which is becoming more common because of greenhouse gas emissions.The legislation, called the Climate Change Superfund Act, mandates that the companies responsible for the bulk of carbon emissions buildup between 2000 and 2024 pay about $3 billion each year for 25 years.The law was modeled on the original Superfund law, which was established in 1980 and requires companies to pay for the cleanup of toxic waste wrought by incidents like oil and chemical spills.New York’s new law focuses on pollution produced by the combustion of fossil fuels, which results in the warming of the atmosphere, causing extreme weather, like floods and storms, to be more frequent, experts say.The idea is to take some of the burden off taxpayers, who now are on the hook for financing much of the cleanup and mitigation efforts after weather disasters.

The law takes particular aim at the oil and gas companies that produced more than one billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions globally over the last 24 years.“Nothing could be fairer than making climate polluters pay,” said Lee Wasserman, the director of the Rockefeller Family Fund, a nonprofit that pushed for the passage of the law.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe....