Ambrose Bierce once said something along the lines of: “Whenever politicians talk, no matter what the topic, it’s always about money.”
In that spirit therefore, I offer up this little piece of shit masquerading as a pearl:
Democrats have moved to enact legislation that would establish retroactive liability for American energy producers through so-called “climate superfund” laws which penalize companies for lawfully providing energy that Americans rely on every day.
Beyond potential political challenges, the Democrat plan to punish energy producers also faces significant legal hurdles.
The Justice Department and Vermont in late March faced off in the federal courts over the 2024 climate superfund law that would require fossil fuel providers to pay for the alleged costs of climate change. The Trump administration has sued to block the law, claiming it violates the Constitution. The administration believes that climate superfund laws are unlawful attempts to regulate emissions that cross state lines. API and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have filed their own lawsuit against Vermont.
Jonathan Rose, who represented Vermont at the late March hearing, said, “We don’t need to convince the court that climate change presents serious challenges to the state of Vermont. The act is intended to recover some of the costs it’s going to need to adapt to climate change,” he said. “What it doesn’t do is, it doesn’t try to mitigate climate change, stop climate change, or otherwise impact global emissions or anything like that.”
Yeah, it’s not even attempting to paint itself as having “noble” intentions (i.e. staving off Global Cooling Climate Warming Change©); it’s a naked grab for money, pure and simple. The accepted “fact” that Global Cooling Climate Warming Change© is actually a thing simply gives the theft a foundation. (Corollary: if Global Cooling Climate Warming Change© is not real — it isn’t — then all this bullshit should go away — it won’t — because they’ll always clamp onto some other imaginary catastrophe as a pretext for their theft.)
A cursory look at a couple of other states trying to do similar: New York and Hawaii. Both Bluer than Paul Newman’s eyes, both stuck with massive Democrat government-created spending deficits.