Climate change | “It seems logical to us to attack those most responsible”

(Montpelier, Vermont) Inside Numa Haase’s house, the studs are partly exposed. Tools are strewn about. A blue tarp covers sections of the floor. Work is progressing slowly, a year after a major flood in downtown Montpelier caused by torrential rains.

“I left my house in a kayak,” Haase recalled, standing at his window overlooking the Winooski River.

He is counting on the support of volunteers from all over to help him renovate his two-story house. At the end of June, when The Press visited the scene, women from Mennonite Disaster Service from Pennsylvania were painting murals in front of his home, smiling under their traditional bonnets.

“There were a lot of volunteers from outside; there are only 8,000 of us in Montpelier,” Haase emphasizes emphatically.

New law

Vermont is at 49^e It ranks among the 50 U.S. states in population, with some 643,000 residents. It became the first to pass a law requiring oil companies to pay a sum for the consequences of climate change.

Again this year, in July, Vermont towns experienced damage from the hurricane’s remnants. Beryl.

“The estimated damage from last year’s flood is $1 billion,” state Sen. Anne Watson, a Democrat and a progressive, said by phone. “We’re not a big state; that’s a lot of money. And we know that climate change is the result of excessive CO emissions.”₂ into the atmosphere. So it seemed logical to us to take on those most responsible for all this, namely the oil companies.”

M^me Watson co-sponsored the bill passed on May 30, dubbed the Superfund Climate ActIt consists of demanding financial compensation from companies active in the extraction of fossil fuels or the refining of crude oil whose greenhouse gas emissions exceeded 1 billion tonnes between 1^er January 1995 and December 31, 2024. Even though the mining and refining did not take place in Vermont.

By January 15, 2026, the state treasury manager will have to prepare a report on the costs related to climate change with the Agency of Natural Resources. The share required from each company will then be determined based on its emissions.

Reviews

The bill had support from Democrats, Republicans and progressives, Vermont’s third-largest party. But it was not unanimous.

In this state known for its left-wing leanings, the state’s governor, Phil Scott, is a moderate Republican. He refused to sign the bill, but stopped short of vetoing it, allowing the law to go into effect.

“I understand the desire to seek funding to mitigate the effects of climate change that harms our state in so many ways,” he wrote in a letter to the Vermont General Assembly.

But Gov. Scott said he fears the financial impact of potential lawsuits against the state.

In an April letter to the Vermont State House, the American Petroleum Institute (API), a major lobbying group representing the oil industry, opposed the bill, raising questions about its constitutionality and retroactive nature.

“These new punitive fees represent another step in a coordinated campaign to undermine America’s energy advantage, and the economic and national security benefits it provides,” he said in an email to The Press Scott Lauermann, an API spokesman, said after the law was passed, without specifying whether a lawsuit would be filed.

Inspired by a federal model

“We think our case is strong,” said Ben Edgerly Walsh, climate and energy director at the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, which lobbied for the bill’s passage.

This was also modeled on the federal “Superfund” of the Environmental Protection Agency, set up in 1980 for the decontamination of polluted sites. The parties responsible for the contamination of the sites can be called upon to pay for their damages.

“It may seem harder to visualize when you’re talking about greenhouse gas emissions attributed to a company, but there’s science to calculate it,” says Edgerly Walsh.

Met in the suburbs of Burlington, in Winooski, he points with his hand to the river of the same name. The same one that crosses Montpelier and whose level rose sharply in July last year.

But floods aren’t the only disruptions linked to climate change: he notes the unusual temperatures, both summer and winter, and their impacts on infrastructure designed for weather conditions from another era.

Impacts

How the money raised through the law is distributed will be determined by an agency, according to a plan currently under development, but the money could be distributed in a variety of ways, including compensation to affected citizens, said Sen. Anne Watson, a former mayor of Montpelier.

“I hope that Superfund will have an impact and can be used to prevent problems,” says Katie Swick, who we met in Montpelier. The 46-year-old teacher was forced to leave her home during last year’s floods and has not yet been able to move back in. She has 18 months of financial assistance for her new rent, but the mother of two sees her deadline fast approaching. She is torn between the work required to raise her riverfront home and having it bought by the city.

Major flooding has marked the capital of Vermont over the years. On the edge of the river, signs have been fixed at different heights to allow the level of the Winooski to be visualized during floods, with the date: 1927, 1992, 2023… They seem to be more frequent in recent years.

“Historic flooding has been made worse by climate change, and the conversation we’re having in Vermont right now is not whether this kind of disaster can happen again, but rather when, and how to prepare for it,” said Senator Anne Watson.