WASHINGTON—Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen joined other lawmakers and environmental organizations on Thursday to introduce legislation that would hold the nation’s largest polluters financially responsible for the costs of the climate crisis.
“The reason we’re all gathered here together is because we all agree on a simple but powerful principle, which is that polluters should pay to clean up the mess they have caused, and those who polluted the most should pay the most,” Van Hollen, a Democrat, said during a Capitol Hill press conference on Thursday.
Joined by climate activists and Reps. Jerry Nadler, D-New York, and Judy Chu, D-California, Van Hollen laid out the key components of the Polluters Pay Climate Fund Act, also known as the Climate Superfund Bill. The legislation includes authorizing the Treasury Department to impose a fee on the top-polluting fossil fuel companies and oil refiners and establishing a $1 trillion Polluters Pay Climate Fund to combat the impacts of climate change.
Among the bill’s co-sponsors are Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, and Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, and Reps. Jamie Raskin, D-Maryland, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York.
According to Van Hollen, the fund would not affect the supply or demand for gasoline, nor would it impact consumers.
“The fee only applies to the heaviest hitters,” he said, referring to big-name energy companies like Exxon, Shell, BP and Chevron, whose emissions of carbon dioxide and methane account for at least one-twelfth of 1% of total emissions of the fossil fuel industry over the last 20 years.
Representatives of the American Petroleum Institute could not be reached for comment.
Van Hollen said that the climate fund would help address the harm and damages caused, build resilient infrastructure, provide funding for climate disaster planning and relief efforts, protect and support environmental justice for communities that have been most impacted and create millions of jobs.
This bill is the most recent iteration of the 2021 draft legislation by Van Hollen. Climate change bills have since been introduced in state legislatures in Maryland, Massachusetts, California and New York. In Vermont, the Climate Superfund Bill was signed into law in June.
Van Hollen said it was important to build momentum for his bill during the election season.
“You have to build awareness,” he said. “If the goal is to make sure that we’re ready to kick this off again early next year, it will require momentum so that when Congress reconvenes after the presidential election, you’re ready to go.”
About a dozen environmental activists and supporters attended the press conference.
Mike Tidwell, the founder and executive director of Chesapeake Climate Action Network, said the climate crisis hit home when his Takoma Park, Maryland, church and a nearby preschool flooded after an unprecedented amount of rain in 2020.
“This is not just an Antarctica problem – this is a Takoma Park, Presbyterian preschool problem, and it’s unfair that churches and small towns like mine have to pay this fee when the oil companies have created the product knowingly that’s triggered this problem, so this bill is long overdue,” he said.
“People don’t see the immediate connection between the climate crisis and these emergencies, but they really are fundamentally connected, and this bill would unlock a huge amount of funding to actually tackle those issues,” said Bea Portela, a representative from the Center for Biological Diversity, which is part of the coalition working on the bill.
Other organizations backing the climate fund bill include Make Polluters Pay, the League of Conservation Voters and the Sierra Club.