As I always recommend, but, damnit, the fossil fuels companies never listen, they should stop selling their product to the government of Maine. Let’s see how that works out, especially when all the winter weather hits
Bill to hold polluters responsible for climate change advances in Augusta
Maine may be joining Vermont, New York, and two other states in establishing a “Climate Superfund Cost Recovery Program” within the Maine Department of Environmental Protection. The goal is to force the world’s largest oil producers to pay for the impact of climate change. This measure seeks to force the 90 or so biggest oil and gas producers in the world to pay for the climate change they allegedly helped cause.
But getting “Big Oil” to pay Maine and other states for the impact of climate change will be no easy task. “Climate change is a global problem. And we are experiencing damage from emissions outside of Maine and outside of the United States. And in our view, we need a way to pay for that damage”, says Nick Janzen of Maine Conservation Voters, testifying Monday before members of the Environment and Natural Resources Committee.
Only companies who’ve emitted more than a billion metric tons of greenhouse gas pollution would pay for the damage from climate change. “The amount of their financial contribution will be determined in proportion to their share of global greenhouse gas emissions”, University of Michigan Environmental Law Asst. Professor Rachel Rothschild told the committee. The sponsors are also seeking to make the law retroactive to the mid-1990’s.
Consider that the NJ Superior Court already threw out a lawsuit as they “ruled that lawful oil companies could not be held liable for worldwide emissions.”
Maine would also have to prove these big oil companies; who are operating legally in the United States, providing a commodity we all need; are also responsible for sea level rise, hurricanes, and other natural disasters, and to what degree. Lawmakers admit proving big oil is responsible for the weather won’t be easy.
The 3 long term tide gauges for Maine show .80, .76, and .73 inches of sea rise per century with no acceleration. Less than is expected during a Holocene warm period.
I spent only one winter in Portland, Maine, as a third-grader, but I can tell you: winters in Maine are bone-chillingly cold!
The snow develops a frozen crust on the top. As an 8-year-old, I was too heavy to walk on the crust — well, sometimes I could get a few steps before I broke through — but my sister were 4 and 2½ years old, and they could walk on the crust sometimes. If they broke through, it was my job to rescue them from being stuck in a snowdrift.
Boys would make snowballs, then leave them in a pan outside overnight, and we’d have snowballs with an icy crust in the morning. Those things packed a wallop!
As much as they want to fight
global warmingclimate change, the last thing New Englanders want is to depend on heat pumps to warm their houses in the winter. They want the direct, much more immediate heat of fossil-fuel fed flame than trying to suck heat out of the atmosphere at 13º F — the average overnight low in Portland in January — or 11º F (Augusta) or 7º F (Bangor) or 0º F (Caribou).The only region of the country in which electric heat is the majority residential heating source is the southeast, due to our milder winters.
Any additional cost placed on the producers by the five blue states will be passed on to the rest of us.
I move we give them to Canada.
“Lawmakers admit proving big oil is responsible for the weather won’t be easy.”
B-b-b-b-but weather and climate aren’t the same thing! Big Media told us so!