New York governor Kathy Hochul signed landmark climate legislation into law last week, showing how states can keep holding polluters accountable even when President-elect Donald Trump rolls back environmental protections.
New York’s Climate Change Superfund Act will require the biggest multinational oil and gas companies to contribute to a fund that’ll be used for infrastructure projects meant to protect New York residents from increasingly dangerous climate disasters like storms and sea level rise.
Trump will soon step back into office and is expected to dismantle existing climate policies and gut the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), having openly disparaged clean energy and federal environmental regulations on the campaign trail. So for the next four years at least, Americans will have to rely on local and state efforts like this to deal with the pollution from fossil fuels that’s causing climate change.
“New York has fired a shot that will be heard round the world: the companies most responsible for the climate crisis will be held accountable,” State Senator Liz Krueger said in a statement after Hochul…