While the fossil-fuel industry tallies up record profits, we taxpayers are saddled with the real downstream costs of their products in climate disruption and pollution. Communities across the country are paying nearly $1 trillion per year for extreme heat, floods, wildfires, and rising seas.
Now there’s a growing movement to make polluters pay their fair share for the messes they’ve made and their deceiving the public for decades. Vermont and New York have already passed “climate superfund” laws, modeled on the legislation that held Big Tobacco and opioid manufacturers accountable in the past. More than a dozen states are pursuing climate superfund legislation, and Illinois will be one of them with a new bill being introduced during this session of the General Assembly.
The fossil-fuel industry understands the threat these superfunds and lawsuits pose to their profits and business-as-usual practices. Not surprisingly, oil and gas lobbyists are currently urging Congress to give fossil fuel companies total legal immunity from any laws or lawsuits that could hold them accountable for their role in the climate crisis. State-level immunity bills for the fossil-fuel industry have already been introduced in Utah and Oklahoma as part of the larger coordinated effort to strip communities of their right to take Big Oil to court.
What can you do? Call or write your state reps and let them know you support the creation of an Illinois climate superfund to hold the industry accountable, and ask them to contact our federal delegation. And immediately contact your members of Congress, especially senators Durbin and Duckworth, to tell them you oppose any legal immunity for the fossil fuel industry. Spread the word about why we taxpayers must push back against the polluters. It’s time.
Pamela Tate
Oak Park Climate Action Network