Climate Change Legislation

Sen. Anne Watson is a Vermont native who previously served as mayor of Montpelier. (Credit: Sen. Anne Watson) Vermont is taking huge strides toward restoring the environment. In a landmark move, the state recently passed the Climate Superfund Act, a bill that requires oil and gas companies to pay for damages from extreme storms fueled by carbon emissions. Vermont made history as the first state to enact this legislation and hold big oil and gas companies financially accountable — followed by New York, whose state legislators approved the bill this month. The bill, which passed with a 26 to 3 vote, was co-sponsored by Sen. Anne Watson, a lifelong Vermont resident, high school science and math teacher and former mayor of Montpelier. Watson, who was elected to state senate in 2022, has witnessed first-hand how extreme flooding has devastated the state – a main reason why she won’t stop fighting for environmental and climate justice. “The thing that drives me is environmental action,” Watson told The Story Exchange. “There's so many issues around our relationship with the environment.” We spoke with Watson to learn the importance of this bill, its impact, and how it can influence other states to get involved with protecting the environment. Responses have been lightly edited. What led you to pursuing a career in politics? For me, I’ve always — my whole life — cared about the environment. Science is my background. I came into politics originally because there was a big project in Montpelier that was going to transition a lot of the buildings downtown from burning oil to burning wood chips, on a district heat system. So, that was very interesting to me and I got involved. I did a lot of work that I'm really proud of as a city councilor, and again, as a mayor. The way that Vermont is set up, municipalities are only allowed to do what they're given permission to do. So, I was like, “if I want to affect more change, then I need a different seat.” I was very interested in running for this higher office. So, there we are. That’s how I landed where I am. Tell me more about the Climate Superfund Act. It requires that the world's biggest oil companies that have some kind of a nexus with the state of Vermont, pay for their share of damages caused to the state by climate change — and that’s all in proportion to how much carbon they have been responsible for. It tasks our state treasurer with coming up with what that number is, looking at the carbon that was emitted between 1995 and 2024, what has it cost the state of Vermont and what do we project it will cost the state of Vermont, moving into the future. It's based on something called attribution science, which is the statistical science of measuring how much worse storms are now as a result of climate change, relative to what they would have been in the absence of climate change. How are the carbon emissions measured that were created by oil and gas companies? The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Emissions Factors for Greenhouse Gas Inventories started collecting data in the early 1990s. That’s the front end of the time period. We wanted the starting time to not be arbitrary, so that’s when robust greenhouse gas emission data was available. Why is this specific bill needed in Vermont? The state of Vermont experienced historic record-setting flooding last year in July. We all just did not expect it to be that bad. But we know that it was made significantly worse because of climate change. Statewide about a billion dollars worth of damage. We’re a small state. That’s a big chunk of money that right now that is being borne by taxpayers, by business owners, by individual residents — who lost inventory, who lost their homes. Not to mention the emotional, mental trauma of that entire experience. Has the state done anything similar in the past? Vermont had a similar case, a few years ago, with requiring that a company called Saint Gobain clean up the contamination, or I should say, pay for the remediation of the damage that the company caused in Bennington County related to huge PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) contamination of groundwater. So, we've gone after companies in this same way, and been successful. It may be a shift for some folks to think about pollution as not just being something that happens in the ground, but something that can happen in the air. We know an excess of carbon can cause damage via climate change, and that is pollution. Do the attribution scientists have so far any type of number or projection of how much the oil and gas companies would owe Vermont? We don’t know that yet. But the treasurer has until Jan.15, 2026, to come up with that number. Was it difficult to get other politicians on board with supporting this bill? There was a little bit of explaining stuff to people. But by the time we got to day one of the legislative session for 2024, I already had 20 sponsors total. The fact that we started with a veto-proof majority was a huge deal. And then, to my relief and delight, multiple Republicans voted for it in the end. Climate change is, I think, a nonpartisan issue. It's affecting our communities, and there was a huge appetite from the public for something like this. In a way, legislators of all parties just responding to their constituency. So, that was really encouraging. What overall impact would this bill have toward fighting climate change? As the effects of climate change become increasingly costly and we can put a value to what that cost is, I think that is going to be language a lot of people understand. This is America. We talk in dollars and cents. If we can put a dollar value to it , then somehow that makes it more real. Do you believe that this legislation will encourage other states to follow suit? Oh yeah, I think so…especially states that are starting to feel the financial pinch of climate change are going to look around and say, “who's really responsible for this?” and come to the table as well. Are there any other initiatives you're advocating for that will help address climate change? One bill that we passed this last session was the Renewable Energy Standard. Basically, this bill would clean up our electric grid. Vermont has a very clean portfolio. Our electric utilities tend to buy a lot of renewable energy, which is great. We love that. But those are just contracts. And physically speaking, the electricity that we get in New England is at least 50%, typically, from natural gas. The bill that we just passed is going to help bring that number down so that our electricity is less dependent on fossil fuels. Transportation is our number one carbon-emitting sector. We did just pass the Advanced Clean Cars and Trucks II initiative, which will mean that 100% of our car sales in the state of Vermont have to be electric by like 2035. We’re continuing to just march down the path of installing more EV chargers, etc. But we don’t really have the population centers that make public transportation very effective or financially viable. And then heating is our next highest carbon emitting sector. That’s why the Clean Heat Standard is probably the next most impactful bill that we hope to get across the finish line if we can by next session. The cost of people transitioning to heat pumps or other lower carbon sources of heat is expensive. The goal here would be to significantly bring down the cost of that infrastructure. Aside from climate change, are there any other issues that you are passionate about? One is actually healthcare. I would wrap reproductive rights into that generally. Healthcare is, I think, just a fundamental human right and is so broken right now that I’m very interested in seeing us make progress, to make it simpler and more affordable. I would love to see us get to a universal single payer healthcare — which I think ultimately would actually save us a lot of money.

Climate Change Legislation

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The Story Exchange

Climate Change Legislation

Meet the State Senator Behind Vermont’s Historic Climate Bill

Fast, Easy Ways to Make Your Business More Green

The Story Exchange

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