If you’re one of those gambling addicts placing bets on every imaginable future scenario that could befall this nation, and you’ve bet on it facing a maximum climate catastrophe, you’ve got a friend in the Trump administration.
When President Donald Trump took office earlier this year, climate advocates were confident that while the federal government would certainly no longer be tackling the issue of climate change, states would help pick up some of the slack. There was a sense of hope in that — at least some of this vital work would continue. This prospect has recently been put into question, because the Trump administration is now trying to prevent states from doing much of anything to limit the impacts of climate change.
The Department of Justice is currently suing the states of New York and Vermont to stop them from enforcing laws passed last year that would make fossil fuel companies liable for some of the costs of dealing with climate change. It is also suing Hawaii and Michigan over their climate-related lawsuits against fossil fuel companies. Finally, the Trump administration is working to end California’s stringent motor vehicle emissions standards and its cap-and-trade program. (Republicans in the Senate recently moved to end Califonria’s vehicle emission standards.)
The first set of lawsuits pertain to climate “superfund” laws. These are laws based on legislation passed in the 1980s that forced chemical and petroleum companies to pay for the cleanup of hazardous waste. In this scenario, the idea is to force fossil fuel companies to pay for the costs of the damaging effects of climate change. New York and Vermont passed climate superfund laws last year. Numerous states — from Maine to Tennessee — have expressed interest in passing laws like these in recent years.
“They’re going to try to impose some liability — some fees — on these companies as a way of forcing them to internalize the cost of past activities,” Rachel Rothschild, an assistant professor of law at the University of Michigan and an expert on superfunds, tells Rolling Stone. “The companies that would be deemed responsible parties under the bills are those companies that have produced, extracted or sold fossil fuel products above a certain threshold during the time period that the bills are going to impose this retroactive liability.”
Rothschild says it’s “pretty unprecedented” for the federal government to file lawsuits to block this kind of environmental legislation and that states have historically had the authority to address environmental issues that affect public health. These laws are only just starting to be implemented, so it’s also quite early to be filing lawsuits against them.
“This seems to be part of a larger effort to not only do nothing when it comes to climate change but to actively dismantle the climate science and climate accountability enterprise that is being built in response to the costs of climate change that are manifesting in everyone’s daily lives,” says Justin Mankin, a climate scientist at Dartmouth College. “These costs from climate change — we are just beginning to confront them, and they are astounding.”
As for the lawsuits against Hawaii and Michigan, those are also quite unusual. The Justice Department decided to sue the two states before their respective lawsuits against fossil fuel companies had even been filed. Both states are hoping to hold fossil fuel companies responsible for how climate change has negatively impacted their environment, by making them pay for climate-related damages.
“It’s almost unprecedented that the federal government is getting involved there,” says Anthony Moffa, a law professor at the University of Maine.
Moffa says the Trump administration appears to be placing itself “on the side of private industry,” and he thinks these actions may have been taken as part of an effort to dissuade other states from pursuing similar legal action.
The actions the Trump administration has taken against California’s environmental regulations could have a sweeping impact considering the size and influence of the state. Trump issued an executive order in April that directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to stop laws, like California’s, that address climate change from being enforced.
California has had some of the tightest vehicle emission standards in the country for decades, and the state sells a lot of cars, so the automotive industry is essentially guided by these standards. Many states have also chosen to adopt standards that are set by California.
“California leads the country in both strong greenhouse gas emission regulations for vehicles and conventional air pollution regulation,” says Ann Carlson, a professor of environmental law at the University of California, Los Angeles. “This is the move that worries me the most.”
The people working in the Trump administration learned a few things from when Trump was president the first time around. One thing it appears they learned, Moffa says, is that states will take up the climate fight when the federal government abandons it.
“They recognized that was the strategy, and states have gotten even more ambitious,” Moffa says. “This is their attempt to try to stop that.”
States are trying to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for how they have contributed to climate change, and the Trump administration is making it clear it will have none of that. The lawsuits and strategies employed by the administration may not be successful, but they clearly create another barrier to acting on climate change. They could also make states more wary about passing new climate laws.
“Trump demanded large contributions from the oil industry in exchange for lax regulation,” Carlson says. “This is an administration that is hell-bent on undermining anything to do with climate change but also, more broadly, any kind of environmental regulation that protects public health.”
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