Joined by more than twenty state attorneys general and several trade associations, West Virginia Attorney General J.B. McCuskey last week announced a lawsuit against New York over the state’s newly enacted climate superfund bill, which seeks to arbitrarily fine energy producers for their contributions to global climate change.
In comments to Fox News Digital, AG McCuskey blasted the New York bill:
“This bill is an attempt by New York to step into the shoes of the federal government to regulate something that they have absolutely no business regulating, and we are more than happy to step in and tell the rest of the country, along with our incredible other state partners, that this is unconstitutional, and it won’t stand.”
McCuskey characterized the lawsuit as “a fight between the elites and the people who make this country run on the back end,” a point reinforced by one of the industry groups that joined the suit, GO-West Virginia, which stated that West Virginian energy producers are “powering their economies as we always have, either with natural gas or electricity” and yet face penalties from New York state.
New York is the second state to enact climate superfund legislation. Last year, Vermont’s superfund bill was similarly challenged in court by a coalition of business groups.
Climate Lawsuits and Superfund Legislation: Two Sides of Same Coin
Climate superfund bills are effectively legislative vehicles with the same aims of climate lawsuits – namely, to hike the cost of fossil fuels – as Capital Research Center writes:
“The new laws have the same objective as this litigation—compel energy companies to fork over huge sums of money to the government—but they attempt to do so through legislative fiat rather than through civil liability.”
It should come as little surprise then that – lo and behold – both initiatives to take down America’s energy industry are the brainchildren of the billionaire Rockefeller philanthropies.
As explained by a Rockefeller-enlisted University of Michigan assistant law professor who works pro-bono on the superfund legislation, when climate lawsuits stalled due to jurisdictional battles, the Rockefeller Family Fund and allies diversified their efforts by approaching the same ends legislatively.
They first tried their hand at the federal level, and RFF “helped develop” a bill introduced by Sen. Chris Van Hollen in 2021. After it failed to advance out of the Senate, RFF and friends shifted focus to promoting superfund legislation in solidly blue states.
Similar to their approach pitching climate litigation against U.S. energy companies, their first state conquest was New York state. In 2022, RFF director Lee Wasserman presented on the Zoom announcing the bill and was introduced by the bill sponsor as a “crucial member of the team” developing the legislation.
Wasserman has personally lobbied state legislatures in New York and to push superfund bills. In a June 2024 op-ed in The New York Times, Wasserman admitted RFF had spent “roughly $200,000 in support of environmental efforts in Vermont, including passage of the climate Superfund law.”
As mentioned above, RFF even enlisted the support of an law professor at the University of Michigan to push similar legislation in Michigan, putting a fresh spin on a familiar playbook Wasserman used previously to enlist plaintiffs for climate suits.
Moreover, as EID Climate has documented previously, both climate superfund bills and lawsuits rely on Richard Heede’s fringe body of climate attribution science to divvy up shares of global emissions among a hand-selected group of companies. The heavily biased research has received funding from the same set of Rockefeller nonprofits that support climate litigation, making it all too apparent these parallel efforts are two sides of the same coin.
Opposition to the Legislation
Last year a coalition of business, energy, and labor groups led by the Business Council of New York State urged Gov. Kathy Hochul to veto the bill, arguing that the superfund arbitrarily targets oil and natural gas producers and risks unintended consequences for consumers and businesses.
The bill is also rife with impracticalities. New York’s bill will attempt to fine foreign oil and gas producers as well as American producers, but it’s hard to imagine Russia’s Lukoil handing New York state $100 million dollars to pay for the state’s climate initiatives.
Despite strong opposition from New York businesses that rely on affordable energy to provide goods and services to the state, Hochul evidently took the word of billionaire-funded activists over her own constituents.
Bottom Line: New York’s plan to fine oil and gas companies for lawful business activity clearly undermines the Trump administration’s call for increased oil and gas to production address the national energy emergency. In effect, New York’s superfund will amount to a tariff imposed on American oil and gas – exactly the opposite of what consumers need.
Read the full story at EIDclimate.org.
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