You Know What Would Be Cool? If Polluters Had To Pay For Climate Doom

What if they had to pay?

What if polluters had to pay for the effects of climate change?

Megan Hall: Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall.

This year, the Rhode Island General Assembly considered a type of bill that’s been popping up across the country: it aims to make fossil fuel emitters pay for the impacts of climate change.

Rhode Island didn’t end up passing the legislation this year, but Nat Hardy from our Possibly Team spoke with one of the bill’s sponsors about what comes next in Rhode Island.

Nat Hardy: Hi, Megan! Thanks for having me.

I guess PBS is able to operate without all that federal money

Nat Hardy: Yeah, it’s called a climate super fund bill. It’s a pretty new idea to address the impacts of climate change.

Jennifer Boylan: The concept is to make the polluters pay for the damages that they caused.

Nat Hardy: That’s Representative Jennifer Boylan, the lead sponsor in the House, for the Rhode Island Climate Superfund Act of 2026. She’s introduced this bill two years in a row with her colleague, Senator Linda Ujifusa,

Has anyone asked if Jen and Linda still use fossil fuels themselves?

Megan: Who would pay these costs?

In reality, that would be you, Megan. In Reality Land companies will pass those costs on. Or, just stop operating in the state.

Nat Hardy: The bill specifically targets the biggest polluters: companies responsible for more than one billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions. So we’re talking companies like Chevron, Exxon Mobil, B.P., Shell. And the companies would be charged proportionally, based on their emissions over the past few decades.

Megan Hall: Interesting! I didn’t realize states could do something like that.

Yeah, they really can’t, per multiple losses in federal court and multiple lawsuits

Nat Hardy: So climate superfund bills are trying to do the same thing. If you caused the damage, you pay to fix it. And the greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel companies are causing the more powerful storms, heatwaves, and other impacts we’re seeing from climate change.

This BS. Let’s, for the sake of argument, say that the products of these companies have a massive role in the (minor) temperature increase of the world, that are causing all sorts of Bad Weather: they aren’t doing it in a vacuum, there are people who use those products. Why don’t we make them pay? Why don’t we stick it to the citizens of Rhode Island? That’s where all this breaks down, all these people wanting Something Done, wanting That Guy taxed, but, refusing to pay themselves and refusing to stop doing the things and using the products they say is setting the world on fire.