Increased temperatures due to climate change are negatively impacting our health, our environment, our infrastructure, and our economy. Yet corporations and governments aren’t doing nearly enough to cut climate-warming emissions, even when they know that the economic cost of inaction in the long run will be significantly greater than making the needed investments now.
One reason for this lack of urgency is that the companies that cause emissions are not the ones who are paying for the impacts. Those costs get passed down to us. The cost of home insurance increases for all of us so insurance companies can try to cover losses due to increased wildfires. Prices at the grocery store increase due to crop losses from extreme heat, flooding, and droughts. The increased need for disaster relief to replace infrastructure lost in extreme storms is paid for by our federal, state, and local tax dollars. In fact, even the more mundane things our tax dollars pay for — like fixing potholes — are happening more frequently thanks to climate change and erratic freeze and thaw cycles.
If you have been following local politics, you know that budgets are tight. Most local towns can’t afford to keep up with our road repairs now, and it is only going to get worse. Some states, like New York and Vermont, have enacted climate superfund legislation to collect fees from fossil fuel companies to pay for climate-induced disaster relief and needed investments in climate change-resilient infrastructure. These laws have the potential to take some burden off taxpayers, which every politician should be supporting.
Not surprising, however, the American Petroleum Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has filed a lawsuit against the states, and the current federal administration is backing the fossil fuel industry. Time will tell whether these climate superfund laws will survive, but the idea behind them is critical.
Local communities cannot bear the cost of climate inaction alone. Next time you see a pothole and wish the town would repair it already, take a minute to reach out to your state and federal elected officials and remind them that we need urgent investments to combat climate change and for fossil fuel companies to pay their fair share for the damage that has already been done. You can find contact information for your state senator and representative here: https://malegislature.gov/Search/FindMyLegislator.
Lori Golder, on behalf of the Amherst Energy and Climate Action Committee (ECAC)
Amherst