Sen. Brenner bill to develop a climate superfund signed into law
AUGUSTA – Last week, Gov. Janet T. Mills signed into law a bill from Sen. Stacy Brenner, D-Scarborough. LD 1870 will initiate the process of establishing a superfund to support climate change resilience and adaptation in Maine, directing the Department of Environmental Protection to determine the amount that historical greenhouse gas emissions have cost the State in climate damages.
“Climate change poses a palpable threat to public health and safety — a threat created, by and large, by the fossil fuel industry’s decades-long commitment to prioritizing profit over all else. When industry’s knowing missteps result in damage too expensive for impacted communities to remedy on their own, superfunds offer a fiscally responsible, equitable recourse,” said Sen. Brenner. “The passage of this bill lays the groundwork for a future climate superfund, which would ease the financial burden Maine communities are currently shouldering alone by asking leading polluters to pay their fair share of the bill.”
Climate impacts are already weighing heavily on Mainers’ wallets, and state and local resources must increasingly be diverted to help them respond to climate change impacts like sea level rise, extreme storms, damaged fisheries, lost farmland, rising insurance costs and public health effects. Last summer’s drought, among the worst on record, resulted in millions of dollars in crop losses among Maine farmers. Two years ago, winter storms racked up an estimated $90 million in damage to public infrastructure and untold more to private property.
Major fossil fuel companies have had the heaviest hand in causing these climate damages. Between 2016 and 2022, 80% of global greenhouse gas emissions were traced to just 57 of these corporate producers — roughly consistent with historical trends since the science of climate change solidified decades ago. These leading polluters, whose own scientists have understood the cascading social and ecological consequences of their business models for decades, continue to rake in hundreds of billions of dollars in profit each year.
LD 1870 directs the State to assign a dollar value to the climate damages incurred due to greenhouse gases emitted between 1995 and 2024. This study will provide a foundation upon which Maine can later build a climate superfund program, requiring the biggest corporate contributors to climate change to help Maine communities pay for the collateral damage of those emissions.
Similar climate superfund programs now underway in Vermont and New York plan to direct leading polluters to pay a one-time fee proportionate to their responsibility for in-state climate damages. The resulting climate superfunds will help local communities make critical investments in resilience, from safer roads and stormwater systems to emergency weather shelters — without diverting resources away from other pressing needs like education, health care or property tax relief.
As non-emergency legislation, LD 1870 will take effect as law 90 days after the Legislature adjourns.
Sen. Brenner is serving her third term in the Maine Senate, representing Gorham and most of Scarborough. She sits on the Environment and Natural Resources Committee.
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