Roper: New York’s Vermont-clone “Climate Superfund” shot down by Obama Judge - Vermont Daily Chronicle
Roper: New York’s Vermont-clone “Climate Superfund” shot down by Obama Judge - Vermont Daily Chronicle # Roper: New York’s Vermont-clone “Climate Superfund” shot down by Obama Judge By Timothy Page on September 8, 2026 • ( 1 Comment ) Vermont’s Big Oil shakedown should meet a similar fate.
vermontdailychronicle.com · Timothy Page · September 8, 2026
Roper: New York’s Vermont-clone “Climate Superfund” shot down by Obama Judge - Vermont Daily Chronicle
# Roper: New York’s Vermont-clone “Climate Superfund” shot down by Obama Judge
By Timothy Page on September 8, 2026 • ( 1 Comment )
Vermont’s Big Oil shakedown should meet a similar fate.
by Rob Roper
Another (BIG) one bites the dust. New York, like Vermont, passed a Climate Superfund law back in 2024 in hopes of making “Big Oil pay” for damage these doom-and-gloomers allege is caused by our burning fossil fuels to survive winter, do our jobs, transport ourselves from place to place, have a modern economy, etcetera. Well, in what’s not a shocker to anyone paying attention, a federal judge – and this part is a bit of a shocker – appointed by Barack Obama shot down New York’s claim, ruling the state – any state – does not have jurisdiction in this arena. It is the federal government’s purview under the Clean Air Act. End of story.
Why is this not a shocker? Because, as we have reported here before at BTL, similar lawsuits brought by states and municipalities around the country have pretty much all met the same fate. New Jersey tried it; failed. New York City and San Francisco jumped in as one would expect; zip. Baltimore and Annapolis in Maryland tried it; nope. Charleston, South Carolina; nuh uh. You see the pattern here.
Ergo, only an idiot (or, perhaps a supermajority of idiots) would bet millions of dollars – your tax dollars in this case — in the forlorn hope that this legal shakedowns pays off. As such, on the first day of the 2027 legislative session the new legislature (with hopefully a bunch of new legislators) should repeal Act 122, because spending more and more money on this “green” going-nowhere vanity project is the fiscal equivalent of dumping it all down the big round hole in the outhouse.
The original appropriation in Act 122, passed in 2024, gave $300,000 to the Agency of Natural Resources to hire an employee fully dedicated to this nonsense and, “costs associated with providing administrative, technical, and legal support in carrying out the requirements of this act and the Program; hiring consultants and experts; and for other necessary costs and expenses.” In other words, what Tammany Hall would call spreading around a little “honest graft.”
Another $300,000 was tossed the Treasurer’s way for “the purposes of hiring consultants or third-party services to assist in the completion of the assessment.” The “assessment” in this case means coming up with a creative goulash of phony numbers and fake science that results in an equation equaling the desired level of ransom to be presented in the note to Big Oil. New York’s was a cool $75 billion over 25 years. Pretty round number for a “scientific” conclusion. Have you heard the joke about the guy interviewing accountants who asks one question: what’s two plus two? The correct answer: what do you want it to be? That what this is, but not funny.
But it turns out that concocting a loaf of baloney this big – I’m going to steal a line from NFIB’s brief on this, “…mak[ing] complex determinations based on untested theories about how to attribute the amount of GHG emissions and related damage to each assessable company” – is a level of imaginative mathematics that doesn’t come so cheap. In 2025, ANR and the Treasurer’s office came back with hats in hand and a sob story that they would another $1.5 million of your hard-earned tax dollars to pay off these consultants. They only got another $350,000, but you know where this is going….
And this is just the tip of the iceberg because as New York was sued so is Vermont being sued, and, yes, you, dear taxpayer, are paying for the legal defense of this indefensible law through the office of the Vermont Attorney General. The case is United States v. Vermont, and it is costing you… unknown. Because this is where any semblance of transparency ends. Some undisclosed chunk of the annual AG’s roughly $17 million annual budget is being wasted on this boondoggle, but we don’t know how much, and AG Charity Clark (D-VT) ain’t sayin’. But best guesstimates put it in the millions, especially if the legal fight ends up being dragged out over many years through endless, useless appeals.
Back in March the federal court in Rutland heard a motion to dismiss Vermont’s case. The presiding Judge, Mary Kay Lanthier, said she would issue a ruling “as quickly as we can.” Which, five months later, does not seem particularly quick. Hopefully the New York ruling along with all the others mentioned here will spark some action and Judge Lanthier will do us all a favor and kill this thing before it costs Vermonters any more money. Barring that, repeal Act 122. Just like blowing millions on electric busses that don’t work (and explode), this is another ideologically driven, tilting at windmills (figuratively and literally) waste of our money that neither we as taxpayers nor our unaffordable state government can’t afford.
Rob Roper is a freelance writer who has been involved with Vermont politics and policy for over 20 years. This article reprinted with permission from Behind the Lines: Rob Roper on Vermont Politics, robertroper.substack.com
### 1 reply »
1. Steve Thurston says:
September 8, 2026 at 9:24 am
Not surprising that Judge Lanthier has dragged her feet. She was recommended by Sanders and Welch, appointed by Biden and took office in September 2024.
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