Climate change is happening. It’s costing Minnesotans billions of dollars per year, and those responsible for it should help pay for it. A Sept. 30 MinnPost Community Voices commentary on Minnesota’s proposed climate superfund law instead implies that state taxpayers should pay for the costs of climate change — not the fossil fuel companies that knowingly caused it— because a federal district court in New York struck down a similar law. I disagree.

Minnesota lawmakers should help Minnesotans prepare our communities for a changing climate by requiring responsible parties to pony up for the harm they’ve done. Minnesota courts aren’t required to follow the same questionable decision that New York courts followed, and Minnesota lawmakers should not just assume that they will and therefore do nothing.

The author makes repeated references to Minnesota farmers, implying that the climate superfund law would negatively impact them. Instead, this bill would create a stable source of funding for local communities to help pay for a portion of the damages we are all already experiencing from our changing climate. 

Community Voices: Minnesota should stop importing failed policy experiments like a climate superfund law

The climate superfund bill would assess the costs that Minnesota farmers and the rest of us are already facing to those who are most responsible for them. This bill first requires the state to calculate the damage we’ve already suffered and the damage we are going to suffer from greenhouse gases already emitted. Our state already did some of those calculations, and the numbers are shocking. We are looking at a price tag of over $2.5 billion per year by 2040. Farmers are already facing significant harm because of climate change in the form of extreme rainfall events, frequent droughts and invading pests. 

We know from the companies’ own records that the emissions leading to this harm occurred during a time when fossil fuel companies were purposefully deceiving us about the science behind climate change. They engaged in an active campaign to cause confusion about whether it’s happening at all, who’s responsible for it, and whether it makes economic sense to try to avoid it. The fossil fuel companies engaged in this campaign of misinformation all while protecting their own assets from the climate change they knew was coming.

The author also makes repeated references to other policies she claims Minnesota wrongly imported from other states. She points to Minnesota’s Clean Cars rule as an example, but this law was challenged three different times by industry representatives and all three challenges failed to overturn the law. She points to a proposed bill to better regulate neonicotinoid-coated seeds, a similar version of which passed in New York and has not faced a legal challenge. She points to a California animal production law that isn’t even proposed here.

She points to a case being heard at the U.S. Supreme Court this month related to climate-deception claims against fossil fuel companies, but ignores the overwhelming losing record of the fossil fuel companies in these cases. These examples seem more like fear-mongering than relevant data points.

Community Voices: As the world moves forward, U.S. retreats on climate change

What the author neglects to point out is the origin of the cases challenging any and all attempts to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for their role in climate damages. On July 14, the New York Times reported that, at a White House meeting with President Donald Trump on March 19, 2025, oil and gas industry executives “began complaining about the Climate Superfund bills that had recently passed in Vermont and New York. As they spoke, Trump’s policy adviser, Stephen Miller was texting the attorney general Pam Bondi. ‘I’m on it,’ Miller told the group. Less than two months later, the administration sued both states seeking to block enforcement of the laws.”

While this is troubling, it’s not surprising. The oil industry has a long history of using the judicial system to delay or evade accountability. But they don’t usually have a presidential administration willing to act as an enthusiastic assistant.

When it comes to claims about who should pay for the climate damages that we are all suffering, please consider the source. For my part, I want those responsible to have to chip in.

Leigh Currie is the chief impact officer at the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy.

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