Richard Peterson, Ph.D., recently retired from the University of New England as emeritus professor of environmental studies.

For years in my Environmental Policy class at the University of New England, I taught about the landmark 1980 federal Superfund bill or CERCLA (Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act). Today, nearly a half century late, it continues to be effective, forcing polluters to pay for the environmental and social damage they have caused.

It was enacted primarily to address specific sites and incidents of contamination with clear evidence designating the corporate culprit. We are now in a different era where greenhouse gas pollution contaminates the entire atmosphere, raising global temperatures and wreaking climatic changes that cause chaos and billions of dollars of damage to ecosystems and infrastructure, including an estimated $17.5 billion here in Maine.

This includes public health costs wrought by increased rates of asthma and other respiratory diseases, and higher rates of tick-borne diseases such as Lyme and anaplasmosis, all associated with warming average temperatures driven by carbon emissions.

The same principle driving CERCLA’s implementation applies here, a principle we’ve all known since kindergarten: If you break it, you fix it. The climate has been broken, and large fossil fuel companies have been breaking it knowingly for many decades. They might say we are all breaking it, all of us who drive our petrol-powered vehicles and heat our homes with oil. Yes, climate chaos calls all of us to take responsibility. But that responsibility is not evenly shared.

Continuing to research, drill for, refine, market and advertise the use of fossil fuels in order to amass massive profits (over $170 billion in 2023) can only be attributed to large oil companies that have known the dangers of their actions since the late 1970s and then went on to mislead the public about those dangers.

In the current 132nd meeting of the Maine State Legislature, lawmakers will consider a bill, LD 1870 (carried over from 2025), that will require the largest culprits causing climate change-related damage in Maine to pay for the repair of that damage and/or adaptations to protect against future damage.

Note that this bill is not asking fossil fuel industries to fix the climate system after breaking it, only to clean up the mess their breaking of the system has caused, and to fund protections against further damage, especially for the most vulnerable communities. Like the communities here in Maine.

Photographic evidence of the horrific damage suffered by Maine communities from winter storms and unseasonal flooding is now seared in the minds of every Maine resident. Fossil fuel companies will likely claim it is impossible to link specific damage to specific culprits. This is true. LD 1870 does not attempt to do that. It limits culpability to the largest climate polluters, companies responsible for more than 1 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions between 1995 and 2025 that have a commercial connection to Maine.

Without LD 1870, those costs will fall to Maine taxpayers. This is not only impractical as the tax revenues generated cannot meet the cost of climate pollution damage, but it is also unethical, since Maine citizens’ contribution to the problem is minimal compared to the contribution of Big Oil.

Maine needs to follow the example of Vermont and New York, where Climate Polluters Pay bills have already become law. By doing so, it will also set an example for the 10 other states that are considering similar legislation.

Jan. 27 will be a Make Polluters Pay Day of Action at the State House that will include a gallery of photos of the damage Maine’s communities have absorbed from the climate chaos caused disproportionately by the largest fossil fuel companies. All those concerned about Maine’s growing climate-related damage and about climate justice are urged to attend.