In July 2025, New Jersey faced a grim reminder of its vulnerability to climate change. Torrential rain and fierce winds battered the state, leaving at least five people dead and millions of dollars in damages. The city of Plainfield, in particular, suffered a double tragedy: on July 3, two people were killed when a tree fell on their moving car during high winds, and less than two weeks later, floodwaters swept away a car carrying two women, resulting in their deaths. These harrowing events have reignited debate over who should bear the cost of climate disasters—taxpayers or the fossil fuel companies long accused of fueling the crisis.
At the center of this debate is the New Jersey Climate Superfund Act, a bill that could make the Garden State only the third in the nation to require fossil fuel companies to pay for climate-related damages and resilience measures. The legislation, introduced in September 2024, would hold companies accountable if they knowingly emitted at least 1 billion tons of greenhouse gases between 1995 and the year the bill takes effect. If enacted, the state treasurer would have two years to assess damages and direct each major emitter to compensate New Jersey, potentially raising $1-2 billion annually, or about $40 billion over 25 years, according to state Sen. John McKeon (D-Essex), one of the bill’s chief sponsors.
“The climate has warmed and these cataclysmic storms are going to become regular as opposed to once every hundred years,” McKeon told Inside Climate News. “They come with damage and loss of human life. Does the taxpayer pay, or do the folks who were responsible and knowingly responsible for climate change ante up?”
The bill draws inspiration from Vermont’s pioneering Climate Superfund Law, passed in May 2024, and New York’s subsequent version in December. Both states now face lawsuits from the Trump administration, which argues that such laws violate the federal Clean Air Act and the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The American Petroleum Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have also taken legal action. New Jersey’s proposal, modeled more closely on New York’s law, sets a clear emissions threshold for accountability and earmarks funds for adaptation projects like seawalls and wetlands restoration. Unlike Vermont’s law, which tasks officials with calculating damage, New Jersey’s approach is more straightforward, targeting companies that crossed a specific emissions line.
Yet, despite Democratic control of the governor’s mansion and both legislative chambers, the bill’s future remains uncertain. Lawmakers are not scheduled to reconvene until after the November 2025 elections, and Governor Phil Murphy’s term ends in January 2026. As of September, only 14 of 40 senators and 31 of 80 assembly members have signed on as cosponsors. Municipal support is tepid as well—just 46 of New Jersey’s 564 municipalities have passed resolutions backing the bill.
Plainfield’s recent tragedies have made the city a focal point in the climate compensation debate. The city issued $5 million in bonds to repair public property and held a benefit concert that raised $95,000 for storm victims—a sum that falls far short of what’s needed. Residents, including those who lost homes or loved ones, are now looking to the Federal Emergency Management Agency for relief, but city officials say more substantial, long-term funding is needed. “We do believe that [climate change] plays a big role in it,” Plainfield business administrator Abby Levenson told Inside Climate News. “There’s definitely a changing weather pattern, and we do believe that it’s related.”
Levenson added that Plainfield would like to expand a stormwater retention basin to better handle future deluges, but such projects require resources that could come from the Climate Superfund Act—if it passes. For now, the community is traumatized and anxious about what the next storm might bring. “The town has done a really good job of coming together as a community but it has been very tragic and very scary,” she said. “Everybody is on edge about when the next storm is coming.”
Supporters of the bill, including youth activists like Ben Dziobek of the Climate Revolution Action Network, argue that it’s high time for fossil fuel companies to pay their share. Dziobek pointed to the recent storms in Plainfield as evidence of the Trump administration’s climate denial and the need for corporate accountability. “Trump is gutting EPA, he is gutting all of our resilience programs, and he is gutting them in places like Plainfield where two women died in their car,” Dziobek said. “This is going to be on the backs of average New Jerseyans; they did not emit that much carbon.”
However, the bill faces stiff opposition from the business community and fossil fuel interests. Ray Cantor, a government affairs officer at the New Jersey Business and Industry Association, told a legislative panel that the proposal would “do nothing” to reduce emissions or slow climate change and would unfairly increase costs for consumers. “Advocates who claim you can impose billions of dollars of liabilities on businesses and not expect that to be passed on to consumers are either being disingenuous or fooling themselves,” Cantor said.
Industry arguments echo a broader national debate. A recent letter to the editor published by the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal accused Big Oil of using its profits to buy political influence, spread misinformation, and stifle renewable energy. The letter’s author, Mark Stoll, argued that fossil fuel companies prefer monopolistic, highly profitable markets, and that their opposition to renewables stems from the latter’s competitiveness and lower profit margins. “That’s why Big Oil fights hard to prevent market forces from operating,” Stoll wrote. He further contended that former President Donald Trump and Representative Jodey Arrington have prioritized corporate interests over national progress, allowing China and Europe to lead in 21st-century energy and technology.
Back in New Jersey, environmentalists have also criticized the state’s Department of Environmental Protection for rolling back a proposed rule that would have raised the required elevation for new buildings in flood-prone areas from five feet to four feet above FEMA flood levels. The agency cited a downshift in sea-level rise forecasts and public comments as reasons for the change, but environmental advocates saw it as a retreat from the state’s responsibility to protect residents from worsening climate impacts. The business community, meanwhile, argued that the new rules still don’t go far enough in easing burdens on property developers.
New Jersey’s densely populated, heavily developed coastline makes it especially susceptible to sea-level rise and land subsidence—problems that climate researchers say are accelerating faster along the Jersey Shore than elsewhere globally. The state’s experience with Hurricane Sandy in 2012 remains a stark warning of the devastation climate change can bring.
As the Climate Superfund Act hangs in the balance, its supporters and detractors continue to spar over who should pay for the mounting costs of climate disasters. The outcome could set a precedent for other states considering similar legislation—and determine whether the burden of adaptation and recovery falls on everyday citizens or the corporations long linked to the crisis.
