Click the link to read the article on the Rolling Stone website (Thor Benson). Here’s an excerpt:

May 24, 2025

When President Donald Trump took office earlier this year, climate advocates were confident that while the federal government would certainly no longer be tackling the issue of climate change, states wouldhelp pick up some of the slack. There was a sense of hope in that — at least some of this vital work would continue. This prospect has recently been put into question, because the Trump administration is now trying to prevent states from doing much of anything to limit the impacts of climate change. 

The Department of Justice is currently suing the states of New York and Vermont to stop them from enforcing laws passed last year that would make fossil fuel companies liable for some of the costs of dealing with climate change. It is also suing Hawaii and Michigan over their climate-related lawsuits against fossil fuel companies. Finally, the Trump administration is working to end California’s stringent motor vehicle emissions standards and its cap-and-trade program. (Republicans in the Senate recently moved to end Califonria’s vehicle emission standards.)…The first set of lawsuits pertain to climate “superfund” laws. These are laws based on legislation passed in the 1980s that forced chemical and petroleum companies to pay for the cleanup of hazardous waste. In this scenario, the idea is to force fossil fuel companies to pay for the costs of the damaging effects of climate change. New York and Vermont passed climate superfund laws last year. Numerous states — from Maine to Tennessee — have expressed interest in passing laws like these in recent years…

“They’re going to try to impose some liability — some fees — on these companies as a way of forcing them to internalize the cost of past activities,” Rachel Rothschild, an assistant professor of law at the University of Michigan and an expert on superfunds, tells Rolling Stone. “The companies that would be deemed responsible parties under the bills are those companies that have produced, extracted or sold fossil fuel products above a certain threshold during the time period that the bills are going to impose this retroactive liability.”

[…]

Rothschild says it’s “pretty unprecedented” for the federal government to file lawsuits to block this kind of environmental legislation and that states have historically had the authority to address environmental issues that affect public health. These laws are only just starting to be implemented, so it’s also quite early to be filing lawsuits against them.

“This seems to be part of a larger effort to not only do nothing when it comes to climate change but to actively dismantle the climate science and climate accountability enterprise that is being built in response to the costs of climate change that are manifesting in everyone’s daily lives,” says Justin Mankin, a climate scientist at Dartmouth College. “These costs from climate change — we are just beginning to confront them, and they are astounding.”