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It's the Brian Larras show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now our climate story of the week,

which we've been doing every Tuesday on the show all this year. New York State Senator Liz Kruger is with us today.

She's proposed some legislation in Albany that would hold fossil fuel companies accountable for their

contributions to climate change

by requiring them to pay for the damages caused by their emissions. She not only proposed it,

it got passed by the legislature, and everybody's waiting to see if Governor Hokel is going to sign it.

She only has till the end of the year, which means the end of the month,

which means two more weeks. So we'll talk about the legislation, how it would work, and whether

it would have the potential to reshape how we approach climate adaptation and resilience and

prevention and accountability in our state. We'll also get into some of the roadblocks that Senator Kruger has faced in

advancing this bill, which is one of the hundreds of pieces on Governor Hokel's desk, awaiting

consideration, signing or vetoing, or just letting get into the law without saying anything before

the end of the year. Senator Kruger, always good to have you. Welcome back to WNYC. Thank you very much, Brian. I appreciate your having me on. This legislation is called

the Climate Change Superfund Act or more colloquially, polluter pays. Tell everybody who hasn't

followed this this year what it is. So basically, you've

described it. This bill says that we know that oil and gas companies have creative massive

climate damage. We're seeing it every day. Extreme weather events, dangerous, deadly things happening in our state.

And these activities, this damage to our climate is costing us a fortune.

We have an estimate already that statewide climate adaptation costs, meaning the things we need to adjust for this crisis, is already costing hundreds of billions of dollars for projects like rebuilding crumbling roads, shoring up our waterfront bulkheads.

These expenses are non-negotiable. Someone's going to pay for them.

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