Prof. James Coleman Interviewed by MPR News About Minnesota Leaders Taking on Fossil Fuel Companies

Professor James Coleman was interviewed on MPR’s Minnesota Now program discussing how Minnesota state leaders are taking steps to hold big companies accountable for their role in contributing to climate change. One route has been through the courts. Another has been through legislation that would make fossil fuel companies pay for their emissions. He was asked about one such proposal in the Minnesota legislature. Prof. Coleman responded, “It’s called Superfund legislation because it's making an analogy with earlier regulation that we had from the U.S. Congress, so national regulation for the chemicals industry. And so one aspect of the Superfund Statute, which is a really quite comprehensive approach to trying to clean up hazardous waste sites, is that it imposes a tax on the chemicals industry that's used to help clean up sites that are — otherwise, we can't find somebody to clean it up. So we can't find anybody that was responsible for it to clean those up. And so I think the analogy that states are drawing, and that you see from Minnesota here, is, well, maybe we need some kind of tax on fossil fuel companies that's going to help pay for these climate harms that we otherwise don’t get paid for.” Listen to the interview.