The nationwide effort to attack American energy companies in Democratic-led state legislatures was dealt yet another defeat this week after the California Senate Insurance Committee voted down SB 982 on Wednesday, and with it, the latest attempt to make oil and gas companies pay for the state’s rising insurance costs.
The bill had already been scaled back the night before just to clear the Judiciary Committee – pushing the liability start date from 2016 to 2032 and adding a credit system letting companies offset liability through emissions reductions – and it still couldn’t secure five votes.
The bill is one version of a broader effort to assign climate-related costs to oil and gas companies — the same theory at the center of the climate superfund campaign.
The defeat in Sacramento is not a coincidence: the campaign is running into resistance at a moment when voters and lawmakers are focused on energy costs, not retroactive liability regimes.
The superfund strategy, increasingly, appears to be less about passing laws than socializing the idea, keeping the concept alive in committee rooms and press releases while the campaign waits for the political environment to shift, as legislators in Illinois and Minnesota have publicly acknowledged.
But as both the litigation and legislation stall, the campaign needs somewhere to go.
And as so many times in the past, the Rockefeller network is stepping up to support.
Rockefellers Back the Effort at Every Level
As the Washington Free Beacon reported this week, Maryland’s “cost of climate change” study to support superfund legislation — announced by Governor Moore in December with $30,000 in “philanthropic funding” — is backed by the Rockefeller Family Fund.
Unsurprisingly, the consultants selected to perform the study are also part of the RFF network. Working through the Maryland Clean Energy Center, the state selected the Center for Climate Strategies to do the analysis. Notably, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund lists CCS in its grantee database and says it helped seed the organization’s development.
The result is a familiar pipeline: philanthropic funding, aligned consultants, and an emissions-and-damages model designed to quantify costs that can later underpin legislation.
That’s consistent with RFF’s broader role in developing the climate superfund concept.
It was idea that came to RFF director Lee Wasserman at a Red Sox game, and he’s been building it out methodically ever since:
RFF wasn’t subtle about what Maryland’s study is for, either. Its press release celebrating the bill’s December passage said the study would “lay the groundwork for a Maryland climate superfund bill” requiring fossil fuel companies to pay for the state’s climate adaptation costs.
Maine Opens the Door to Outside-Funded Study
Maryland isn’t alone. Maine lawmakers took a similar approach, scaling back a proposed cost-recovery program into a study. The revised legislation would authorize Maine DEP to contract with a consultant and allocate $600,000 in state funding.
But notably, it was amended earlier this month to explicitly allow funding from private sources. That change opens the door to the same kind of outside philanthropic support now backing Maryland’s effort.
Supporters have acknowledged the strategy: pause while litigation in New York and Vermont plays out, build the analytical record, and revisit legislation later. In other words, the state is building the evidentiary and political foundation first—while preserving the option to return with the same underlying theory.
Bottom line: California’s defeat Wednesday is a window into where this campaign stands. When insurance and climate superfund bills can’t reliably clear committees, the efforts shift into climate studies that build cost models, gather expert commentary, and add new talking points so the same liability theory can come back later when it’s more politically convenient.
