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Nate Davis is a Rockland city councilor. The opinions expressed here (other than the language of the City Council resolve) are his alone.
The devastating storms of the winter of 2023-2024 inflicted an estimated $90 million in damage to Maine’s public infrastructure. The City of Rockland, where I serve as a city councilor, suffered heavy (and expensive) damage to our public waterfront. Whether through direct costs, insurance payments, or disaster relief funding, taxpayers foot the bill for both prevention and replacement of such losses.
While it’s difficult to attribute specific weather events to climate change, there exists a scientific consensus that rising temperatures do and will contribute to increasingly intense storms. Even the U.S. Geological Survey — an agency of a federal administration now openly contemptuous of climate action — observes that “with increasing global surface temperatures the possibility of more droughts and increased intensity of storms will likely occur.”
Closer to home, the Maine Climate Council, an assembly under the administration of the Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future, explicitly states that “rising sea levels have caused recent increases in coastal flooding, such as the record-breaking storm events of January 2024.”
In March, the Rockland City Council unanimously passed a resolve (which I sponsored) that “urges the Maine Legislature and governor to create a Maine Climate Superfund.” Rockland was the first municipality in Maine to endorse the creation of such a fund. The idea of a “superfund” originated with CERCLA, the federal Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980. The general approach is to charge a fee to participants in industries known to damage the public interest, even if specific damages can’t be tied to specific participants.
The Maine Legislature now has the opportunity to create a climate superfund for Maine via LD 1870, sponsored by Sen. Stacy Brenner of Scarborough and six other legislators. LD 1870 would establish a Climate Superfund Cost Recovery Program Fund, funded by fees assessed to any “entity that was engaged in the trade or business of extracting fossil fuel or refining crude oil between Jan. 1, 1995 and Dec. 31, 2024.” The fund would pay for “climate change adaptation projects in the State, which the [Department of Environmental Protection] is directed to prioritize through the adoption of a resilience implementation strategy and to ensure that at least 35% of the funds are used for climate change adaptation projects that benefit low-income persons with environmental justice concerns.”
This is not a new approach. New York and Vermont have passed similar legislation and are both defendants in a lawsuit by the Trump Justice Department. LD 1870 was carried over from the last legislative session largely because Maine legislators wanted to wait to see the outcomes of outstanding legal challenges.
It is tempting to continue to wait. That would be a mistake.
We face twin crises: a warming climate and an economy increasingly inhospitable to folks younger than I am. But really they are one crisis: the narrowing of the scope of our compassion. The same poverty of spirit afflicts both the fossil fuel companies who for decades concealed the consequences of their behavior and the folks who live in nice houses but oppose nearby affordable apartments because of property values or “neighborhood character.” Neither recognize that their circumstances carry a debt to care for others.
LD 1870 is an opportunity for that rarest of public actions: The correct assignment of deeds and consequences, and in a manner that eases the economic strain on Mainers to boot. Prudence and caution are fine virtues, but the times call for courage. The Legislature would do well to remember not just the motto of Maine, but also the title of Maine’s award-winning climate action plan: Maine Won’t Wait.
