Great. Gas will cost even more.

Hochul Signs Bill That Will Fine Fossil Fuel Companies $75 Billion to Pay For Damage Caused to Climate

New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed a $75 billion climate change bill that will fine fossil fuel companies for the damage caused to the environment.

“With nearly every record rainfall, heatwave, and coastal storm, New Yorkers are increasingly burdened with billions of dollars in health, safety, and environmental consequences due to polluters that have historically harmed our environment,” Governor Hochul said. “Establishing the Climate Superfund is the latest example of my administration taking action to hold polluters responsible for the damage done to our environment and requiring major investments in infrastructure and other projects critical to protecting our communities and economy.”

The Marxist bill was carried by Democrat Senator Liz Krueger and Assembly Member Jeffrey Dinowitz.

“The Climate Change Superfund Act is now law, and New York has fired a shot that will be heard round the world: the companies most responsible for the climate crisis will be held accountable,” said Senator Krueger.

“Too often over the last decade, courts have dismissed lawsuits against the oil and gas industry by saying that the issue of climate culpability should be decided by legislatures. Well, the Legislature of the State of New York – the 10th largest economy in the world – has accepted the invitation, and I hope we have made ourselves very clear: the planet’s largest climate polluters bear a unique responsibility for creating the climate crisis, and they must pay their fair share to help regular New Yorkers deal with the consequences.

“And there’s no question that those consequences are here, and they are serious,” Krueger continued. “Repairing from and preparing for extreme weather caused by climate change will cost more than half a trillion dollars statewide by 2050. That’s over $65,000 per household, and that’s on top of the disruption, injury, and death that the climate crisis is causing in every corner of our state. The Climate Change Superfund Act is a critical piece of affordability legislation that will deliver billions of dollars every year to ease the burden on regular New Yorkers.”

Reuters reported:

New York state will fine fossil fuel companies a total of $75 billion over the next 25 years to pay for damage caused to the climate under a bill Governor Kathy Hochul signed into law on Thursday.

The law is intended to shift some of the recovery and adaptation costs of climate change from individual taxpayers to oil, gas and coal companies that the law says are liable. The money raised will be spent on mitigating the impacts of climate change, including adapting roads, transit, water and sewage systems, buildings and other infrastructure.

Fossil fuel companies will be fined based on the amount of greenhouse gases they released into the atmosphere between 2000 and 2018, to be paid into a Climate Superfund beginning in 2028. It will apply to any company that the New York Department of Environmental Conservation determines is responsible for more than 1 billion tons of global greenhouse gas emissions.

New York becomes the second state to pass such a law after Vermont passed its own version this summer. The laws are modeled after existing state and federal superfund laws that require polluters to pay to clean up toxic waste.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/12/hochul-signs-bill-that-will-fine-fossil-fuel/

God is with us – Putin

Russia will focus on achieving victory in the Ukraine conflict in 2025, the president said

God is with Russia, President Vladimir Putin has said, expressing confidence that Moscow would prevail in its conflict with Ukraine.

Putin spoke with reporters on Thursday after a meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council (SEEC) in St. Petersburg.

Asked whether he believes that the Ukraine conflict will end in 2025 with a Russian victory, he said: “I believe in God. And God is with us.”

He brushed off reports that the US is planning to propose to “freeze” the conflict along the current front line in exchange for a delay in Ukraine’s membership in NATO.

Putin said that such a delay was first proposed by outgoing President Joe Biden in 2021, adding that the US was told at the time that such a deal would be unacceptable to Moscow.

“We are also striving to end the conflict,” Putin said, stressing that Russia’s “number one goal” for 2025 is achieving victories on the battlefield.

“We believe that we will be successful on the front line and accomplish our objectives in the field of the economy, as well as resolve social issues, the issues of military security, and security in the broadest sense,” the president said. “We will continue moving in accordance with our plans.”

US President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to negotiate a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine within hours of taking office. While he has declined to discuss any specifics of his proposal, the American media has cited several anonymous sources as saying that it could involve “freezing” the conflict with each side keeping the territory it currently controls. Both Moscow and Kiev have rejected an idea of an unconditional ceasefire.

https://www.rt.com/russia/610044-putin-russia-ukraine-god/

Here’s how the US burned millions ‘fighting propaganda’

Fed to the tune of $61 million a year, the Global Engagement Center was a failed attempt at narrative control

If the nosy grandma peering out the window were a government entity, it would be the Global Engagement Center. The priciest hall monitor in history has just been given a pink slip.

The Global Engagement Center, created by then President Barack Obama’s executive order in 2016, was supposed to help fight terrorist messaging. But the neocon majority in Congress successfully pushed for it to become more involved in fighting “Russian election interference” – or, more like flooding voters’ brains with the idea of it.

Its speech and narrative policing under the guise of combating fake news ultimately became so intolerable that its spending was just cut from the latest budget bill and its operations have now been shut down.

The center’s demise also may or may not have had something to do with the fact that it was exceptionally lazy and stupid, even as far as government initiatives go. American taxpayers have been paying $61 million a year for this entity to crank out a grand total of about eight reports over as many years. Yep, that’s about $61 million per report, one of which was called “Gendered Disinformation.”

Other activities include issuing press releases with titles like, “Faces of Kremlin Propaganda: Dmitri Peskov.” Oh wow, guys, you found one! And it’s none other than the public official whose actual job title is communications chief for the Kremlin. How many Americans would have otherwise been duped! Imagine Russians paying one of their government agencies tens of millions a year to “expose” the White House Press Secretary as speaking for Washington.

The center also spent a lot of resources promoting Russian-linked media as Russian-linked. And also as totally badass. They wouldn’t shut up about it, effectively generating one giant free advertising campaign targeting citizens who might be curious about this thing that’s managed to get under Washington’s skin so badly. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, citing the work of the center, called for the entire world to unite against RT. “We know that RT possesses cyber capabilities and engaged in covert information influence operations and military procurement,” he said in September 2024. Guess he was referring to my bulk ordering of missiles on Amazon Prime.

China was another obsession. “Every country should have the ability to tell its story to the world,” began a report from 2023 titled “How the People’s Republic of China Seeks to Reshape the Global Information Environment.” It then proceeded to tell China exactly how it shouldn’t be telling its story to the world.

The Center accused China of “digital authoritarianism” and using “intimidation to silence dissent and encourage self-censorship.” Sounds like US academia. Or the Global Engagement Center.

How about France’s arrest of Telegram founder Pavel Durov last summer, now charged with enabling crimes like pedocriminality, fraud, and drug trafficking just for having created the platform? President Emmanuel Macron wined and dined Durov personally from 2018 to 2021, even giving him fast track French citizenship, and is now behaving like a psycho ex who didn’t get what he wanted. Like maybe the encryption keys. No statement from the center on that one, huh? Or on the comments by Durov’s former PR guy suggesting that Macron is just acting as a wingman for Washington in all this.

The center’s latest partner is Kiev, with which they set up the Ukraine Communications Group, along with Poland, to fight Russia informationally. If they have such a crack team, then why is it all over social media that the latest campaign out of Kiev, honoring Ukrainian fighters killed in Russia’s Kursk region at schools and social centers, shows supporters holding up “hero” headshots of porn stars Johnny Sins of “Brazzers” fame and Billy Harrington, instead? How about the whole Azov neo-Nazi rebranding initiative? There’s such a lack of clarity or historical truth on that issue from the center that the entire Canadian parliament was brainwashed into clapping for a bona fide World War II-era Ukrainian Nazi last year.

more…

https://www.rt.com/news/610021-global-engagement-center-fail/

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