Democrats urge windfall tax as big oil set to make billions from Iran war. Guardian Dharna Noor 17 Mar 2025 Progressive and green groups join call for tax on major fossil-fuel companies to help offset rising living costs. With oil prices continuing to rise, the Rhode Island senator Sheldon Whitehouse and California congressman Ro Khanna have proposed taxing big oil’s windfall profits from the Iran war-fueled crisis. “Trump’s war of choice in Iran is not just a moral mistake but an economic blunder that is skyrocketing gas prices for working Americans,” said Khanna in a statement. The Guardian has contacted the American Petroleum Institute, the top US oil lobby group, for comment.Hours before the bill’s release, dozens of consumer and environmental advocacy organizations sent a formal letter to Congress backing such a proposal.

“Revenue from a windfall profits tax should be returned directly to struggling American households to help offset rising costs,” says the letter, which was signed by the Make Polluters Pay campaign, the Sierra Club, Public Citizen, and more than 70 other state and national groups.

The time to impose the tax is now, supporters say. If oil prices remain at their current level, gas prices will continue to rise while US fossil fuel firms could collect an additional $60bn this year, analyses from consultancy firm Rystad Energy and investment bank Jeffries show. “Energy producers and commodity trading firms benefit from volatility in energy prices,” Isabella Weber, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, told the Guardian last week. Windfall taxes, she said, can “raise money to cushion the more vulnerable sections of society from cost-of-living pressures”.

Though the US has not imposed a windfall tax on oil companies since the 1980s, the sector has profited from various fuel crises since. After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, oil companies recorded historic profits – profits that one 2025 study co-authored by Weber found were 13% higher than total investment in the US’s green energy transition that year. Donald Trump has insisted that such excess profits benefit ordinary Americans. “The United States is the largest Oil Producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money,” Trump posted on Truth Social last week.The post only holds true if by “we” Trump meant to refer to wealthy people, according to another 2025 analysis co-authored by Weber. Oil firms’ profits flow to those who own shares in them, either directly or via retirement funds, pensions, or other investments. Those people tend to be well-off, the study found......read on              https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/17/democrats-windfall-tax-fossil-fuel-companies-iran-war

How Trump’s big climate finding repeal could actually hurt big oil. Without federal climate regulation, fossil fuel industry may be more vulnerable to local lawsuits. Guardian Dharna Noor 24 Feb 2026 The Trump administration’s repeal of a foundational climate determination could clear a path for new litigation and policies targeting big oil, legal experts say.

Earlier this month, Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized a rule revoking the “endangerment finding”, a 2009 determination that established that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare. The move eliminated federal limits on climate-warming emissions from motor vehicles, and is expected to extend to all other pollution sources. Critics say the change was designed to reward oil companies, which poured record sums into Trump’s campaign. Ironically, it could also weaken a shield the fossil fuel industry has used against attempts to make it pay climate damages around the US.

The future of that legal shield will soon face a major test as the supreme court considers a fossil fuel industry petition to quash a climate lawsuit filed by a Colorado city. In recent years, dozens of US states and local governments have brought climate-focused lawsuits against big oil. Since 2024, Vermont and New York have also passed “climate superfund” policies that compel oil majors to help cover the costs of climate disasters. Fossil fuel companies and their allies have claimed that these laws and lawsuits should be thrown out because they are preempted by the federal Clean Air Act. The endangerment finding rollback could topple that reasoning, said Pat Parenteau, environmental law expert at Vermont Law School. “I don’t see how oil companies can, with a straight face, any longer make that argument,” he said.

In 2011, the supreme court dismissed a climate lawsuit by Connecticut against a power company, saying emissions should be regulated by the EPA under the Clean Air Act, not the courts. Since then, nearly a dozen climate lawsuits against big oil have been dismissed on similar grounds. Many of those dismissals have been appealed. Now, if the federal government no longer regulates greenhouse gases, no federal law should be read to preclude other efforts to control them, said Parenteau. Public nuisance claims – alleging companies harmed communities’ health and safety and should fund abatement – may be especially benefited by the endangerment finding’s rescission, said Michael Gerrard, the founder of Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. But oil companies have argued that suits framed around deceptive messaging or marketing – rather than emissions – are still fundamentally about pollution and should be preempted by the Clean Air Act, said Parenteau“All climate accountability cases could be affected,” he said.......read on    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/24/trump-climate-endangerment-repeal-oil-lawsuits

Pennsylvania Must Act to Limit Greenhouse Gases, Lawyers Argue.Citing the state’s environmental rights amendment, a new petition contends the government has an obligation to fight climate change.Inside Climate News Kiley Bense February 6, 2026 Nearly 25 years ago, environmental lawyers Robert McKinstry and John Dernbach appeared at an early conference on climate change at Penn State University. They spoke about how state policy could fill the gaps left by federal inaction.  “At that point, we had plenty of time,” McKinstry said. But they’ve since watched opportunities to curb greenhouse gases in Pennsylvania slip by again and again, even as climate science advanced and flooding, severe storms, drought and wildfire smoke rattled the state. Most recently, the prospect of joining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative was taken off the table as part of last year’s protracted budget negotiation. 

On Thursday, the lawyers demanded action on a petition they first submitted in 2018, arguing that the state is obligated under its environmental rights amendment to reduce greenhouse gas pollution. “We have lost seven years—time that could have been spent more fully developing a lower-cost and more reliable clean energy economy,” they wrote in a cover letter to Pennsylvania’s Environmental Quality Board, which adopts regulations for the Department of Environmental Protection. “This is unacceptable.” Pennsylvania’s constitutional environmental rights amendment states that the people have “a right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment.” It names the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as a trustee of these resources. 

“The people who are in charge of Pennsylvania’s government, and that’s not just the governor, but it’s also the legislature, have a responsibility under the environmental rights amendment to do something serious about climate change,” Dernbach said. The petition proposes an economy-wide cap-and-trade program called the SAVER regulation, for Stability and Affordability Via Emissions Reductions. Modeled on California’s 13-year-old program, SAVER is intended to reduce emissions in Pennsylvania by 40 percent by 2030 with the goal of reaching carbon neutrality in 2052. Cap-and-trade sets limits, or “caps,” on the amount of pollution that sources can emit. Companies can then buy and sell allowances to emit certain volumes of pollution, incentivizing efficiency and emission reduction. The revenue generated is typically invested in initiatives that benefit clean energy production, public health or sustainability. Cap-and-trade is used around the world, from Washington state to South Korea, the European Union and China. The first American national cap-and-trade program, aimed at reducing the harmful pollution that caused acid rain, was signed into law in 1990 by President George H.W. Bush.

McKinstry and Dernbach say the regulation would stimulate a clean-energy economy in Pennsylvania, creating jobs and reducing air pollution. The program would also create a fund to invest in public transportation, energy efficiency and electricity transmission systems. Funding for strapped public transit systems in Pennsylvania has become hugely controversial over the last few years.  In California, critics of cap-and-trade have said the program isn’t meeting the state’s climate goals, and environmental justice advocates contend that its current design allows companies to continue spewing pollution near disadvantaged communities. Dernbach said cap-and-trade “does not inherently lead to environmental justice issues,” and he thinks those concerns could be addressed during the rulemaking process. The petition argues that SAVER would improve air quality in disadvantaged communities in Pennsylvania.

In 2018, the lawyers filed the original petition with Pennsylvania’s Environmental Quality Board. By then, the luxury of time to figure out how to move forward on climate change had evaporated.  Now the situation is even more urgent. Increasing temperatures, extreme weather and rainfall have already cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars, and could inflict billions in damage to public infrastructure, agriculture and public health over the next 15 years. Pennsylvania’s greenhouse gas emissions have declined less than U.S. emissions overall since 2005. In some sectors, including agriculture and power generation, the state’s emissions are projected to increase in the future.....read on  https://insideclimatenews.org/news/06022026/pennsylvania-greenhouse-gas-cap-and-trade-proposal/

 Every company wants to produce the last barrel sold’: the treaty to stop fossil fuel production.Tzeporah Berman’s campaign group believes Cop30 will help its initiative to phase out oil, coal and gas take shape. Guardian Jonathan Watts And it’s only getting worse because every country is trying to artificially keep alive their fossil fuel industries, even though they know the damage they cause. At Cop30, we will be working to expand the group of countries participating in the development of the treaty.