(AP) — Vermont has become the first state to enact a law requiring fossil fuel companies to pay a share of the damage caused by climate change after the state suffered catastrophic summer flooding and damage from other extreme weather.

Republican Gov. Phil Scott allowed the bill to become law without his signature late Thursday, saying he is very concerned about the costs and outcome of the small state taking on “Big Oil” alone in what will likely be a grueling legal fight. But he acknowledged that he understands something has to be done to address the toll of climate change.

“I understand the desire to seek funding to mitigate the effects of climate change that has hurt our state in so many ways,” Scott, a moderate Republican in the largely blue state of Vermont, wrote in a letter to lawmakers.

The popular governor who recently announced that he’s running for reelection to a fifth two-year term, has been at odds with the Democrat-controlled Legislature, which he has called out of balance. He was expected by environmental advocates to veto the bill but then allowed it to be enacted. Scott wrote to lawmakers that he was comforted that the Agency of Natural Resources is required to report back to the Legislature on the feasibility of the effort.

Last July’s flooding from torrential rains inundated Vermont’s capital city of Montpelier, the nearby city Barre, some southern Vermont communities and ripped through homes and washed away roads around the rural state. Some saw it as the state’s worst natural disaster since a 1927 flood that killed dozens of people and caused widespread destruction. It took months for businesses — from restaurants to shops — to rebuild, losing out on their summer and even fall seasons. Several have just recently reopened while scores of homeowners were left with flood-ravaged homes heading into the cold season.

Under the legislation, the Vermont state treasurer, in consultation with the Agency of Natural Resources, would provide a report by Jan. 15, 2026, on the total cost to Vermonters and the state from the emission of greenhouse gases from Jan. 1, 1995, to Dec. 31, 2024. The assessment would look at the effects on public health, natural resources, agriculture, economic development, housing and other areas. The state would use federal data to determine the amount of covered greenhouse gas emissions attributed to a fossil fuel company.

It’s a polluter-pays model affecting companies engaged in the trade or business of extracting fossil fuel or refining crude oil attributable to more than 1 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions during the time period. The funds could be used by the state for such things as upgrading stormwater drainage systems; upgrading roads, bridges and railroads; relocating, elevating or retrofitting sewage treatment plants; and making energy efficient weatherization upgrades to public and private buildings. It’s modeled after the federal Superfund pollution cleanup program.

“For too long, giant fossil fuel companies have knowingly lit the match of climate disruption without being required to do a thing to put out the fire,” Paul Burns, executive director of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, said in a statement. “Finally, maybe for the first time anywhere, Vermont is going to hold the companies most responsible for climate-driven floods, fires and heat waves financially accountable for a fair share of the damages they’ve caused.”

Maryland, Massachusetts and New York are considering similar measures.

The American Petroleum Institute, the top lobbying group for the oil and gas industry, has said it’s extremely concerned the legislation “retroactively imposes costs and liability on prior activities that were legal, violates equal protection and due process rights by holding companies responsible for the actions of society at large; and is preempted by federal law.”

“This punitive new fee represents yet another step in a coordinated campaign to undermine America’s energy advantage and the economic and national security benefits it provides,” spokesman Scott Lauermann said in a statement Friday.

Vermont lawmakers know the state will face legal challenges, but the governor worries about the costs and what it means for other states if Vermont fails.

State Rep. Martin LaLonde, a Democrat and an attorney, believes Vermont has a solid legal case. Legislators worked closely with many legal scholars in crafting the bill, he said in statement.

“Most importantly, the stakes are too high – and the costs too steep for Vermonters – to release corporations that caused the mess from their obligation to help clean it up,” he said.

PITTSFIELD, Vt. (WCAX) – More than 30 new police recruits Friday traded their training gear for badges as they were sworn in as the 117th recruit class to graduate from the Vermont Police Academy.

“Born to serve, trained to protect” were the words recited by the 117th basic recruit class at the Vermont Police Academy Friday.

The 31 recruits officially walked out the doors on their way to serve as the state’s newest law enforcement officers.

“It’s a great feeling to graduate. I’m excited to get back out on the road and help my community. It’s a building block. I’ve learned that without the people I’ve had here, without my fellow classmates, there’s no way we would have been as successful as we were,” said Hinesburg Police Ofc. Andrew Thomas.

Inside, each recruit was given a certificate while family members helped to pin on their badge. Class president and newest Vermont State Trooper Michael Robidoux told his classmates that the work they’re going to do will have an impact. “Never forget that it matters — giving back to this great state and the community, protecting some of the most vulnerable members of society, and showing up on potentially the worst day of someone’s life. It matters,” he said.

This graduation comes as many departments throughout the state say they’re still struggling to recruit new officers. The VSP says they welcomed in four new troopers with this class but it will take more to fill all their vacancies. “Our goal is consistently to put out as big of a class as possible, and we try to get up to 20 people per class. Seeing back-to-back or repeated classes of that size will definitely start to put a dent in the problems with retention or attrition,” said VSP Lt. Robert McKenna.

While these recruits have completed their training at the academy, they’ll now go through additional training at their respective departments

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But will a wet, hot, climate change-driven summer be enough to tilt the election in someone’s favor?

We know that climate-related issues can swing elections — clean air and water, cheap energy, and creating new high-paying jobs all poll exceptionally well. Voter interest tends to drop off, however, when these things are framed as climate issues. And on the darker flip side, the realities of living in a hotter world, including “unchecked migration, economic stagnation, and the loss of homeland,” are “precisely the kind of developments that have historically fomented authoritarian sentiments,” Justin Worland argued in Time earlier this year. Donald Trump, meanwhile, has repeatedly proved eager to go toe-to-toe with President Joe Biden on things like clean energy, electric vehicles, and climate science.

But how much extreme weather events themselves could swing the November election is far less clear. Research suggests that even living through a traumatic event like a wildfire or hurricane isn’t necessarily enough to convert you into a climate voter. “Experience matters, but I don’t know that it matters in the way that people wishcast it to,” Matto Mildenberger, a political scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara who has studied the relationship between proximity to wildfires and pro-environmental voting, told me.

As Mildenberger explained, “In order to experience a wildfire or a heat wave or a flood and have that galvanize you into wanting to see more ambitious climate action, you’d have to experience and understand yourself as a victim of climate change.” For decades, fossil fuel interests have worked to undermine the scientific narrative and cast doubt on the links between extreme weather and climate, which is why even Republicans who experience disasters firsthand still “fall back onto stories about how there have always been wildfires, there have always been droughts.”

In other words, this is not a chicken-or-egg enigma. How voters already think about climate change is what shapes their ensuing narratives about disasters. Peter Howe, a professor of geography at Utah State University who studies public perceptions of climate change, conducted a survey of research on behavioral outcomes in relation to extreme weather that reinforced this idea. He found that “extreme weather may reinforce opinions among people who are already worried about climate change, yet be misattributed or misperceived by those who are unconcerned.”

There is evidence that linking climate change with extreme weather could actually backfireat the ballot box for green-minded candidates. A 2022 study led by Rebecca Perlman, a professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley, found that Republicans who saw references to climate change after a wildfire became less likely to support an energy tax that would “protect against future wildfires and other natural disasters.” Concerningly, this pattern even showed up (albeit with “weaker and generally nonsignificant effects”) among Democrats and Independents, leading Perlman and her coauthor to suggest that “on the margin, attributing weather-related natural disasters to climate change may be a losing political proposition with voters.”

Perlman confirmed that she would be “surprised” if extreme summer weather had “much impact on voting at the national level” when I reached her via email. But that “doesn’t mean it will be precisely zero,” she went on.

Mildenberger made a similar point. Though a hurricane or a wildfire is unlikely to peel Republican voters away from Trump (and might even push some deeper into his arms), if you take a more regional lens, then you could “easily expect extreme weather events to reshape how people are prioritizing their vote, or their likelihood of volunteering, or how they’re talking to their friends and family about the current administration.”

But while hurricanes, droughts, wildfires, and heat waves can confirm Democratic priors and motivate liberals who wouldn’t otherwise have voted, Matthew Burgess, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, warned me against lumping all conservatives together as uniformly undisturbed. “Even deep red parts of Colorado get worried about drought and water scarcity,” he pointed out.

Burgess’ research has found that Independents and liberal-to-moderate Republicans worry about climate change only slightly less than moderate-to-conservative liberals do; it’s conservative Republicans who are set far apart from the rest of the electorate, sometimes skewing results. In other words, while many studies look at extreme weather events and climate change attribution and frame the results as Republicans versus Democrats, the actual split in how voters interpret extreme weather events might be better framed as between the mostconservative Republicans and everyone else.

The bigger question, in Burgess’s mind, is whether extreme weather could ever rival issues like crime or inflation, which generally affect a greater portion of the electorate, for a place in voters’ hearts. “If you had a really big natural disaster that directly affects a broad swath of people, and whose link to climate change is really clear — that would be the type of thing I would expect to have an effect” on voters, Burgess said.

Admittedly, it’s scary to imagine what exactly that event might be. A massive wildfire season with smoke that blankets the entire country or breaks out in a place we don’t expect? Hurricanes that pummel both the East Coast and the West Coast? So much flooding that whirlpools appear in the streets of American cities? Or something we haven’t already experienced and maybe haven’t even anticipated?

If there were ever a summer to find out, it’d be this one. It’s another “hottest year ever” on Planet Earth, and even if Americans don’t ultimately vote like it, that truth will remain.