West Virginia won’t clean up your mess

West Virginians mined the coal that forged the steel that built New York City.

The Empire State Building, the Brooklyn Bridge, even the subway — none of these iconic landmarks would exist without the blood and sweat of West Virginia coal miners.

West Virginia still powers the nation, supplementing its coal production with oil and natural gas.

But New York elites want to punish West Virginians for doing the very jobs that provide them so much comfort in their ivory towers.

The Climate Change Superfund Act, which the Democrat-run state Legislature passed and Gov. Kathy Hochul signed into law in December, imposes liability on energy producers for doing just that — producing energy.

It declares that carbon emissions cause climate change, and are therefore to blame for any and every undesirable weather condition the state faces.

New York’s state government has bungled disaster response time and again. Its politicians want someone to blame, and they chose the energy industry.

They chose wrong.

West Virginians don’t back down.

And we won’t allow political elites to serve as judge, jury and executioner against the industry that employs thousands of West Virginia coal miners and gas and oil technicians and operators.

New York’s law imposes strict liability on any company producing a certain, arbitrary amount of carbon emissions, to be determined by the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

Worse, the law targets past emissions, punishing producers retroactively for lawfully running their businesses.

The DEC doesn’t have to find fault. It doesn’t have to file a lawsuit and convince a judge or jury that a particular energy producer caused specific harm to New York.

No, the law declares energy producers to be automatically “responsible” just because politicians say so.

That’s not justice, and it’s not the rule of law.

That’s authoritarian bureaucrats picking winners and losers.

And the losers will be many.

The statute requires energy producers to pay $75 billion to the state of New York — money that could be spent on salaries and benefits for workers, or for new infrastructure projects to make everyone’s energy more affordable.

That $75 billion loss will cause three things: job loss, higher prices at the pump and higher utility bills — hurting hardworking Americans across the board, New Yorkers included.

The only winners are the political elites who aim to bend America to their radical agenda, no matter the cost.

Fortunately, the United States Constitution has something to say about this lawlessness.

For starters, it prohibits any state from unduly regulating commerce in another state.

West Virginia can’t tell Idaho potato farmers how to harvest their spuds — and New York can’t tell West Virginia energy companies how to mine coal or extract gas and oil.

The Constitution also doesn’t allow states to come up with their own regulatory schemes when the federal government has rules controlling specific conduct, especially in areas of unique federal interest.

The US Environmental Protection Agency regulates greenhouse-gas emissions; New York doesn’t have that power.

So New York can’t go back in time and penalize energy production in other states that the EPA said was lawful.

In fact, a federal appellate court ruled against New York City when it tried to do much the same thing just a few years ago.

On top of that, the law is simply unfair.

Our country was founded on the principle of due process of law.

Every citizen has the right to be heard, and every citizen has the right to conform their conduct to the law.

New York’s law takes away those rights.

Imagine a state lowering the highway speed limit from 65 to 55 miles per hour — then ticketing you for going 65 last year.

That’s what this law does to energy producers, slammed with a staggering $75 billion fine by unelected backroom bureaucrats without any meaningful chance to defend themselves.

It blatantly offends the Constitution and the fundamental sense of fairness that has existed in our country for 250 years.

That’s why I, along with 21 other state attorneys general, three energy trade associations and one energy company, have sued the New York politicians responsible for implementing the Climate Change Superfund Act.

Our coalition is asking a federal court to issue an injunction stopping this unconstitutional overreach that would wreck our nation’s power grid and put thousands of Americans out of work.

New York’s political elites may think they can seize control of America’s energy industry, but we won’t allow them to go unchecked.

This is a fight for America’s energy independence, for American jobs and for the rule of law. West Virginia won’t go quietly.

J.B. McCuskey is the attorney general of West Virginia.