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In the enormous barrel of fossil fuel industry profits, $3 billion is a relative drop. For New York and its taxpayers, however, it’s a significant amount of compensation for all the damage that the burning of fossil fuels has done, and continues to do.

That’s how much money the state intends to siphon from some of the industry’s major players annually to support the Climate Change Superfund Act. The measure, signed into law by Gov. Kathy Hochul on Dec. 26, calls for companies to pay that sum annually for 25 years -- $75 billion in all.

Even $75 billion won’t cover the cost of dealing with the damage caused by burning coal, oil and natural gas -- harm that the industry and its shills portrayed as alarmist nonsense against overwhelming scientific consensus. That cost is expected to range into the hundreds of billions of dollars just in this one state for things like........

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