Twenty -one states sued New York on Thursday, arguing that a new law that forces a small group of large energy producers to pay $ 75 billion in a background to cover the damage of climate change is unconstitutional.

The lawsuit, filed in Albany, lists state attorney general Letitia James and other officials as defendants.

According to a statement, the Attorney General of Virginia Occidental JB McCuskey directed the coalition of states against the Superfund Law on New York Climate Change, which requires payments for allegedly caused damage from 2000 to 2018.

The law requires that the main fossil fuel companies pay to the background during the next quarter based on their past gas emissions.

“This demand is to ensure that these wrong policies, obliged from a State to the entire nation, will not take the United States to interruption of an energy crisis, allowing China, India and Russia to overcome our energy independence,” McCuskey said in a release in a release .

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“This law is unconstitutional, and I am proud to lead this coalition of general lawyers and brave private energy companies and industry groups in our struggle to protect against this overreach,” McCuskey added. “If we allow New York to leave with yours, it will only be a matter of time before other states do the same, destroy the power grid of our nation.”

“We hope to defend this historical legislation in the Court and defeat Big Oil once again,” said Paul Demilele, spokesman for the Democratic Office of New York Governor Kathy Hochul, in an email.

The lawsuit accuses the state of New York to try to force producers and energy consumers in other states “to subsidize certain ‘infrastructure’ projects based in New York, as a new sewerage system in New York City” .

He called the law “an ugly example of chaos that can result when states overreach.”

According to the demand, New York wants to blame the small group of energy producers for the global greenhouse gases that entered the atmosphere of many sources.

“However, coal, oil and natural gas were helping New York during that time. They helped maintain the lights on in Albany, manufacture the steel that supported the iconic skyscrapers of New York City and feed the industry that maintains the buzz of New York ports, ”said the demand.

In addition to the West Virginia, the states that join the demand are Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Wyoming.

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Topics New York climate change demands