Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Peter Welch were the leading speakers at the event. They called for opposition to Trump’s efforts, and sought greater leadership from state politicians on the issue of climate change.
“Our message today is simple: we will fight Donald Trump, who thinks climate change is a hoax,” Sanders told a visibly enthusiastic throng that overflowed the lawn of the Statehouse.
“Our job today, tomorrow and every day is to transform our energy system away from fossil fuels to energy efficiency and sustainable energy,” Sanders said. “Our job is to create millions of new jobs in wind, solar, geothermal and other clean technologies.”
“Our fight is for clean energy,” he said, “our fight is for democracy, our fight is for a government that represents all of us, and not just the one percent!”
“Bernie! Bernie! Bernie!” the crowd responded. “Give ‘em hell, Bernie!” they shouted.
Most of the speakers condemned Trump and his policies, including Welch.
“Aside from being wrong, the president’s policies are just plain stupid,” Welch said.
Welch spoke of “a common obligation” on the part of Americans to protect the environment. Solar power is an important part of that obligation, he said. Jobs in solar power have grown by 600 percent over the past 10 years, he said.
“President Trump, get over it,” Welch said. “Clean energy is on the way!”
Brattleboro resident Shela Linton said Americans need to consider “climate justice” as part of any successful environmental strategy.
“We must understand how racism, patriarchy and classism are at the root of climate injustice,” Linton said. “What this is really about is a systems change. It is imperative that we understand that this is about systems, and we must change the systems of racism and capitalism.”
Zuckerman panned Gov. Phil Scott’s record on the environment. The governor was at Thunder Road on Saturday, practicing laps in his race car.
“We need more leadership out of the fifth floor of that building — the governor’s office — on climate change,” Zuckerman said.
Robb Kidd, the lead organizer for the event and the director for Sierra Club Vermont, said the rally was meant to spur state and national politicians to address the impact of human activity on the Earth’s climate.
“We’re here today because the issue of climate change has been going nowhere in the political sphere, and in fact in this nation it’s going backwards, and in the state of Vermont it’s stagnant,” Kidd said.
Saturday’s event coincided with other events across the nation and in Washington, D.C.
“Hundreds of thousands of people are in D.C. to call out the Trump administration on their disastrous policies on fossil fuels,” Kidd said. “Instead of regulating and restricting the use of fossil fuels, they’re further exploring and exploiting fossil fuels, and with this [being] 100 days of the Trump administration, we’re calling for action to create a different course, and here in Vermont we’re calling for strong action from our political officials, too.”
Abraham Oort, a retired climatologist who lives in Hartland and who wrote a book about climate physics in the 1990s, said the scientific community agrees climate change is happening, the only remaining debate is how quickly.
“The ice … is melting faster than expected,” Oort said. “The Arctic sea cover is decreasing spectacularly. It’s very unusual if you look at the climate record long-term. The last 200 years have been a very new feature.”
Scientists would like to disprove the theory of climate change, because the scientific method rewards those whose discoveries refute incorrect beliefs about the world, Oort said. But it’s been mainly financial interests, and not scientific investigations, that have created the appearance of dispute among scientists on the topic of climate change, he said.
Vermonters are fairly insulated from the phenomenon, said Oort’s wife, Bineke Oort, but people around the world look to Vermont for leadership in environmental and social issues.
“We’re OK here — unless you’re in the ski industry, and they’ll find other ways to earn money, in water parks and such — but we’re pretty safe,” she said. “But overall, it’s a disaster.”
Rally participant Jane Woodhouse, holding a sign that said, “Make Earth Great Again,” said the level of protest against Trump’s policies appear to be of a historic scale.
“I haven’t seen this kind of action since the anti-nuclear stuff in the ‘80s, or the Vietnam war,” she said.
Another woman who joined the rally, Ann Lemmon, said events like the climate change rally remind people that they’re not alone in their views.
“After the Women’s March, it was incredible, and then I got really depressed,” Lemmon said. “It’s important to go to these to get moral support from somewhere.”