Editor’s note: This commentary is by Michael J. Badamo, of Montpelier, who was editor and publisher of The Watchman. He has been in and out of Vermont politics since 1976; in 2002 he ran for governor as a Progressive.
[G]ov. Phil Scott’s worry about Vermont needing a few thousand more workers to solve the supposed economic crisis of underpopulation may be regarded as laughable in not too many years. Right now it doesn’t seem too funny.
Scott and just about all of our contemporary economic thinkers are thinking in the past and ignoring certain inevitabilities about the future. Simple logic would tell us that Vermont in a very few years will be facing a large influx of climate refugees from downcountry. We don’t need a couple of million dollars to encourage people to move here. We do need to be spending that money and much more on planning how we are going to accommodate a much bigger population.
Suppose the Vermont population doubled in the space of five or 10 years? I think by 2040 we’ll be in that ballpark. It’s time to start thinking about it and making some plans.
Recently we’ve seen several reports suggesting the effects of anthropogenic climate change are accelerating. Greenland and Antarctic ice are melting at a much faster pace than previously thought. More monster storms can be expected to smash the coasts. Every year produces record heat. One report says we have a 10- or 12-year window to do something about it.
Will we?
We haven’t done much so far and it will take at least 10 or 12 years to undo the environmental havoc the Trump administration is so cheerfully causing.
People living on or near the ocean all over the world are starting to get worried. The New England coast is beautiful and attracts people for good reason, not just for the beauty but for practical benefits. Those benefits are now threatened. Sea level may not rise enough over the next couple of decades to drown anybody but an ever warmer ocean will bring, has already brought, cascading storms that make coastal living less and less desirable. People will move. Maybe they already are.
People will move to higher ground, ground less likely to wash out from under their feet. Vermont will certainly not get all these climate refugees. But we certainly will get some. Millions of people live in the danger zone in New England. Even more live in New York and New Jersey. We will certainly get some, more than we are ready for.
So let’s stop worrying about luring a few thousand people and start thinking in terms of a housing shortage, a school shortage, inadequate medical facilities, and all the other things that make a functioning community. The new people will bring some money and many skills. It all needs to be put together.
I know, downcountry people can be annoying neighbors but we welcome them as tourists. A little compassion suggests we have no choice but to offer hospitality to fellow Americans and perhaps others from farther away. Maybe we can survive the ongoing great extinction.
