Editor’s note: This commentary is by Ben Edgerly Walsh, the climate and energy program director for the Vermont Public Interest Research Group.
That we’re facing a climate crisis – a climate emergency – is undeniable.
Every city, state and nation that understands that simple fact has a responsibility to take action commensurate with the challenge before us. Vermont has to date failed to do so. That record must end this legislative session.
Just three weeks into the year, the signs are good. Leaders in the Vermont House and Senate are stepping up and supporting the kinds of policies that are needed for Vermont to move from merely talking the talk on climate to actually walking the walk.
Now, it’s Gov. Phil Scott’s turn. The governor has been given the benefit of the doubt on climate for two and a half years, since he declared “we’re still in” after President Donald Trump announced the U.S. was going to pull out of the Paris Climate Accord. And yet, over and over he has rejected opportunities to reduce Vermont’s climate pollution in line with the goals he has stated he supports.
Let’s be clear – that’s the metric the governor and other elected officials must be measured by. Not how excited they are by new technologies, not how lofty their rhetoric is, and not even how long the list of actions they support is, but rather how much climate pollution such actions would eliminate. On that metric, the governor has yet to show he is serious about the climate crisis.
He missed an obvious opportunity to propose significant action in his budget address. Once again, he said he’s committed to Vermont’s climate targets, and once again his actual proposals barely scratched the surface of what we need to do.
Here’s the good news: 2020 is proving itself to be the year that Vermonters say enough is enough. Young people are showing up in droves to demand action, legislators are backing major pieces of legislation – and Scott has the opportunity to finally live up to his promises.
The Climate Solutions Caucus has put forward a serious, credible climate platform this session – a platform which a coalition of 30 organizations representing business, youth, poverty alleviation, public health, environmental, and other diverse interests from across Vermont is backing.
At the top of the list is the Global Warming Solutions Act, which will turn Vermont’s climate pollution goals into binding requirements on state government, and bolster the resilience of our communities while cutting our climate pollution and getting on track to hit our goals.
In the Senate, the Climate Solutions Caucus is backing a bill to require all electric utilities get 100% of their electricity from renewable resources by 2030, with far more of that electricity coming from renewables built right here in Vermont. The Senate is also considering legislation to refocus the work of our efficiency utilities, like Efficiency Vermont, on climate pollution, allowing them to do significantly more work to clean up our heating and transportation sectors – and to make it more affordable for Vermonters to heat their homes and get where they need to go.
Finally, the governor’s staff has been negotiating on Vermont’s behalf for years now to ensure a strong regional Transportation and Climate Initiative. This regional cap and invest program will enable Vermont to invest in moving Vermonters off fossil fuels in the transportation sector and assisting low income and rural Vermonters in the transition to cleaner, more affordable transportation options.
If we continue to ignore the colossal climate pollution coming from transportation around the state, the problem will just get worse, and Vermont will pay the price. This program will keep more money in Vermont instead, helping our economy grow over time. It also has the potential to enable a just, equitable transition to cleaner transportation; it’s important the Legislature and the Scott administration work together on legislation that will ensure that potential is realized.
Each component of this climate platform would be a step forward on its own, but it’s the combination of all four that is truly needed this year. If the sum total of what an elected official supports will clearly fail to set Vermont on track to achieve our climate commitments, that elected official does not support our climate commitments, and they shouldn’t be allowed to pretend that they do.
The governor simply saying ‘I care, I believe in science, but I’m unwilling to act’ is no longer enough. It’s time he lead, follow, or get out of the way and let the legislators who are proposing these solutions do their work.
Passing the Global Warming Solutions Act, 100% by 2030, energy efficiency modernization, and TCI will be an important start. Perhaps more importantly, it will signal to those in our government, as well as our neighbors and the country as a whole, that Vermont will no longer operate under a mode of stagnation and fear in the face of the climate crisis, but rather courage and action, because that is what the urgency of the situation demands.
