Editor’s note: This commentary is by Duncan Nichols, of East Thetford, who is a licensed clinical social worker who has worked in 19 Upper Valley schools in this capacity and a member of the Upper Valley Affinity Group.
Dear Sen. Mark McDonald and Reps. Jim Masland and Tim Briglin who represent my district:
In recent years we have talked at lunch meetings, in granges and people’s homes, and even at high school sports games, to discuss how to transition away from fossil fuels. We have debated the citizen-led movement to prohibit new large-scale fossil fuel infrastructure which we know must happen so clean energy can actually take its place. This is the century of solar and wind and the 20th century was the century of fossil fuels. Consider this: a mere hundred years ago, a time when my own parents were youth, only a few fuel trucks (horseless carriages they were called) traversed the Vermont hills.
But how to tackle the many problems of transition. As one Vermont governor dealing with the Great Flood of 1927 said, we are looking “in the face of real discouragement.” Unfortunately, this year’s centerpiece of climate legislation, H.688, the Global Warming Solutions Act, while a positive step, will not do enough. It will take three years to come into effect, has no serious funding mechanisms and, importantly, does not recognize the timeline of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Let’s look to the time of the Great Flood of 1927 for inspiration. Republican Gov. John E. Weeks called a special session to deal with the disaster which in just two days brought over eight inches of rainfall to already saturated soils, immersing the valleys in a brown flood. A state of emergency was declared in 10 Vermont counties. In that crisis, 84 Vermonters died and over 1,200 bridges were destroyed. In his State of the State address, Weeks reported — and generally accurately — “Through sheer force of determination, Vermont energetically accepted the challenge of the elements and in the face of real discouragement commenced the work of reconstruction.” We too know that whoever our elected governor is next term she or he will have to work with the same determination as did the 1927 administration. Because we are now seeing farmland go under water on a regular basis and witnessing people who live in these valleys, many of them poor, lose everything, just as in the Great Flood, you will have to help administer a statewide emergency.
And you will have to find ways to fairly fund the transition to clean energy. Since water cannot be squeezed from a stone, this time you must require the Vermonters who can afford it to pay more of their share to do that. In fact, this very session you have the opportunity to help pass legislation which immediately funds a transition towards clean energy and weatherization. Sen. Anthony Pollina’s Vermont Green New Deal Fund (S.311) would accomplish those goals. And then next year you must quickly prohibit new large-scale fossil fuel infrastructure as the 55 Vermont towns resolved that you do in their 2018 and 2019 Town Meetings.
In the Statehouse hangs a portrait of Hollister Jackson, 55th lieutenant governor of Vermont, who drowned in the Potash Brook in Barre on Nov. 3, 1927. I think you must have seen it. Hollister lost his life in the Great Flood. Less than a month later, when legislators were called to Montpelier for the special session, newspaper accounts describe how many of the legislators carpooled in their Model T’s to Montpelier, and due to a snowstorm that week took an extra day to travel. A few days later, on Nov. 30, a bond was authorized for $8.5 million for flood rehabilitation. In 1928 and 1929 the government demonstrated the will to pay back most of the bond by levying luxury and fuel taxes, among other mechanisms.
In his 1929 State of the State address to end the biennium, Gov. Weeks devoted much of his speech to the flood. Weeks, whose term was extended four additional years due to his leadership around the disaster, said: “The true Vermont spirit was vividly exemplified by our indomitable courage in a time of adversity and the faith and valor of Vermonters has turned catastrophe into opportunity.” “Through sheer force of determination” he said to the assembly, “Vermont energetically accepted the challenge of the elements and in the face of real discouragement commenced the work of reconstruction.”
I write this open letter to you, my legislators, as encouragement, but also as a warning: We must not allow new fossil fuel infrastructure, including large biomass plants, to be built in our state. At the same time, we must help Vermont fuel dealers and their employees make their transition. On Jan. 28 in the Energy and Technology Committee which you chair, Tim, without any irony in his voice, Matt Cota, executive director of the Vermont Fuel Dealers Association, said essentially that we all know now that we are in a climate emergency. Cota eloquently described the situation, how dealers and their employees must adapt to the transition away from fossil fuels, and how we must help them. He was poignant and factual in his plea to consider the Vermonters who work in his industry.
According to the Public Service Commission report of 1927, there were 85 electric and gas companies in Vermont. Consider that today, 100 years later, there are at least as many individual solar companies in our state. The transition is happening and we have to move quickly and with compassion in the direction of a Vermont which, while warmer and wetter, truly addressed this crisis. Ninety-three years ago, Gov. Weeks, speaking to the assembly, said: “The dramatic narrative of how Vermonters dauntlessly bent to the burdensome tasks before them is widely known and has been rehearsed in verse and story in every part of the country.” My dear representatives, I hope someday we can sing about what we accomplished today.
