Editor’s note: This commentary is by Nate Denny, a former woodworker and teacher from Northfield.
Whether or not climate change is responsible for record hurricane and fire seasons or ticks and long-horned beetles, Vermont looks poised to become a refuge for those fleeing from extreme heat, humidity and flooded coastal developments. As the livable portion of North America drifts steadily northward, will Vermont welcome back those who left us for warm winters and lower taxes? Will Californians abandon their paradise/nightmare for a more modest landscape that doesn’t burn every year? Will the hills of Vermont be carved up into building lots for every minor land baron who wants to look down on his neighbors?
There will be constant pressure from developers, lobbyists and politicians to weaken Act 250 so that a few fortunes can be made. Vermont Democrats seem to be torn between loosening the rules governing large-scale commercial development and protecting mountain forests from fragmentation. For now the issue is on the back burner, perhaps the only positive outcome of the pandemic.
While sticking out our necks to demonstrate leadership in combating climate change will accomplish little on a global scale, at least we should prepare for what is coming. Do we really want Vermont’s population to skyrocket past one million? The greater good would instead be served by preserving as much as possible of our natural environment, otherwise Vermont will be unrecognizable in a few decades. Farm fields and forested mountains will have been replaced by housing tracts. Every road into Chittenden County will be clogged with the traffic the migrants thought they had left behind when they fled Boston and Los Angeles to build castles in the countryside. Eventually Vermont will smolder, metaphorically and literally, in a miasma of smog and smoke as we repeat the mistakes made everywhere else.
Or we might escape this fate. Act 250 could be strengthened rather than weakened. A hefty tax on fossil fuels would encourage tighter building standards, the use of public transportation and housing development concentrated near town and city centers. And so on and so on. Vermont will thrive in the era of climate migration by carefully protecting our mountains and forests, water quality and biodiversity, and, through wise and far-seeing development regulation, select for the sorts of folks who will live among us with humility and respect for our time-tested principles of living small, rather than large.