This commentary is by George Plumb of Washington, Vt., a board member of Better not Bigger Vermont (formerly Vermonters for a Sustainable Population, which he co-founded). He organized the groundbreaking 2013 report “What Is an Optimal/Sustainable Population for Vermont?”
It was recently announced that Vermont is getting warmer and wetter. That’s according to a new climate assessment study conducted by UVM and the Nature Conservancy in Vermont. It found the state has gotten 2 degrees warmer and has had a 21% increase in precipitation since 1900!
Of course, this is true for more than Vermont. It also applies to much of the eastern United states. And the Earth as a whole is experiencing climate change, with July 2021 the hottest month for the earth
But it is not just warmer and wetter and how we should adjust to it that we should be concerned about. The third word that should be added to this phrase is ‘worried.”
Worried that our children and grandchildren are not going to live as long as we have. Worried about the sixth great extinction that is causing so many species of life to no longer live on this Earth. Worried that the COP26 was a total failure and will not result in a rapid reduction in greenhouse gas emissions that is needed to avert the worst of coming disasters.
It is not only government agencies that need to be acting, but we as individuals should be doing everything possible to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. However, an article in the Guardian recently stated, “Citizens are alarmed by the climate crisis, but most believe they are already doing more to preserve the planet than anyone else, including their government, and few are willing to make significant lifestyle changes, an international survey has found. The widespread awareness of the importance of the climate crisis illustrated in this study has yet to be coupled with proportional willingness to act, the survey of 10 countries, including the U.S., France and Germany, observed.”
This certainly is also true in Vermont, which claims to be an “environmental state.” All one has to do to verify this is to look at our highway use. The most popular vehicles by far now are huge, empty pickup trucks, most of which are driven by people who really don’t need them. And large RV’s are growing in popularity and jet plane travel is dealing with growing demand after the Covid-19 slowdown.
Personally, although having a fairly good income, my carbon emissions are relatively small. I was one of the first in Vermont to drive an all-electric car and have driven relatively little, having never even driven across the country. I have flown in a jet plane for recreation purposes only once in my 84-year life. I was one of the early ones to install a rotating solar panel. I have heated with wood for most of our life here in Washington.
And I was one of the first citizens (not a paid professional) to organize a climate action in central Vermont way back in 2009. This was a bicycle ride with 50 people starting from Barre and Montpelier and converging at a midpoint to call attention for the need to construct a separate recreation path between the two cities so people would not have to drive all the time on the Barre/Montpelier Road, and a narrow, marked shoulder that is scary and dangerous for most bicyclists. Unfortunately, this still hasn’t happened.
I will confess that I can still do more to reduce my emissions. As just one example, I should be growing more of our food on our land.
The other citizen action that is needed besides personally reducing carbon emissions is to “have one or maybe none” because every human, no matter how hard they try in today’s world, is going to produce some greenhouse gas emissions. Unfortunately, the Earth is projected to grow its current 7.9 billion people to 8 billion in 2023.
And instead of a growth-forever economy, we need to move to a steady state economy and make a Better and not Bigger Vermont that helps to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.
