This commentary is by Melinda Moulton, a writer and filmmaker who lives in Huntington.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster relief fund will run out of money by mid-August. FEMA has estimated that climate disasters could cost $2 trillion a year by the end of this century.
Imagine if during the past 60 years humans had made the change to renewable energy.
This summer, we have seen some of the hottest temperatures on Earth since we started recording temperatures back in 1659. Friederike Otto, senior lecturer in climate science at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment in the UK, told CNN, “It just shows we must stop burning fossil fuels, not in decades, but now. This day is just a number, but for many people and ecosystems it is a loss of life and livelihood.”
In addition, the economic impacts of extreme weather and climate disasters caused a total of $165 billion in damages in our country in 2022. This year that number will be higher.
Ten years ago, I installed three solar arrays on my meadow, and since that time never paid an electric bill. Under net metering, any excess energy that our solar arrays produce goes back to the energy grid and we build up a surplus.
But in 2022, Vermont’s Public Utility Commission lowered the net metering rate by three cents. This reduced the value of my solar production versus my electric use, and my electric bills are now reflecting this reality.
T.J. Poor from the Vermont Department of Public Service has said that “lower-income customers have not benefited from the current construct of net metering as much as higher-income customers.”
Jonathan Dowds, who is deputy director with Renewable Energy Vermont, has stated, “The last thing we should be doing as a state to hit our climate goals and energy goals is to slow down the deployment of clean energy resources.”
James Moore, one of the cofounders of SunCommon, the largest solar company in Vermont, said: “We are addressing a climate crisis, and here in Vermont we have had this increasingly go-slow approach. It is time to put the pedal to the metal and get policies in place to accelerate this clean energy transition.” Right on, James!
Indeed, Vermont is a leader in generating solar energy and a lot of that credit goes to SunCommon. Vermont has seen a 500% increase in solar power during these past 10 years, but we can do better.
If we as a species do not start now to move seriously off fossil fuels and move toward 100% renewable energy, we may not be able to live on this planet through the end of this century. The temperature whereby a human can survive is measured by “wet bulb,” which means the temperature is read by a thermometer covered in a water-soaked cloth, and that temperature is the lowest in which an object can cool down when moisture evaporates.
The wet bulb temperature of 95 degrees Fahrenheit is equivalent to a heat index of 160 degrees Fahrenheit. A human could live up to six hours of exposure to this temperature.
Large areas of the southern United States are at dangerous wet bulb temperatures this summer. The Washington Post just reported on July 20, 2023, that we are living through Earth’s hottest month on record.
AccuWeather experts estimate $3 billion to $5 billion worth of damage from the recent flooding across the Northeast and New England. According to the EPA, greenhouse concentrations will increase unless the billions of tons of our annual emissions decrease substantially.
To make our country fully renewable, it would cost $4.5 trillion. According to a recent analysis by the energy research firm Wood Mackenzie, “Over the next 10 years, this is technically and logistically attainable.” The estimate includes the costs of replacing all fossil fuels and nuclear power with hydroelectricity, biomass, geothermal, wind and solar. Households could save as much as $321 billion in energy costs yearly or up to $2,500 a household per year by switching to renewables.
Isn’t the specter of an uninhabitable planet more of a threat than anything else imaginable? Isn’t an investment by our federal government of $450 billion a year for 10 years to create a fully renewable environment worthy?
I am grateful to live in Vermont, where the heat is bearable, for now, and where I can find a cool, clean body of water to plunge, but this may not be the case in a few decades. We must move quickly to put renewable electric generation (biomass, geothermal, sunlight, water, wind) at the forefront of our energy program and transition completely away from fossil fuels.
