This commentary is by Hanah Morgan, who grew up in Hartland and is now raising her family in Plainfield. She is the coordinator for Families Rise Up, a family-focused climate justice project of 350Vermont.
Looking back on my childhood in Vermont, my sibling and I had it about as good as it gets. We spent most of our days outside, swimming in our pond, exploring the woods and walking our goats through the tall grass across the road from our old farmhouse. We didn’t worry about ticks and Lyme disease, or floods or air quality alerts from wildfires or extreme heat. It doesn’t feel like that long ago, and it really wasn’t!
Now I am parenting my own young kids in Plainfield, and the realities of the climate crisis are hitting home harder every year. It’s never been more clear that we need to stop burning polluting fuels for our energy, because doing so is destroying our communities.
On July 11th, I was waiting for a doctor’s appointment to address acute and painful Lyme symptoms, and reeling from shock as more texts, videos and Facebook posts revealed the devastation of the previous night’s flash flooding in my little town. I learned about the loss of homes and beloved pets, and roads that simply vanished and may never be rebuilt.
My son’s kindergarten teacher and her family lost everything when their apartment building collapsed into the river. Friends and coworkers lost everything overnight. The loss was hard to comprehend, and the sense of deja vu was uncanny: we were marking the one-year anniversary of last year’s catastrophic flooding with a new catastrophe.
In the days and weeks after this year’s flood, the Plainfield community showed up with an outpouring of love, generosity, organizational skills and grit. Roads were cleared and fixed. People mucked out basements, donated food, water and other supplies, and set up a large tent and recovery center.
The farmer’s market turned into a mutual aid event and even included a brass band! The sense of community was palpable. People from all walks of life were putting their lives on hold, showing up, getting dirty and working together.
But as I write this, it is raining again, with reports of catastrophic flooding in other Vermont communities, and more rain on the way. My heart goes out to everyone being affected, and I feel weary thinking about all the volunteer efforts just beginning in other towns.
I am so grateful to live in a place where I know my neighbors will come together to support each other through the increasing climate disruptions coming our way. But we also need to do more: we need to do everything we can to reduce the effects of the climate crisis, instead of just responding to it with each new disaster. We need to use this community momentum to organize for climate justice.
Right now, we can come together to call on our utilities to do better — because in order to mitigate the climate crisis we need to stop burning things, and we need to stop now.
Even though Vermont makes national headlines because of climate-related disasters, our utilities continue to contribute to the problem. They burn fossil fuels and greenwash their pollution by advertising false solutions such as “renewable” natural gas, liquid biofuels and biomass — all of which contribute significant amounts of greenhouse gas. But we can meet our energy needs with clean, affordable energy, and stop investing in polluting infrastructure and fuels.
As Vermont towns grapple with recovery and rebuilding, our utilities should be helping communities do this in a climate-smart way. They can incentivize weatherization and community solar and wind projects. They should be investing in solar and wind-powered heat pumps, and ground-source thermal energy networks to keep our buildings cool during heat waves and warm in the winter without burning fuels.
Our utilities should support stronger ratepayer protection policy, phase out the use of outdated, inefficient and polluting fossil-fuel “peaker plants” and subsidize demand-response to reduce energy use during peak times. They should be planning to shut down the McNeil biomass plant in the next three years, and advocating to the legislature and the Public Utility Commission to disqualify “renewable” natural gas, liquid biofuels, biomass and hydrogen from clean heat credits in the Clean Heat Standard.
On August 10, Vermonters will call on utilities and elected officials to urgently move away from outdated and dirty energy infrastructure in favor of a clean and affordable energy future. This event is part of a national week of action organized by the 350 Network Council, 350.org and People’s Action. You can learn more and RSVP for this action at 350vt.org and see actions taking place across the country at bit.ly/utilityaction.
While I know that I can’t magically go back to the Vermont of my childhood and protect my kids from all the dangers of a warming climate, I also know that it’s not too late to join with others to organize and demand climate justice measures. Every little bit counts when it comes to reducing the climate emergency and protecting our kids’ future in this beautiful place.
