On the first Earth Day in 1970, pockets of student groups and activists organized more than 12,000 teach-ins and events across the country that marked the beginning of a new era of federal environmental regulations, like the Clean Air Act, and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Fifty-five years later, the holiday has become more corporate than radical, but to Ethan Tapper, who gave the devotional address to the House of Representatives Tuesday morning, the day is still an important opportunity to recognize that past and all the work that lies ahead.
“I think of Earth Day as this ritual where we honor the people who have given us the legacies, the good environmental legacies that we now stand on,” Tapper said in an interview.
Tapper, a true Vermont multi-hyphenate is a forester and author who has amassed a social media following of more than 47,000 on Instagram and TikTok for his casual explainer videos about forest phenomena, from what makes a tree alive to mystery forest scat. He’s also in a ten-piece punk band, the Bubs.
On Tuesday, Tapper read to legislators from a section of his first book, “How to Love a Forest,” that details a walk in the woods with a fellow forester, one who tends to the land as an “expression of care and compassion in a world of exploitation and short sightedness.” In the excerpt, Tapper describes the responsibility of managing a landscape as “building a better legacy for those who may someday follow, whoever they are.”
For Tapper, that includes a proactive, hands-on approach to forest management: actions like cutting down trees, moving plants around, and even spraying some herbicide every now and then. Leaving a forest totally untouched, is not an act of compassion, he says.
He foresees a new era of environmentalism in that vein on its way.
“For a long time, a lot of these really powerful environmental movements have been basically just about stopping doing things,” Tapper said. “But this new era of environmentalism is about doing less of the bad stuff and also more of the good stuff, and being willing to actually step into our role as stewards of this planet.”
In the know
State leaders and environmental organizations used Earth Day as an opportunity to defend Vermont’s climate change initiatives in light of a suite of recent actions made by President Donald Trump.
Among other federal moves, an April 8 executive order from the Trump administration singles out Vermont for its efforts to hold energy producers financially responsible for contributions to greenhouse gas emissions.
At a press conference at the Statehouse, Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark doubled down on her commitment to fight the executive order, which is aimed at state climate laws that the president believes threaten “American energy dominance.”
“We marked our calendar 60 days from April 8, because that’s when we expect that the (Department of Justice) is going to act in response to this executive order,” she said in an interview. “There’s probably a number of things they’re considering, and whatever it is, we will be ready. We will be ready to defend Vermont, we will be ready to defend the Climate Superfund Act.”
Read more about some of the Earth Day events at the Statehouse here.
— Izzy Wagner
U.S. Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., visited Mohsen Mahdawi in a Vermont jail Monday, sharing a snippet of their conversation to social media.
And on Tuesday, more than 100 people rallied at the Statehouse to call for his release and what they characterized as the federal government’s circumvention of due process.
Mahdawi, a Palestinian student organizer at Columbia University who lives in the Upper Valley, was arrested by federal agents in Colchester last week during an interview for U.S. citizenship. Masked federal officers ushered Mahdawi into a vehicle, and he was later detained at Northwest State Correctional Facility in St. Albans.
Lawyers for Mahdawi quickly filed a lawsuit arguing his detention was unlawful, and a federal judge in Vermont ordered that he not be taken from the state. A hearing in his case is scheduled for Wednesday morning.
Vermont House adopted a resolution Tuesday “objecting to the manner and circumstances” of Mahdawi’s detention and calling for him to be “released immediately.”
Read more about the ongoing response to the detention here.
— Ethan Weinstein
On the move
Thousands of Vermonters could see their medical debt wiped away under a bill headed to the governor’s desk.
The legislation, S. 27, would use $1 million in funds appropriated to the Treasurer’s Office to erase $100 million in Vermonters’ medical debt. It would also prohibit credit reporting agencies from taking into account Vermonters’ medical debt when determining their credit scores.
“With medical debt, it often happens to you when you have no control,” Vermont Treasurer Mike Pieciak, who has spearheaded the proposal, told lawmakers this month. “You don’t have the ability to say, ‘I’m going to delay this care or delay this treatment.’ You don’t have the ability to shop around. You’re being taken by ambulance to a hospital and the procedure’s happening to you.”
The bill leverages the fact that medical debt can be purchased for pennies on the dollar — roughly one penny per dollar of debt, in fact. Thus, a $1 million investment could erase about $100 million of debt.
The legislation has received unanimous support from both chambers of Vermont’s General Assembly. The bill passed the Senate last month, and House lawmakers voted it out Tuesday.
The bill, now poised to become law, would place Vermont among roughly 20 states and cities that have used public funds to eliminate residents’ medical debts.
Read more about the legislation here.
— Peter D’Auria
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