Welcome to the new world of Vermont environmentalism and our Legislature, all of whom are now fully captured by carbon.
This commentary is by Annette Smith of Danby, executive director of Vermonters for a Clean Environment.
June 16, 2024
The concept of “carbon capture” has been in the news for years. Is it hype? Is it real? As with so much “news” these days, it is hard to tell. What Vermonters can now bray far and wide is that this small state has achieved total success in the deployment of carbon capture. No, it is not a technology. Nor is it something that results in reducing carbon emissions from the atmosphere. Rather, it is a result of the long game played by Al Gore, with his “Inconvenient Truth” movie, and Vermont and New York’s Bill McKibben, with his endless writings about the end of the world, to turn environmentalists’ focus worldwide solely to carbon emissions. Their message to our children: “live in fear.”
Nothing matters anymore except global warming, climate change, climate emergency, rising CO2 emissions. Forget about birds, bees, bats and bears. All public policy must be laser-focused on reducing carbon emissions, no matter the cost. It is our North Star, our moral imperative! European policies led the way, with massive build-out of “renewable” energy, albeit reliant on coal-fired electricity to produce wind turbine components and polysilicon for solar panels. Europe is burning lots of trees exported from America’s southeast forests that meet the definition of “renewable” because it’s “biogenic CO2” — a nifty term to magically erase emissions that are worse than those from coal plants. The United States is well on its way to assuring massive wind turbines and fields of glass-covered, aluminum-supported polysilicon arrays will cover the country’s rural landscape — to feed the electric vehicles resulting that will require fossil-fueled mineral extraction in remote, previously-intact ecosystems throughout the world. No worries, Vermont is not being left behind. As everyone knows, Vermont must be a leader, and lead we will, with Vermont’s “environmental groups” banding together to teach our elected leaders what they must do and set an example for everyone to follow.
The Global Warming Solutions Act was the great achievement of the “environmental groups.” Vermont must now reduce its tiny emissions by unrealistic levels by specific deadlines, or anyone can sue the state to make it require the Agency of Natural Resources to enact rules to achieve the emissions reduction requirements. While the GWSA gives lip service to nature, the only mandate is carbon emissions reduction. Strap on your boots, we are now on the rough ride to assure the state achieves those unachievable mandates.(Wait. Cue the attack dogs: “She is a climate change denier. Don’t listen to her.”)
The next achievement of the “environmental groups” that have aggressively lobbied Vermont’s legislators into submission with the passage of the GWSA is the creation of the Climate Council. An elite body consisting primarily of people with high salaries or personal wealth living in the I-89 to I-91 corridor, a/k/a the “Burlington/Montpelier Bubble,” they set to work to meet the GWSA’s unrealistic one-year deadline to draft a Climate Action Plan that was thrown together and released the night before the deadline, assuring that few on the Climate Council read it before voting on it. And vote to approve, they did. One of the elements in the Climate Action Plan is the Clean Heat Standard, the next achievement of the “environmental groups”-led legislature who will do what they are told. Though barely discussed by the Climate Council because it was developed by a private working group from Vermont Gas Systems, Regulatory Assistance Project and Energy Action Network, it was in the Plan, so the legislature had to act. It is a moral imperative, remember? he Clean Heat Standard takes aim at the evil fuel dealers, and makes them change their business models from selling liquid fossil fuels to installing technology or weatherizing homes. Or they can pay for credits. The Public Utility Commission is currently struggling with the impossibly-complicated task handed to them by the legislature.
Now comes the Renewable Energy Standard, “modernized” to assure that more of Vermont’s forests are cut and fields are covered with technologies manufactured using coal energy in China. Fully captured by the carbon-reduction mantra, Vermont’s legislators praise the bill, H.289, as the result of a collaborative process between the utilities, the “environmental groups” and more. Except there were interests missing from the discussions, namely: those of rural communities and the people who live here, as well as the interests of real environmentalists who focus on water, wildlife, forests, soils, toxins and the beauty of Vermont. During all those collaborative meetings, the environmental groups on the panel — Vermont Natural Resources Council, Conservation Law Foundation, Sierra Club, Vermont Public Interest Research Group — focused on carbon emissions and not the land use impacts of an estimated tripling of the acreage necessary for the in-state renewable energy development enabled by the RES. Welcome to the new world of Vermont environmentalism and our Legislature, all of whom are now fully captured by carbon.