What does this portend for Vermont?

by Rob Roper

New York governor Kathy Hochul is in a fight with the courts over that state’s greenhouse gas reduction mandates. Like Vermont’s Global Warming Solutions Act, New York passed a law dictating that the state must reduce emissions by, in their case, 40 percent by 2030. And, like Vermont, a major policy for doing so is a so-called Cap & Invest carbon credit/tax scheme. It ain’t happening. Not the 40 percent reduction; not the Cap & Invest program.

Why? The former turns out to be impossible (Hochul’s word was “unrealistic”), and the latter would cause electricity rates to skyrocket to economy killing, poverty inducing levels of absurdity while decreasing reliability.

Last summer Governor Hochul was forced to deal with the realities associated with what moving forward with this pie in the sky nonsense would mean, mostly, I assume, for her reelection prospects. She punted Cap & Invest to an undetermined point in the future, when, I speculate on her motivation, there will never be another election in which the people responsible for this colossal stink bomb could be held accountable.

But here’s the problem Hochul is running into with the climate radicals in her state — and the courts….

As mentioned above, New York’s greenhouse gas reduction targets, like Vermont’s, are now a matter of law – a point not lost on the radicals who saw to it that the law was passed. And they’ve sued. Courts are supposed to enforce the law, not rewrite it from the bench (a principle often forgotten, but not in this case). So, they ruled the law is the law and are now telling Hochul that she can’t not follow this law just because it’s irresponsible to attempt and impossible to do anyway. Just do it.

Hochul is appealing that ruling and using the time to figure out a Plan B, which will have to involve either changing the climate law, or killing it entirely. Or, failing in that, New York is screwed (even more than it already is).

This is where Vermonters should perk up their ears. If activists can sue New York for not following their unaffordable, logistically impossible climate law – and force the politicians to implement it regardless of the real-world consequences — then they can sue Vermont to do the same. Perhaps even easier because our Global Warming Solutions Act actively encourages ANYBODY to sue the state if we fail to meet the GWSA mandates.

This is why it is imperative when the Vermont legislature returns in January, they immediately take up measures to fully repeal Act 18, the Clean Heat Standard law, and at the very least drastically amend the Global Warming Solutions Act to eliminate its greenhouse gas reduction mandates by either returning them to “goals” or kicking them so far down the road they post no realistic threat, and stripping out the right to sue provision. Even better, repeal the whole darn thing.

Of course, the right to sue provision which states,…

If the court finds that the rules adopted by the Secretary pursuant to section 593 of this chapter are a substantial cause of failure to achieve the greenhouse gas emissions reductions requirements pursuant to section 578 of this title, the court shall enter an order remanding the matter to the Secretary to adopt or update rules that achieve the greenhouse gas emissions reductions requirements….

… was put in there precisely to spark what’s happening in New York to happen here.

The Vermont politicians who passed the Global Warming Solutions Act with the cheering support of countless high school students who apparently aren’t aware of the electricity generation necessary to power the AI programs that do their homework for them, wanted the accolades for being climate warriors, but they didn’t want to take the heat for what they had to know the law would actually do in practice. For that, they wanted the courts to tell the Agency of Natural Resources to do the dirty work and let them take the blame. I’ll leave it to the reader to come up with your own colorful descriptions for this type of political behavior.

Just imagine what “rules that achieve the greenhouse gas emissions reductions requirements” would look like. What kind of regulation could force, for example, the tripling of the number of electric vehicles in this state by 2030, which GWSA advocates say is necessary. Or to cut the emissions generated when you and 600,000 neighbors try to heat your homes? Stalin would blush.

Rob Roper is a freelance writer who has been involved with Vermont politics and policy for over 20 years. This article reprinted with permission from Behind the Lines: Rob Roper on Vermont Politics, robertroper.substack.com