by Paul Dame
As many towns across Vermont experience catastrophic flooding for the second time in the last six months, it is becoming painfully obvious how the Democrats holding the supermajority have given Vermonters the wrong prescription for how to deal with the problems we face with these kinds of major weather events.
For the last two decades, Democrats have focused the energy behind concerns about our environment primarily on reducing certain kinds of energy consumption with the hopes of eliminating Vermont’s carbon footprint. And while that may be a worthwhile goal to some, the obvious problem is that by focusing on problems we can have little impact on relative to the world, it means we have been completely avoiding problems we are not only able to have an impact on – but problems to which we have a duty and obligation to act.
If it was possible that five or ten years ago Vermont had been able to entirely eliminate every fossil fuel in our state – does anyone genuinely believe that we could have prevented the flooding that we are seeing now – or what we saw in July? Any reasonable people would have to concede it as being highly unlikely. Even if carbon emissions were tied directly to severe weather events like this, a reduction in Vermont emissions would barely register. This is an argument that has been used for over a decade – and yet has fallen on deaf ears.
But like so many other tricky economic lessons, we are leaving ourselves unprepared because of the opportunity cost of chasing the wrong policies. This misguided focus on reducing certain energy supplies has also meant that we have completely avoided dealing with the current reality because too many Democrat leaders have bought into the fairytale that we can go back in time. They have been quick to jump on certain weather events as evidence that we “must do something” but the “something” that ends up getting done leaves Vermonters unprepared for more certain disasters.
Democrats have misdirected energy and mismanaged funds to combat climate change in a way that has lined the pockets of their uber-wealthy megadonors, like David Blittersdorf or former members of the Democratic leadership like Rep. Mike McCarthy – while at the same time perpetuating a painful problem for Vermonters who haven’t benefited so neatly. When a flood comes, it will disrupt the lives of those who drive EVs with solar panel charging stations just as terribly as the person who believes that climate change is a total hoax. And if our plan is to keep throwing more money at EVs, solar panels and windmills while floodwaters continue to drown the downtowns that are a hallmark of the Vermont landscape we have to ask what have we really saved?
Instead, we must demand some fundamental changes that protect us from the real and undeniable threats instead of squandering money and goodwill chasing abstract ideas that we just can’t as tightly connect to the lives of everyday Vermonters. Our state government will have little impact on global temperatures – but we owe it to the people of our state to protect them from changes by moving towards mitigation efforts that protect the daily lives of our residents. Democrats have pushed our government so far out into the aspirational that we have abandoned the practical – and we are watching the devastation caused by Democrats being so wrong.
One of the more dangerous provisions of the Global Warming Solutions Acts allows any money-hungry law firm to sue the state to collect massive legal fees for themselves if we miss targets that we have almost certainly been doomed to miss since day one. That would likely trigger a court to mandate the state to reprioritize state spending on a narrow band of solutions – almost none of which will result in more homes being protected from the next flood. And unless we change the composition of the legislators in Montpelier, we are likely to continue down the path of feel-good measures that get good press related to some abstract climate goal – but has very little measurable real-world value for most Vermonters.
What we need instead is to get back to the basics of government. While it’s an interesting theory that we can change our energy consumption to make it not rain so hard – a smarter, and more proven-effective approach is to update our infrastructure so that if it rains hard – regardless of the underlying cause – we know that we have a solid dam solution to protect our people. Climate alarmists often use the rationalization that goes something like “even if climate change isn’t real – the risks are too high to do nothing in case we’re wrong” But the same argument now needs to be turned around to ask “just in case it’s too late to stop climate change, shouldn’t we be preparing for more floods regardless?”
To do this effectively we need the legislature to reallocate misguided climate change spending into infrastructure as well as make adjustments to Act 250 to permit more building outside the flood-prone downtown centers.
The author is an Essex Junction resident and chair of the Vermont Republican Party.