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by Alison Despathy
Vermont has both the lowest energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in the country.
Carbon is the building block of life. Ask anyone with a greenhouse who pumps in CO2 to help their plants grow. Don’t forget about the entire Carboniferous period and how beautifully plants handled that situation. Consider reading The Genius of Trees by Harriet Rix to understand a tree’s capacity for cycling elements, weather, and soil.
Leave our farmers, fuel dealers, automobile dealers, and hard working Vermonters alone. They do good and necessary business in Vermont which builds our local economy and community providing jobs and food. They do not need to pay more to do business or have to pass it on to customers.
Research the mycorrhizal fungal network that runs thick and deep through our Vermont forests, sequestering, transforming and trading carbon for food with plants and trees.
Carbon is not Vermont’s issue- stop wasting money, resources and time on this. This is legal plunder.
Use tax money as it is intended, to fix roads and culverts, educate our children, safely handle waste, protect our water and natural resources and help those who are struggling. Stop creating underhanded schemes with pretty names (a/k/a- Affordable Heat Act, Renewable Energy Standard, Global Warming Solutions Act) that funnel money to favored industries at Vermonters’ expense with zero benefit.
Vermont does not need a greater tax burden. Period.
Forcing all of Vermont’s major sectors into the carbon credit scam through bad policy such as the Unaffordable Heat Act raises costs of all products and services for Vermonters and hurts our small businesses.
Reality check- There is not an “inevitable transition to renewable energy” happening. 100% Renewable energy is not base load, reliable, affordable, safe or even a reality in VT. Put solar on homes and the built environment where it makes sense and reduces consumption and saves money for Vemrotners without destroying the environment. Stop clearing forests and destroying prime agricultural land for industrial scale solar projects for billion dollar investment managers charging more for electricity and getting major tax breaks in Vermont.
AI and their data centers are using more energy than entire countries, plus stealing water from cities but Vermonters should pay more for basic living expenses like heat and gas? Not a chance
Renewable energy is not even possible without petroleum products. Mining minerals and metals, producing concrete, steel and glass all demand this intense energy source. See this for what it is, an ecosystem destroying, propaganda campaign to build and subsidize an industry that cannot even survive or perform as a worthy business.
Child labor and massive human rights abuses are rampant with the race to secure minerals- cobalt, lithium and copper- for renewable energy. How can people continue to support this “inevitable transition” knowing it is built on the backs of the Global South suffering toxic exposures and gross abuse.
It is irresponsible, really criminal to force through policy and experiment on VT to be fully electric- weather, power outages, inadequate grid capacity, glitches in wireless infrastructure required for aspects of this system all bring risk to our cold and rural state. Many Vermonters strive for frugality, independence and living lightly on the earth.
No one is denying climate change, that is absurd. The climate has been changing since the beginning of time. Of course it is changing in our little blip of life on the grand and ancient story of the earth. We are but a breath of a moment in the earth’s climate change story. Stop making it difficult for us to afford to live and enjoy life. No one should have to regularly fight policy that attacks the very people it is supposed to serve.
Vermonters already do so much. We pay fuel taxes for programs to help Vermonters weatherize. We have policies mandating fees on Vermont’s electric ratepayers that are used to reduce energy consumption and encourage affordability through efficiency measures. Audit Efficiency Vermont and guarantee the approximately $50,000,000 a year is getting to Vermonters or give the money back to ratepayers.
Get well acquainted with ISO-New England in order to check, in real time, how impossible it is for renewable energy to supply all of Vermont’s energy.
Stop trying to tax Vermonters out of Vermont- this is our home.
Repeal the Renewable Energy Standard which was designed by renewable energy special interest and attacks and punishes our small state utilities and will increase costs for all ratepayers with projected financial burdens to Vermonters of $500 Million to $1 Billion over the next 10 years.
Wake up from your utopian dream of Vermont’s electric future which has become a nightmare for so many saying NO to destructive policy such as the Global Warming Solutions Act. Repeal the Global Warming Solutions Act- it does not serve Vermonters, our local economy or our environment.
For years, Vermonters have been pushing back on proposed carbon taxes and UNaffordable and ineffective climate policy proposals. These are grassroots Vermonters understanding what is happening at the State House and working to spread the word and step up to take action so we can continue to live here and afford to buy food, heat, gas and raise our families.
The climate change agenda is painfully and parasitically growing an industry on the backs of those who work hard and try to live a life full of meaningful experiences and joy. Stop destroying that dream.
Please Vermont legislators, please consider the following as you develop laws with real impacts on all of us who live here and love Vermont. Please come together and do what is best for Vermont.
The author is a teacher, clinical nutritionist, and Danville resident.
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Categories: Commentary, Environment, Taxes
Saying what must be spoken as always, my fellow Vermonter. Truth to power, truth to power!
A long held traditional policy of ‘don’t fix what ain’t broke’, and recycle, reuse, along with live and let live, saw Vermonters through drought, depression and wars, with Vermonters showing up when the going got tough to help their harder hit neighbor.
Winters were weathered the same way, with simple woodstoves that went out in a deep freeze or ten feet of snow, only if you ran out of wood. And if you did,layers of wool kept you warm beneath the covers until help came. Most of the time.
Light provided by candlelight you could read by warmed ones soul reading Scripture or books from the library. We knew where everything we used came from, and either we or our neighbors were the sources of everything we used.
Vermonters were the last to want ‘new fangled ‘ improvement even as Ward’s catalogues were used as toilet paper in the outhouses… Toilet paper being one of the improvements we embraced…
We did and made do to live simply before God.
Our lives kept us lean, frugal, healthy and engaged with family, friends and community, and we had use for the flimflam man from out of state selling us something mo’bettah. We didn’t want it need it, and… All those parts that broke more often and replaced at greater and greater expense. Our yards started to fill with more and more junk…
Our way of life, the Spirit of it, became stained with false idols and sloth, smothered and gas lighted.
Alison, you describe the end game well. We have arrived.
Ultimately before digital ID comes to roost, what we choose to support in the inner sanctums of our lives becomes what we live. We still have that choice individually to simplify our lives to simplify live and follow God’s laws as we are meant to do.
It’s on us to make our own choices and not allow tyranny to rule even one iota of our right to choose.
What are you willing to accept?
Alison’s article is a tour de force of science and logic that should be required reading and study for all Vermont Legislators and Governors.
The scientific data over the history of earth show no correlation between co2 concentrations and earth’s temperature. Some 10,000 years ago miles thick glaciers covered all of New England and far beyond. It took A LOT of heat to melt those glaciers with no human input whatsoever, no cars, no burning of fossil fuels. no industrial revolutions, no “green new deal”. Just the collosal forces of our Universe at work. We need more humility, more real science, more real data to understand that the forces at work driving climate change dwarf mere mortal humans. The self absorbed egotistical view that humans have the capacity to change the earth’s climate needs to be challenge by reality. Co2’s concentration in Earth’s atmosphere is about .04%. That’s 4 seats in a 10,000 seat stadium. Come on Man get real! Without co2 human life and flourishing come to an end. More co2 equals more plant food and higher crop yields. The rise of co2 to present levels has produced the greatest period of human flourishing ever. Climate warms people stop freezing to death and are able to thrive. In light of these facts the labelling of co2 as a pollutant is patently absurd.
The bad news is that a whole generation of students k-college have been indoctrinated to see humans as the problem. At heart it’s an anti human life belief system. If real humans get injured in our pursuit of a political fantasy then it’s no big deal. It’s no surprise that we have gone from abortion on demand in which human life has become so devalued that a mother is encouraged to choose the death of her child, to political assassinations of those we have devalued, dehumanized, and disagree with.
Like I said we need a large dose of humble reflection when we no longer care that real people are being denigrated, and devalued.
………”Vermont carbon policy is legal plunder”………couldn’t agree more.
I started to type something foul, directed at those “in power” and those who put them there. My backspace key is still smoking after I changed my mind.
Thanks for writing this article, Alison Despathy, and thanks to the commentators before me.