Has reconsidered questioning authority

by James Ehlers

When I receive new credible information, I change my mind. The ability to change one’s mind is considered a sign of intelligence.  And who among us doesn’t want to at least signal the appearance of intelligence? 

After a weekend of deep diving and braving the headwinds, I have stood up and leveled my personal playing field.  My position has evolved and, going forward, I now support the Unaffordable Heat Act, S.5.

If you, like me, had previously fallen prey to right-wing propaganda and bristled at the notion of embracing neoliberal economics, I hope you, too, will reconsider questioning authority. Here are just a few of the reasons to support S.5:

• Lower heating bills by wrapping oneself in the warm blanket of sanctimonious equity-centering rhetoric and planet-saving platitudes
• Stimulate Vermont’s Superfund-Site economy
• Give Norwich and Woodstock YIMBYs an opportunity to host their own lithium battery factory
• Be the change and bend over to “stand up” a new credit scheme for financial sector speculators now that housing derivatives have fallen out favor
• Grow mining and hazmat recovery jobs for children seeking an experiential education outside mainstream classrooms
• Massage the fragile egos of politicians suffering the pains of cognitive dissonance as they seek to avoid the mandates of the Clean Water Act for another 40 years
• Create affordable housing downwind and downstream of new copper mines
• Suppress the fires of narcissistic rage consuming Court Street and the State House Cafeteria that are undoubtedly contributing to the warming of the local political climate
• Ensure recycling facilities never run out of a steady stream of “sustainable” electric vehicle and photovoltaic e-waste
• Increase housing and property values for the investor class upstream of the renewable energy supply chain
• Rehearse “active listening” acting skills on real-live social justice advocates
• Keep populations of scary bats and pesky backyard-chicken-snatching aerial carnivores in check with ridgetop predator-control zappers
• Show solidarity with “renewable” energy lobbyists  and “nonprofit” directors struggling to afford a second home and vacations to Belize and Costa Rica
• Solidify our dependence on foreign-owned private gas and power companies
• Stick it to that redneck Republican who has been hauling the #2 fuel-oil hose up your posted, habitat-fragmenting driveway to ensure all 4,000 square feet (and three-car garage) stays at 70 degrees when the heat pump succumbs to the laws of physics

If that is not enough to wake us from our Homo erectus dreams, there is the satisfaction of knowing Vermont can lead the nation and demonstrate, without question, that Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt. Here in Vermont this is the one river that shall, not may, remain free flowing, never to be renewably dammed.

Perhaps, most importantly though, in supporting S.5,  Burlington and Chittenden County can lead the way, globally, with the first ever physics-defying hot-air-fueled arc furnace for locally manufactured, non polluting, particulate-free, carbon-neutral turbine towers and PFAS panels for use in the local Lake Champlain Shelburne Point base-load (bullshit) wind “farm” and Shelburne Farms fusion-fueled dying star array, respectively.

Thank you for joining me in my S.5 evolution, ensuring Vermont remains economically and socially stratified.  There is no privileged upstream without a degraded downstream.

James Ehlers, a former US Navy electrical officer, damage control and HAZMAT officer, successfully lost the 2018 Democratic Gubernatorial Primary to a Republican.