by Gina Galfetti
Has anyone else wondered why the Global Warming Solutions Act never solved anything? Indeed, from day one the Act was doomed to fail. Climate change is indeed very real; however, initiatives proposed in the GWSA were never going to have any measurable effect on the problem of carbon emissions, and when it was combined with the Clean Heat Standard and the EV mandate, the Majority appears to have had an agenda that missed the mark.
The fact of the matter is the quickest way to reduce carbon emissions and save low- and middle-income folks money would be to invest in weatherization programs. Vermont has some of the oldest housing stock in the nation, and weatherizing homes is the fastest way to reduce emissions significantly while at the same time reducing both fossil fuel reliance and lowering electric bills.
And when one starts peeling back the layers of the onion a bit further, I find it even more concerning that when you take a drive around and look to see who has solar panels, shiny EVs, and heat pumps, it is readily apparent that many low-income folks got left out of the mix. Indeed, the folks who were able to make the investments in solar and electrification already had money, and their homes were weatherized as well. That’s why they were able to take advantage of all the subsidies that were given out for solar panels, EVs, and heat pumps, because they had the money for the upfront costs. Folks who were living paycheck to paycheck while property taxes exploded were never in the running to cash in.
And what exactly did the promotion of solar, and specifically net metering, achieve for low- and middle-income folks? The answer is very clear: when folks with solar panels take advantage of net metering, they sell power back to the grid at the residential retail rate. Great move for them…their bills drop to zero in the summer, and they bank credits to offset their electricity bill in the winter. Good deal, right? Wrong.
The problem with that is that the retail residential rate is way higher than the bulk rate, so what happens to folks without solar living in drafty old homes? You guessed it…their bills go up to offset the premium power they have to buy.
Now, I am not interested in going down a rabbit hole and calling out the folks who got very rich during the green energy boom that was built on a false promise of creating a solution to global warming. The information is there if you want to take that dive. But I want to make one thing very clear: when you understand the science behind global warming and you consider that Vermont will have no impact, the money got spent in all the wrong places to help working people and prepare for the inevitable changes that are coming.
You’ve got to ask yourself why. One, if the goal was to reduce carbon, why didn’t we do the thing that would have had the most impact, i.e., weatherize homes? Two, why did we not start investing major amounts of this money in adaptation for the new future that we are headed for? Because if you look at all the models, we are beyond the tipping point, and the major carbon polluters such as China, India, and Indonesia show no sign of letting up; China alone uses 10.5 times more coal than the United States.
Which brings us to three: why are we farming solar when the biggest threat we face to our region from climate change is the mid-Atlantic current shutting down?
I’m not going to dive into the minutiae of that science, but this is the Northeast’s most pressing climate-change problem: think lower temps, more rain, higher sea levels, and world-wide drought elsewhere. Given that scenario, does it really make sense to penalize farmers as we have in Act 181 and Act 59 when you can’t eat solar panels? I think not.
It is time for folks to be more critical of the so-called environmentalists in this state, specifically the lobbyists and big donors who pushed this policy through with the help of the wealthy elites in the Majority, and start looking at the realities radical environmental policy has created in the form of land seizure and regressive taxes, and who is really footing the bill.
Let’s start pushing lawmakers to pass legislation that benefits struggling Vermonters who pay taxes and work extremely hard. Let’s make lawmakers invest in adaptation for more flood-resilient infrastructure and communities, and let’s take the heat off of farmers so when things change, as they always do, we are ready and the hard-working folks that make it possible are still living here to help.