by Guy and Tim Page
A House bill introduced March 1 would have plans in place by 2026 to overhaul the entire Vermont economy into a “regenerative economy.”
The bill would task 11 regional People’s Assemblies to create a Regenerative Economy Roadmap that would make Vermont a 90% Regenerative Economy by 2046.
One of H435’s lead co-sponsors comes as no surprise to State House observers: Rep. Brian Cina, a Burlington Progressive who since taking his seat in January, 2019 has sponsored or co-sponsored several hundred bills, many of them aspirational in a progressive vein. The colorful, outspoken Cina has sponsored 89 bills in 2023 alone.
But Cina’s legislative successes (when they happen) usually are a result of dozens of other lawmakers and stakeholders getting behind his initiative. He’s an adept catalyst and provacateur. What he’s not is a key legislative decision-maker.
But Amy Sheldon is.
Sheldon, chair of the House Environment and Energy Committee, is as low-key as Cina is outgoing. A natural resources consultant with a Masters Degree in resource planning, Sheldon is deadly serious about environmental transformation. She will – and has – spent not months but years leading committees under her jurisdiction to pass transformative legislation. She chaired the House committee that has spent half a decade on rewriting Act 250, the state’s landmark environmental planning bill.
Last session she was the sole sponsor of a bill to fund a planning study for conserving 50% of all total land area from development. After lengthy testimony in her committee, she shepherded the bill through the House and the Senate – only to see it vetoed by Gov. Phil Scott.
Undeterred, she reintroduced the bill again this year as H126, community resilience and biodiversity protection, and has spent many hours of committee time reviewing it. It passed the committee on March 1 and was sent to the House Appropriations Committee.
According to its introduction, H435 would address claims that “the world is facing climate emergencies, mass extinction, and ecological collapse as a consequence of human economic activity over the past 400 years. These activities did not account for the full impact of the economy on the environment and on society. In order to survive these changes, Vermont must build resiliency and create a roadmap for a just transition from an extractive economy to a new economy that repairs and restores the Earth.”
Also, the bill states: “There will not be economic justice without racial justice and social equity, and the new economy must recognize and rectify the intersection of systemized oppressions,” and openly calls for the creation of local “People’s Assemblies.”
Much of the bill reads like classic Cina – for example, “The world is facing climate emergencies, mass extinction, and ecological collapse as a consequence of human economic activity over the past 400 years.”
But it also has a 32-point punch list of detailed wonkiness describing how Vermont must change its energy use, childcare, education, healthcare, and housing (and much more) to achieve the 90% Regenerative Economy. That part sounds more like Sheldon.
Will Sheldon put this bill on the back-burner of aspirational legislation? Or will she – as she has already twice done – use the Power of the Chair to make change happen? When H.435 appears on her committee agenda for more than a hearing or two, the public will have its answer.
But here’s a clue, maybe – the same day H126 (protecting 50% of all land from development) was voted out of her committee, she and Cina introduced H435. One would-be transformative task done, has she begun another?
Categories: Legislation, Video
I had to do some research to figure out what they are talking about:
“A regenerative economy means moving away from extractive business models and unlocking the potential for positive contributions for nature and society. Businesses have the potential to be climate positive, nature positive, socially positive and economically positive by moving beyond a solitary focus on limiting emissions into the environment.
This includes helping to draw down carbon dioxide and contributing to a positive long term trajectory on climate change while adding more biodiversity for the future and ensuring justice, equity and inclusion within and between societies and economic markets.”
Now, if someone can translate into reality ….
It sounds like a ‘cover story’ for (de)generates.
More progress b.s. that is destroying Vermont. What company wants to have to deal with this garbage on top of act 60. And they are always puzzled that big employers don’t want anything to do with this state.
I do not believe they are puzzled at all. They know exactly what they are doing, and in the process they want to create the “climate” that will be sure to drive the conservative element out of here.so they can have their own little world with no more brick walls or washed out roads, or conservatives.
the market needs to be freer in Vermont not even more overburdened by a government that only wants to control it and i feel try to profit from their machinations. every thing they do makes it harder for the average citizen to make a living
One more time, the lack of ELECTABLE, candidates with superior judgement is how we get these idealistic, underachievers. Is anybody catching on yet?
…moving away from extractive business models and unlocking the potential for positive contributions for nature and society. Businesses have the potential to be climate positive, nature positive, socially positive and economically positive…
WELL ALLRIGHTALLRIGHTALLRIGHT’ Soooooo you’ve had a revelation and now your going on the road to do the missionary work necessary to convert us to this enlightened view of how the economy should work..? right? No, No, No —- not really, you’re going to create some doctrines in the legislature to redesign our economy and then MAKE US do enterprise the way your insights dictate. This mistake has some history you know. When folks have had insights reading the Gospels they’ve tried to make laws to enforce their insights. …doesn’t work out so well.
Anybody that thinks they know what this world will be like in 25 years is without a doubt a complete fool that should not have any authority at all. You want a great Vermont, time to get rid of act 250, act 60 and all it’s little tentacles. It was a bad experiment and it failed.
Anybody that thinks they know what this world will be like in 25 years is without a doubt a complete fool that should not have any authority at all. You want a great Vermont, time to get rid of act 250, act 60 and all it’s slimy little tentacles. It was a bad experiment and it failed.
Vermont Republicans should be proud and rejoicing the bills their legislators are advancing, which they indirectly voted for by running candidates that stood for something.
Instead of being resentful, they should happily accept the new taxes, the new gun laws, and the further deterioration of our schools.
At least we stood for something and now we stand on the steps of the Capitol peering in through the windows.
There’s a cabal, reminiscent of Warren Jeffs, masquerading as “True Republicans” that is blurring the line between Right Wing Republican Zealots and Bigots.
Do you believe Cabal candidates stand a chance?
Primaries and Elections have consequences.
A “regenerative economy” sounds like something where someone else decides what I can spend my money on, what I can eat, what things I can watch, where I can go, etc. — I won’t be alive in 25 years, but if I was I’d be on the lines of revolution against the communists.
The end goal here is population CONTROL, Vermont having been invaded by Marxist ideology and found to be fertile ground for their dystopian wet dreams, they want to limit any more growth, read: population. Now that the useful elite idiots have their slice of the rural pie, they want nobody else to join. So they will concentrate the new middle/lower income arrivals in the dense city areas in the multiple 4 story units sprouting like mushrooms in the Chittenden district. The population REDUCTION will continue via the experimental gene therapy shots under the guise of “healthcare”, while planned parenthood will continue to cull the next generation under the guise of “reproductive choice”, all the while the “beneficent” state of vt, will invoke its “compelling interest” option under article 22 if the numbers don’t dwindle quickly enough. How l long to see a gallows built for these evil doers.
When Rep. Sheldon was named chair of the Act 250 reassessment committee in 2019 I, as the only still-active veteran of the House that passed Act 250 in 1970 (with my vote) offered to meet with them to discuss what happened then and thereafter – including my elsewhere well received 1975 Environmental Law Review article on the subject. I was not favored even with a polite rejection. Nor did any other member of that committee ever speak to me. So I am not very receptive to her current idea of a “regenerative economy”, or anything else.
“Regenerative” refers generally to agricultural methods. This conflation only clouds the conversation, perhaps deliberately. The city mice know little of how to grow food — are EVs “regenerative,” manufactured and shipped from China using massive amounts of fossil fuels and natural resources? Cina is deluded, and it shows.
The fraud is about CO2, and we need more, not less.
“Friends of Science Society is an independent group of earth, atmospheric and solar scientists, engineers, and citizens that is celebrating its 18th year of offering climate science insights. After a thorough in review of a broad spectrum of literature on climate change, Friends of Science Society has concluded that the sun is the main driver of climate change, not carbon dioxide (CO2).”
https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/no-climate-emergency-says-nasa-award-winning-climate-scientist-climate-activists-undermine-your-freedoms-says-investigative-journalist-845177826.html
geologic temperature timeline
Just depends on what you want to show I guess.
Climate great Swindle
https://rumble.com/v1itrzz-the-great-global-warming-swindle.html