by Don Keelan
Vermont needs money to fix its failing infrastructure. It has topped-out in raising taxes and borrowing. Thus, S.259 was conceived: go after ‘Big Oil.’
Why? I am not surprised that my two state senators would be the co-sponsors of this most irresponsible piece of legislation?
Senators Richard Sears and Brian Campion joined with 17 other Senators to introduce S-259; a bill that would “establish the Climate Superfund Cost Recovery Program Fund, within the Agency of Natural Resources.”
Basically, the Superfund would obtain funds from any entity that, between 2000 and 2019, caused Vermont exposure to over one billion metric tons of covered greenhouse gas emissions. Meaning, the entities that were in the business of extracting and refining synthetic or crude oil, extracting crude oil from natural gas liquids, and of course, mining coal (all tied to the billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions) will be charged a yet-to-be-determined fee.
What I found interesting is that the fee is still a mystery and the anticipated millions of dollars that will flow to the State, if ever, are detailed in the proposed legislation.
The rationale is that the fossil fuel companies knowingly sent their products our way and, since 2000, have caused irreparable harm to the Vermont environment. According to Senator Becca White (D. Windsor) in a VTDigger opinion piece on April 4, 2024: “Vermont suffered 17 climate disaster events between 2011-2021.”
The easy way out is to blame the fossil fuel giants. But why not blame me? Back when my family used anthracite coal and later fuel oil, we were aware that we were sending pollutants into the sky. I still do, but I recently adopted efficiency methods and lowered our carbon emissions output. Nevertheless, will I, and other fossil fuel consumers, be called upon to send money to the Superfund?
When you look back at Vermont’s November 1927 flood, there was no mention that the oil or coal companies were to blame. This is after 85 lives were lost and over $50 million ($900 million in today’s dollars) in costs were incurred. The fact that there had been much deforestation and little, if any, farm crops were harvested was given as the major cause for the resulting damage to over 1,200 Vermont bridges.
Senate bill S-259 has a lengthy wish list of projects that will receive funding from the Climate Superfund Cost Recovery Program Fund receipts. According to a Bennington Banner article on the subject of S-259 on April 3rd, the funds are to be spent “upgrading stormwater drainage systems, upgrading roads, bridges and railroads, relocating, elevating or retrofitting sewage treatment plants, and making energy efficient weatherization upgrades to public and private buildings.”
There is a level of intellectual dishonesty that can be charged to those who sponsored or co-sponsored this disguised carbon tax legislation. The reason the bill targets the big fossil fuel companies is they have deep financial pockets. Conversely, Vermont’s infrastructure has been in managed decline for decades due to the fact that the State has little money. In the past 40 years, The State has taken on many social programs, resulting in less funds for what the State once did so well, take care of its infrastructure. One of the few avenues left to bring in money is to go after ‘big oil.’
How will State go after the oil companies to pay-up when the time comes? The Attorney General’s office will do what it always does, engage the services of one of Washington D.C.’s well-healed law firms that bill at $2,000 per hour.
Let me suggest a way of saving some money in legal fees. Within the bill, there is S599a (1): “identify responsible parties and determine their applicable share of covered greenhouse gas emissions.” So who are the responsible parties? First, it is me and, to a large degree, the 13 million annual Vermont visitors who traverse our roads at the State’s invitation. The State Tax Department should also own up. It had no problem collecting taxes when we filled up our cars and trucks with gasoline and our businesses with fuel oil.
In its search for new revenue, Vermont has become desperate for financial resources. What a terrible state of affairs, and it is only becoming more dire.
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Categories: Commentary
S.259’s intent is clear, the result may not be. “Big Oil” isn’t really present in Vermont, Mobil, Shell and other majors do not have terminals nor own retail outlets here. It would be rather easy to shut off the flow, if any- to the jobbers that actually provide the fuels to Vermont’s retail buyers. If Mobil, for example wants out because of this money grab- they turn off their credit card network and force jobbers to re-brand- by barring the sale of their products in Vermont. Simple. Once again, the legislature is looking for deep pockets to steal dollars from- yet the consequence of these legislative money grabs help the NGO’s and legislators but can seriously harm the consumer and Vermont’s fragile economy.
Such is the hubris of our legislators- to think that Vermont’s pittance of hydrocarbon usage matters to “Big Oil”. Climate Change™ is but a means to separate dollars from the public, while magnanimously proclaiming to ” help the environment”- but doing nothing.
Climate-change stars, mugging for their green overlords. They’re certainly not smiling at us, because usually when you smile at someone you expect them to smile back. I am not smiling, least of all at the sloppy-ass clothes. Is that how Vermont’s ‘leaders’ wish to represent our state to the public?
Appearances are important; for example, when people look like other people, there’s usually some deep esoteric reason for it. With this in mind, I can’t help noticing that the fluff-headed chippie quoted herein looks like porn star Stormy Daniels. I think the “matched set” should be rigged up pony-fashion to pull Trump’s triumphal chariot this January.
these people are calling for a expostfacto law to steal money for the green mafia/// expostfacto websters new world dictionary/// done after something, but having retroactive effect////
The more I read foolish stuff like this, the more I am inclined to believe that it is possible that some strange force from outer space, or some other dimension, has gained control of these people…no other reasoning can explain how they act!
Just look at their faces…they all have that deer in the headlight look in their eyes or kool aid drinkers for sure.
What ever you do, come election time, vote every one of them out, but best warn the mental health professionals, before voting them out… to stand by, for a new batch of poor souls, in dire need of a big dose, of mental reality.
They are profoundly unhappy people. Everything that once made Americans joyful and proud — God and country, faith and family — has been repackaged as ‘Christian Nationalism’ and turned into a negative. But what’s really tragic about them is that they are ultimately working towards nothing. Whatever the short-term benefits to their careers or finances, in the long term, this “brave new green world” will be none of theirs, nor of their progeny. If the depopulation and impoverishment agenda succeeds, it will be to the benefit of a relative handful of elites and their children. I suspect they know this and it makes them feel even worse. Unhappy people are dangerous people, so beware, especially of the slyboots who shed crocodile tears at the “bittersweet” departure of her predecessor. Crocodile tears hide crocodile teeth, and I wouldn’t mess with her.
Thank you so much Don. Perfect summation.
Legislature, the AGO, DMV, you name it, the whole of state government is running out of our money. Like Margret Thatcher said about the eventuality of all socialist governments, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” The chickens are coming home to roost.
The nerve of these big oil companies! Selling us fuel oil for all those years so we can keep our houses warm in the winter. Just think of how outrageous it is that they have been selling us gasoline so we can drive to work and all those flat landers could drive to Vermont for vacation. I say “Make them pay!” Oh wait, we’re the ones who will pay for these idiotic proposals. Gee, imagine that. Reality bites.
Do the oil companies get a “Thank You” for keeping thousands of Vermonters warm the last 100 years?
Do they get credit for powering our heavily electric and electronic lives? Our medical systems? For creating an energy system that enabled Vermonters to come out of the oil lamp days and powered the economics for businesses to locate in Vermont?
The impact from ongoing burning of wood (considered “green” for some odd reason) in Vermont is causing true particulate pollution. More CO2 is greening up the Earth, providing higher crop yields for the people of the world.
“If you make a mess, you clean it up.”
Does anyone think this will apply to them when it comes to cleaning up all these toxic solar panels and EV batteries full of heavy metals? …not to mention the human rights they violated in their importation.
You make a mess, you clean it up. Right.
It’s called paradox. In the State that banned billboards, solar arrays now litter the landscape, and still provide less than 15% of Vermont’s power. Never mind that these VPIRG folks have a history of profiting from these sky-is-falling acorns that hit them on the head.
As John McClaughry pointed out in 2021:
“Here’s a tale of two enterprising young men from Vermont who hit the jackpot by selling their startup company to a larger one for $40 million.
The 2010 election brought into office Gov. Peter Shumlin, previously known as “the Senator from VPIRG.” He was an enthusiastic anti-nuclear crusader and climate alarmist who warned of “an unspeakably horrid future” for our grandchildren if Vermonters failed to wage all-out war against the menace of climate change.
With Gov. Shumlin leading a large Democratic-majority legislature for what proved to be six years, it was clear that much if not all of VPIRG’s ambitious climate program would become law.
So, in 2012 VPIRG Board President Duane Peterson and its Clean Energy Program director James Moore departed those positions and launched a for-profit startup called SunCommon.”
https://www.reformer.com/opinion/columnists/john-mcclaughry-a-capitalist-success-story/article_db0b2bde-26cd-11ec-b08c-037d0a08cc6b.html
The rest is history. VPIRG is an ongoing racket.
The dustup in the Middle East will likely shut down all shipping through the Strait of Hormuz shortly. Analysts opine gas will spike well over $5 per gallon June/July – can’t imagine what heating fuel will be. So, VPIRG is the poster holders and activists of the big lie and fraud? I hope they are prepared and ready to pay dearly for it – everything will cost even more, that is if you can find it – supply chains will snap and break.
And they submit a photo of them standing in a room and clothed by the by-products of petroleum…the carpet upon which they stand, with their rubber footwear, holding a vinyl sign, colored with oil-based ink. The room is decorated with wood, harvested and milled with diesel power, finished with glossy urethane. The activist’s watches and phones are made with exotic elements, mined in third-world countries by child labor and assembled in China, the world’s most prolific polluter of toxins and CO2. When those VPIRG women (or those who identify as such) stop consuming damaging products from the fashion, cosmetics/hair care, jewelry and cut flower industries, then they will have some credibility to dictate to all of us how to behave.