|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Paid spokesperson for program gives masterclass in why it won’t work
by Rob Roper
When you’re getting big bucks to hold a public meeting and nobody from the public shows up, what do you do? Get one of your employees to play the role of “good citizen.” This is what happened at the first legally mandated public outreach forum that was supposed to inform the public about the Clean Heat Standard and get feedback from us folks who are about to get roadkilled by this “Mack Truck” piece of legislation, to use the description coined by Department of Public Services commissioner June Tierney.
As BTL reported earlier, only two members of the general public combined have attended the April and May public outreach meetings. (See: The Clean Heat Standard Public Engagement Fiasco.) And, as BTL also reported earlier, neither one of them had anything to say. So, to fill that awkward silence, moderator Curtiss Reed asked his colleague and Special Projects Assistant at The Vermont Partnership for Fairness and Diversity, Gemma Seymour, to vamp a little and share her own story about home heating. She did! Oh boy, did she!
Seymour must not have received the memo that her firm’s mission was to explain to the public, with a special focus on traditionally marginalized and vulnerable populations, how the Clean Heat Standard is supposed to work, because she embarked on a ten-minute excoriation of the program, illustrating in stark terms how it is too expensive, too impractical, and cannot work in the real world. Especially for those vulnerable populations the politicians promised (fingers tightly crossed) to protect.
Seymour explained that she rents an apartment in a four-unit complex in Brattleboro. She is responsible for her own heating and electric bills. Her first concern: if her landlord is forced or incentivized to spend the money to swap out the existing oil system for cold climate heat pumps or advanced wood pellets, he will certainly use it as “an excuse to raise my rent. And I don’t want my rent to go up.” Yeah, who does?
Then she makes a very good and perhaps overlooked point: “In order for the heating system in this [apartment] unit to be replaced, the unit would have to be vacated. I’d have to move someplace else for, you know, probably at least a month in order for that to be done. And in today’s housing market, how does that even happen? I mean, even if the money were available for me to just pick up and move to another place, there’s no place to move to.” True that!
She further notes that sixty-five percent of the people in her neighborhood are renters, and likely in the same boat. This is what “social justice” and “a just transition” look like under a Clean Heat Standard mandate. Nice words smashed like bugs on the windshield of reality.
Next Seymour takes a nice meaty bite out of the hand that’s feeding her to host this event, calling out the legislators who passed Act 18 for gross incompetence. “If you look at the operable part of the legislation, the obligated parties in Act 18 are the fuel dealers, and that’s it. Fuel dealers are obligated to obtain Clean Heat Credits, and the Public Utilities Commission is charged with creating a system by which this is going to happen. There’s no hard targets put into place as to how much reduction has to take place. There’s no incentives for homeowners to actually upgrade systems, or landlords to upgrade systems. It’s an expense for them that they are going to recoup in rental costs. And that’s a big red flag for everybody who rents in Vermont.” Tell it, sister!
She goes on, “In order for the oil system to be replaced in this building, somebody would have to pay thousands of dollars to have all of that ripped out. And, oh by the way, that oil tank is hazardous waste now, so that has to be handled in a certain manner. I’d have to vacate the building. Find a new place to live. And somebody’s got to foot the bill. All of which is ultimately going to make my rent go up.” Yup!
She did the math. “If I divide my $800 [annual heating bill] by nine months of the heating season, that means my electric bill [plus any rent increase] could go up ninety dollars a month before I was paying more money than I was before. Now I’m willing to pay a little bit more if it means a cleaner environment. But the reality is I don’t want to pay THAT much more.” Says the professional climate activist. How do you think everyone else feels?
But this is a sentiment that jibes with the polling done last December by Campaign for Vermont that showed while a majority people like the idea of cutting greenhouse gas emissions in theory, they have almost zero interest in paying anything extra in order to do so. And the Clean Heat Standard is going to cost LOTS extra.
So, if this is what you’re paid DEI spokesperson has to say about your signature program, I mean, good luck selling it to the general public. Which may be the strategy behind holding meeting ostensibly for the public that nobody from the public attends.
In closing, I’ll just remind Gemma, if she’s reading, not to be too shocked and surprised that she, a lower income person from a traditionally marginalized background, is getting the doo-doo end of the Clean Heat Standard stick. Senator Mark MacDonald did warn us all as he and his colleagues passed this law, “We don’t do things based on helping poor people. We’re doing things based on saving the world.” You’re just being asked to do and pay your fair share.
Rob Roper is a freelance writer who has been involved with Vermont politics and policy for over 20 years. This article reprinted with permission from Behind the Lines: Rob Roper on Vermont Politics, robertroper.substack.com
Discover more from Vermont Daily Chronicle
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Categories: Commentary, Energy, Legislation
The bible reminds us that darkness will be revealed… and darkness will do the showing and telling… will we see their doublespeak/forkedtonguespeak?
This is a reply to V1P1
There are seven Republican Senators likely going to be re-elected. Find me 3 Democratic Senators, I have talked to one, who will join the Republicans to sustain Governor Scott’s veto and that will kill the CHS. Doesn’t get more clear than that. Hard work? So what. Get busy.
So, enough with the name calling and huffing and puffing and find those 3 Democrat Senators!!!!
Back at John,
You call it huffing and puffing, I asked you questions that you didn’t answer. You are the director of a non-profit whose mission is to expand the green new deal to save the next generation. You don’t mind plastering the VT fields with cheap solar panels or ripping the land apart for wind towers that are extremely inefficient. Your idea for ditching the worthless CHS is noble. However, you want to expand and spend the people’s money on a problem that doesn’t exist so you can keep your non-profit salary intact no matter what. Maybe you are connected to the green energy cult and would profit from your efforts regardless of the so-called climate crises outcome. I don’t know if that’s true but your push for wind and solar is a good indication. I may stick around to keep an eye on people who profess to have the answers as long as someone else (the taxpayers) pays for it. I think the whole climate crises is similar to the salesman’s snake oil elixir. It’s always about the money.
Dear Mr Roper – Is it possible to let us know in your articles as to when/where these public meetings are held? I can say that I do not know where to look on the legislative pages. I typed in “public meetings” and looked through the bill and the documents page… no luck
Okay John,
Where was there any anger expressed in either of my statements? You attacked my first comment, and I asked you where all the money was going to come from for expanding the weatherization programs. You have written opinion pieces in VT digger supporting wind and solar energy, it’s my opinion that there is no weather or climate crises. None of the predictions from the 70s forward claiming catastrophic occurrences have come true. You have deflected each time by insinuating something about me just for asking questions. Then you deflect and refuse to answer where all the money is going to come from to for your 3,000 weatherization projects and installers? Transferring money from the cancelled Clean Heat Standard {if that happens} to another similar money program does not benefit any taxpayers who are already the 3rd highest taxed in the country. The most important aspect of this green energy push is the lack of transparency. You typically said to me enough of the name calling then responded by saying I sounded like a schoolyard bully. LOL!
If the Vermont voters return these incompetent non-representatives to the legislature in November, they deserve all the financial punishment they will get. There comes a point when talking and complaining about this current grift for the green energy connected class is like beating your head against the wall to cure your headache.
These dolts in the green climate cult have already stated that their boondoggle law will do nothing to affect the climate here or anywhere else on planet earth, so what’s the point?
My opinion is it’s about the money being spent by the green industry grifters like VPIRG to influence the legislature. If we followed the money, we would see the point of why they will destroy the middle class, harm those with even less and ruin our Vermont fields with cheap Chinese solar panels and tear our ridgelines apart to install bird killing and noisy, Monolithe wind turbines to make the connected class rich. So why would the legislature do this? Maybe it’s time the voters used their heads instead of their feelings. You really have to be ignorant to believe this is good for Vermont
In the meantime, I will be working on my escape from VT plan. I have lost all faith in counting on liberals to finally realize they are at fault for all of this destruction to this once great state.
So, you have an escape from VT plan. Good then you won’t be in the way of others of us who are actually trying to kill the CHS. It means a lot of emailing and phone calls to PUC and legislators to get them to seriously consider an alternative: expand the Vermont State Weatherization Assistance Program to double the projects from 1,200 in 2023 to 1,500 this year and, 3,000 or more. Expand it as the workforce expands by increasing installers wages and offer grants also to low median income families.
To John,
Why would I be in your way john. I’m a born in Vermont conservative. Who is it that pays for all that weatherization work you speak of? What about all those phone calls and emails that have already fallen on deaf ears in the people’s house. How would you know what I have done to bring common sense to Vermont? Where will you get all those installers and who will pay for their wages?
I’ve lived, worked and raised my family here in VT and now as a widower and still working in my 70s, I can’t afford to stay here. Before you go off on protecting the next generation, perhaps you should be concerned with my generation who can’t afford your green new deal. Sing your song to someone else, I’ve paid my dues.
“We don’t do things based on helping poor people. We’re doing things based on saving the world.”
I am a Catholic, and from my point of view, this is a profoundly evil and asocial statement. The parish priest and I have discussed the implications of the Clean Heat Standard for our not-very-well-off community; we agreed that this law in particular and the false-gods-before-the-real-God climate cult in general puts objects and abstractions before people and is therefore immoral. In keeping with the tenet of care for the poor, our weekly Mass often includes a collection “for the fuel needs of the parish,” and I hope that those who can will give more to keep everyone warm in the winter. Being a concerned homeowner, I hadn’t even thought about what a train wreck this will be for renters and landlords! (Of course, condo owners and managers will be in the same pickle.) According to Eternal Word TV Network, 62 percent of Catholics are now Republicans, and one can see why; peace and prosperity for all (rather than an endless course of punishment and blame for everything from ‘racism’ to climate change) is in keeping with Christ’s Divine Mercy. Religious aspects aside: As recently pointed out by President Trump, ‘woke’ people are unhappy people and will take their misery out on the most vulnerable. Gaia-worshippers are actually Moloch-worshippers; not to get off topic, but genocide can be slow-walked as well as fast-tracked and I would say that any poor-but-happy people are squarely in the sites of the Demon-crats.