In the movie Tootsie, Bill Murray’s character is a playwright who has a running conversation with Dustin Hoffman about a scene he’s writing, “the necktie scene,” that’s just not working. He finally surrenders to Hoffman’s diagnosis of the problem, “I’m rewriting the necktie scene without the necktie.” I was reminded of this joke when I saw the Public Utility Commission’s long awaited Draft Clean Heat Standard Rule Companion Status Report. They’re telling the legislature to rewrite the Clean Heat Standard law without the Clean Heat Standard.

In an indictment that could have been lifted verbatim from one of a number of BTL articles, the PUC concludes:

The Clean Heat Standard as currently conceived [by the dimwits in the legislature] requires substantial additional costs and regulatory complexity above the funding needed to accomplish Vermont’s greenhouse gas emission reduction goals. For example, the Clean Heat Standard would require establishing a credit marketplace managed by what is likely to be a costly credit platform, the potential for fraud and market manipulation, the appointment of new or varied default delivery agents with administrative costs of their own, and the participation and regulatory engagement of hundreds of fuel dealers and other actors — e.g., companies and individuals that install clean heat measures — not currently or historically regulated by the Commission.

Our work over the past year and a half on the Clean Heat Standard demonstrates that it does not make sense for Vermont, as a lone small state, to develop a clean heat credit market and the associated clean heat credit trading system to register, sell, transfer, and trade credits. Because the Clean Heat Standard introduces these additional regulatory hurdles and costs, the Commission is considering other options to achieve Vermont’s greenhouse gas emission reduction goals for the thermal sector.

In other words, go rewrite the necktie scene without the necktie. But what are the “other options” hinted at in that last sentence? They only offer one:

“[A] new thermal energy benefit charge on the sale of fuel oil, propane, and kerosene. Similar to the long-standing electric efficiency charge, the Commission would set the thermal energy benefit charge based on statutory criteria, including the need to provide sufficient funding to meet the Global Warming Solutions Act requirements.

Yup. A straightforward carbon tax on home heating fuels. Strip away the Rube Goldberg Carbon Credit contraption, and that’s what you’re left with: a direct charge on your oil, propane, and kerosene home heating bill. And to “sufficiently fund” the number of clean heat measures necessary to meet the Global Warming Solutions Act mandates, that carbon tax will necessarily be massive. In the billions massive. Of course, per the report, “The Commission is not providing a cost estimate at this time.” Uh huh. I guess give them another eighteen months.

But here’s the thing the PUC may not understand, or at this point maybe they just don’t care: the supermajority’s whole objective in pushing the Clean Heat Credit scheme was to give themselves a rhetorical argument to take on the campaign trail — it’s not a tax! Who us tax our constituents’ ability to survive Vermont winters? 

Now if lawmakers take the PUC’s recommendation to implement this direct tax/fee/surcharge, that plausible deniability (implausible really, but hey, they’ve been sticking to it, bless their hearts!) is gone. Do they have the guts — or a truly principled commitment to saving the planet — to face the voters with that proposition? It’s time to separate the true believers in catastrophic, anthropogenic climate change from the virtue signaling panderers!

Either way, Rep. Laura Sibila (I-Dover), Sen. Chris Bray (D-Addison), and all their colleagues along with the clowns at VPIRG, Energy Action Network, Vermont Conservation Voters et al just wasted three of the twelve years Greta Thunberg told us we have left before the global spontaneous combustion occurs. They’ve undermined the state’s ability to meet the GWSA deadlines for 2025 and 2030 at least. And, we might as well mention, multiple millions of taxpayer dollars, just to prop up the illusion that this obviously unworkable farce was somehow a good idea. 

How can I say obviously unworkable? I have to go back deep into the archives to December 27, 2021, when I was still serving as president of the Ethan Allen Institute. Then, just days after the publication of the Climate Action Plan recommending the Clean Heat Standard, I wrote in an article titled, Clean Heat Standard Is a Stealth Carbon Tax on Heating Fuel,

First of all, just imagine the size and scope of the bureaucracy necessary to monitor, verify, and keep track of all these “credits” being generated by people installing heat pumps, etc., and then maintain an accurate ledger of who creates, buys, sells, and owns these things….

How many auditors, inspectors, and accountants will it take to verify, assign a credit value and a shelf life to each transaction, identify the “owner” of each credit, and then keep track of any future buying and selling of credits between parties over time. How much will it cost to administer such a program, again, at taxpayers’ expense?

The “Clean Heat Standard” is an expensive, inefficient, recipe for cronyism, corruption, and oppressive regulatory overreach that will achieve little more than increasing the cost for the majority of Vermonters to heat our homes. No thanks. 

Compare this to that earlier quote from the PUC report. I don’t re-post this here to say I TOLD YOU SO!!! (Well, maybe just a little.) I do so to make the point that it took about five minutes for anyone with a shred of common sense, a modicum of intellectual curiosity, and more than six brain cells to understand that this scheme was totally asinine. That a supermajority of our elected representatives apparently lack these qualities – as well as seemingly every single reporter and editor employed by our major media outlets – is frankly pathetic.

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