by Rob Roper

It’s not the governor’s fault your ridiculous plans are collapsing.

Senator Anne Watson (D-Washington), chair of the Senate Natural Resources & Energy Committee and Kool Aid filled climate change religionist, recently penned an op-ed essentially calling on Governor Scott to clean up the catastrophic climate policy mess she and her party created – and blaming him for the mess. It’s a craven political Hail Mary.

Let’s take her argument (a generous description for what is a whining mini-tantrum), apart….

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Watson complains all Scott does is “stall, resist and let the Legislature do the heavy lifting — only to blame us when we propose real solutions….”

First of all, it was/is the Democrats and Progressives in the legislature’s idea to embark on this “Vermont must save the planet” crusade, and Scott has disagreed with the approach and its underlying policy prescriptions from the outset. Why should it be on him to come up with a plan to meet mandates he thinks are unrealistic and unaffordable, which they are.

“Let” the legislature do the heavy lifting? That’s their job. If they want to meet the mandates of their Global Warming Solutions Act, it’s they who have to pass the laws necessary to pay for and implement the programs necessary to meet those mandates. And they have not done so. Not a one. (The only reason Clean Cars and Trucks is happening is because it was already established in rules and the Democrats/Progressives in the legislature didn’t have to do any so-called heavy lifting.)

Which leads into the second half of her complaint: “blame us when we propose real solutions,” emphasis on the word “real.” Nothing Watson and her cohorts have proposed is remotely realistic. And they know it. The number of electric vehicles they would need to put on the road by 2030… the number of heat pumps installed… the number of homes weatherized…. None of it is realistic. We don’t have the tax capacity or even the labor force to do the work. It’s not a “real solution,” it’s a half-baked fantasy concocted by fully-baked brains. And now that that reality is imposing itself on Watson’s “real” solution, she’s trying to shift the blame onto Scott’s recognition of these facts for its failure. Lame!

Watson says, “Unfortunately, it remains unclear what further policies the governor is actually willing to support,” despite the Governor’s proposal in H.289 in which he outlines a plan for moving forward with more realistic timelines and affordable goals for greenhouse gas reduction. But, turning the accusation around, it is equally unclear what policies Watson and her colleagues are actually willing to support – beyond mere rhetoric that is.

The Democrats say they support the Clean Heat Standard but refuse to even contemplate bringing an implementation bill up for a vote. They say to their constituents they support a Cap & Invest program but won’t put forward legislation that would make such a policy law because, even as Treasurer Mike Pieciak (D-VT) has testified, it’s just too freakin’ expensive and regressive – and so they don’t really support that. They could simply increase the current excise taxes on home heating fuels as suggested by the Public Utilities Commission and raise the gasoline and diesel taxes to raise the revenue for their GWSA agenda. But, no, again when the rubber meets the road, they won’t support that.

Watson points out as an admonition to the governor, “The next major GWSA deadline isn’t tomorrow. It’s in 2030 — five years from now. Five years to act.” Yeah, but the first GWSA deadline was 2025, and you had five years to act to meet that goal, which we missed, because you, even with a supermajority capable of overriding any Scott veto, didn’t do squat.

And that would all be well and good if it weren’t for the fact that the Democrats passed in their Global Warming Solutions Act the provision that gives standing to anyone who wants to to sue the state – at taxpayers’ expense — if Watson and company continue on their path of doing nothing “meaningful and substantial” to meet the targets in their law. That they refuse to repeal that provision without passing a single policy to meet the mandates seems like nothing more than spiteful spitting in the eye of the voters who do not want this agenda – and made that clear in the last election. To which I say – but I try to keep these pieces clean, so I won’t say it.

Which gets me to the last point. Watson says, “I’m interested in solutions, and I believe Vermonters are too.” No we are not (at least now what she considers “solutions”) and she knows it. If Watson et al really believed Vermonters were interested in the so-called solutions she and her party are suggesting, they would pass the bills necessary to raise the revenue and implement the programs necessary to meet the greenhouse gas reduction goals in their Global Warming Solutions Act. They would dare the governor and Republicans to thwart the will of the people with a veto, and then use the roll calls against them in the next election.

They’re not doing this. Know why? A larger majority of Vermonters do not want what they are selling. The Global Warming Solutions Act is political dumpster fire, and Watson knows it. But she and her party don’t care. They hope to win back their supermajorities in the next election due to an anti-Trump wave and – if it happens – claim the victory as a mandate to pass this disaster. It won’t be. But, as just noted above, she and her party won’t care.

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