The crippling cost of a supermajority virtue signaling with other people’s money.
by Rob Roper
This week, the Vermont Senate passed the Renewable Energy Standard bill (H.289) by a vote of 18-8, making no amendments to the bill as passed by the House back in March. What this bill would do is mandate Vermonters via their electric utilities buy more expensive, less reliable renewable energy – in large part from politically connected campaign donors in the renewable energy business.
The cost to ratepayers? The estimates vary, but the average expectation is around a 7% increase in your electric bill. And that’s just the added increase caused by the crony-mandates. It doesn’t include the expected, natural inflationary price increases. In total dollars, the original cost of this scheme according to both the Department of Public Service and the Joint Fiscal Office was $1 billion over ten years. After some arm twisting by VPIRG and Renewable Energy Vermont, JFO lowered estimate to around half a billion. Even if the low estimate is correct (BWAAAHAAAAhahahah!) that still an average of roughly $50 million a year being syphoned out of Vermonters’ wallets and into the pockets of special interests.
As Senator Irene Wrenner (D-Chittenden North), one of just two Democrats to vote against the bill, summed up with evident frustration, “My constituents are reeling from higher costs. This is unacceptable. Why are we going to vote for a bill that hasn’t been thoroughly vetted by the senate? We have no clear understanding of what this will do to our constituents, and it will add another incredible burden to our constituents.” Her fellow Ds care not.
Speaking of adding another incredible burden to constituents, over in the House they took up S.259, a bill to establish a Vermont Climate Superfund, which basically says Vermont will send a multi-million (maybe billion?) dollar bill to 73 fossil fuel companies for climate damages and then wait for them to just fork over the cash. While it would admittedly be nice if they did, I expect this sternly worded invoice will be received in the halls of Exxon Mobil and crew with about the same seriousness I took a recent email from the President of Uganda informing me that I had won their national lottery and just needed to provide my bank account and social security numbers to collect. In other words, not much.
Nevertheless, S.259 allocates – wastes! — $600,000 of our taxpayer dollars to pay new bureaucrats and outside consultants to come up with the number our Attorney General will dramatically slide face down across the table (metaphorically speaking, of course) for the oil companies to contemplate. While $600,000 may not sound like a lot to the Ways & Means Committees, as a taxpayer, think of this as being forced to pay for a $600,000 rock by someone who intends to throw it at a hornets’ nest — that you are standing under. The cost of the rock isn’t your biggest problem.
After the oil companies dramatically take a Zippo to Vermont’s demand and leave it slowly smoldering in an ashtray on their desk (metaphorically speaking, of course), the next step in this dance is for the Vermont Attorney General to sue those 73 companies. This will cost not a few hundred thousand, but millions, and good luck with it! We’d be better off spending the money on Powerball tickets because when you lose at Powerball, the lottery doesn’t come after you for potentially tens of millions in attorney’s fees – which even the proponents of this idiocy admit is a distinct possibility.
A lawsuit will also take years, and at the end of all that time and expense, the odds of our winning this case are slim for a number of reasons this space is too small to get into in detail but, the word “unconstitutional” did come up in debate quite a bit! And here’s the kicker…. If Vermont did somehow win this lawsuit, the oil companies would simply pass the cost of the impact fee on to their customers. Again, that’s you!
Of course, the House passed it 94-38 because, hey, it’s your chips they’re playing with in this legal casino.
Add to these useless but painful bites out of your paycheck the estimated 70 cent per gallon Clean Heat Standard these same folks passed last year, and the similar Clean Transportation Standard they’re planning for next year, and all the rest of the Climate Virtue Signaling Agenda and Vermont households are looking at thousands of dollars in added annual expense. For nothing. None of this will impact the climate, and all of it distracts and take resources away from dealing with problems we can actually solve.
I wish it were just climate policies that are driving Vermonters into the poor house, but Senator Russ Ingalls (R-Essex) expressed it best when he concluded, “We’re raising electric rates by maybe 7%. 20% property tax increase. Fuel oil by 70 cents a gallon. Food costs are up 35%. Insurance costs are going up [H.766]. We’re passing these bills to ‘save’ Vermonters. Who’s going to save Vermonters from us?”
The only possible answer to that, of course, is Vermonters themselves at the ballot box this November. Or nobody.
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
Categories: Commentary, Energy, Environment, State Government
Climate change caused by humans is not possible. Research it; the data is there.
And then follow who’s getting their hands on our needlessly spent money, one way or another, starting with the Three Stooges Vermont has as representatives in Washington, DC…
The absurdity in all of this is that the ‘climate crusade’ is attempting to reduce one of the most critical chemical compounds supporting all life on planet earth – CO2.
“Join LEAG (Living Earth Action Group) for Part 2 of John Feldman’s 2023 documentary film Regenerating Life; learn how the most important greenhouse gas is water, not carbon dioxide, and that it is the water cycle that regulates the temperature of the planet.”
Again: “… the most important greenhouse gas is water, not carbon dioxide,…”!
The question then is two-fold.
First, if CO2 is not the boogeyman it’s made out to be, and when, in fact, CO2 is deemed beneficial to the environment, why perpetuate the false CO2 narrative to promote anti-carbon, renewable energy legislation and other various draconian energy policy standards?
Second, we know it’s all about the money. But why isn’t anyone in the legislature addressing the false CO2 narrative?
All this, and then they will cry and pout when, WHEN, people pack up and leave Vermont. The people running this state and incapable and should be replaced immediately. They are a threat to the tax payer
Which raises a third question: in a corrupt world, how do prisoners replace their jailers?
That all persons are born equally free and independent, with certain natural, inherent and unalienable rights amongst which are the enjoyment and defending of life and liberty, the acquiring , possessing and protecting property, pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety, therefore slavery and indentured servitude in any form are prohibited. Art 1 VT constitution. It seems to me this needs to be counted as a violation of our T constitution, looking at the average government salary ( 72k) and the average individual income ( 41 k), and given that private property cannot exist if it can be paid for and made extinct by the non payment of rent in the form of property tax, invalidating the meaning of private property. We need a taxpayer bill of rights, and we need a coalition of people to file suit on this trespass of our rights in a diseconomic fashion, and perhaps do in in an extraordinary fashion, be filing an affidavit of fact first. I have decided to enter the Bernie sanders race to speak to the enslavement of the people by congress. and as a house rep, here in putney for the same. Thank Rob, Well said.
Word has it the US Treasury told Canada to pay up debt owed sooner rather than later (holding a large bond due to payoff 2029.) Canada has obliged by leveraging climate carbon taxes and increased GST taxes (all food items) upon their people. In-kind, the USA debt/liquidity crisis is prompting States and utilities to start cash grabbing in haste because they too are under the gun to pay bond debts. Foreign investors are bumping and passing on US Treasury bonds deemed junk. Appears BRICS has lined up to sink the petro fiat currency. The “climate crisis” is a circular firing squad of the money-changers front running the economic implosion no one is supposed to know about until it’s too late.
The oil companies will have a counter suit:
Give back all of the progress that has been made by the use of oil.