Watch every Democrat candidate in the recent lieutenant governor debate voice their support for a carbon tax on home heating oil, propane, natural gas, and kerosene — and throw gasoline and diesel into the mix.
Scott indicated that when the clean heat standard policy, costs and impacts are more fully worked out, a “revised” CHS might yet win his support. That was not encouraging news to the fuel dealers and their customers who will pay the CHS bill.
Are you ready for the coming carbon tax on your home and business heating bill? The Vermont House is working at flank speed to enact the “Clean Heat Standard” (CHS) concocted by the Climate Action Network, and adopted by the Vermont Climate Council.
In what is believed to be the first time a carbon tax has been put to a national vote, upscale urban regions including Geneva, Basel and Zurich voted in favor of the CO2 law, but 51.6 percent of voters, and 21 of the country’s 26 cantons, said “get out of here with your carbon tax.”
After the push for the carbon tax fizzled out in 2018, the climate change game turned to enacting a carbon tax by disguising it as something else. The latest version is called “the Thermal Energy Efficiency Charge,” and Sen. Chris Bray has become its most ardent promoter.
The proposed “Enhanced Energy Savings Act” is a carbon tax, and maybe the Senate should “own it and come out swinging,” one senator told his fellow Natural Resources and Energy Committee members yesterday.
TCI was a bad idea before the COVID-19 recession. Today it is absolutely unthinkable.
We all want a healthy planet, and we want our government to play an important role in protecting our environment, but what’s happening in the Vermont Legislature today has crossed the line into what amounts to an obsessive, dangerous, and unhealthy disorder.
Although numerous Northeast governors have either backed out of or made statements against the regional Transportation and Climate Initiative, Vermont state lawmakers on Thursday discussed the matter as if TCI remains very much alive.
Vermonters are more than willing to roll up our sleeves and work together on climate solutions that are sensible, affordable and that can be measured locally in the short term for accountability. But joining TCI would hobble us.
If New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont, Connecticut and Rhode Island don’t participate in the TCI program, that would leave Massachusetts — whose governor, Charlie Baker, is probably TCI’s biggest booster — completely isolated.
The real beneficiaries of this scheme to tax Vermonters for their fuel use are the rich and powerful. State government, with an annual budget totaling over 1.5 billion and a workforce of over 8,000, will grow bigger, administering complex regulations proposed by the initiative.