In a supposedly free society, is it really the role of government to “break the will” of bad guy Vermont senior citizens on fixed incomes trying to heat their homes in February? We would say not.

What I suspect we’ll get is a hugely expensive program that does nothing to stop climate change, undermines our ability to adapt to it, and diverts resources away from real solutions.

It is worth pointing out that no one in the Vermont press corps has ever been willing to ask this very basic question of any of the GWSA’s advocates, perhaps because they knew what the honest answer is: “Vermont can’t stop or even affect climate change.”

Massachusetts only reached its 2020 goal because of Covid-19 restrictions on travel. If it takes a pandemic for Massachusetts to reach it goals, that should tell you how many sacrifices Vermonters must prepare to make to reach our 2025 GWSA goals.

What 14 of these 15 these appointees have in common — or they wouldn’t have been appointed — is an unquestioning belief in the legislatively declared climate emergency, and the determination to make little Vermont a pioneer in appearing to do something about it.

A 23-member posse galloped into being a week before the elections and held its organizational meeting Nov. 20 The “posse” is the creature of the recently passed Vermont legislation, the Global Warming Solutions Act, which survived Gov. Phil Scott’s veto.

A 23-member Vermont “Climate Council” has been appointed and will begin working on a “Climate Action Plan.”

One of the red flags we raised concerned oil and gas heating systems and the possibility that they could be banned from new construction, renovation, or with the sale of a property. Well, on that front Burlington has fired the first shot.

Either Speaker Johnson is lying to the people of Vermont now about what this law does, or she and the legislators who pushed through this bill have been lying to GWSA advocates for the past two years.