With a few exceptions, the opposition by Republican legislators to the clean heat standard has tended to be tepid. Republicans have been willing to vote against a bill, but not as enthusiastic about speaking out against it aggressively. That seems to be changing, at least to some degree.
Last week, Jamison Ervin, the manager of the Nature for Development global program, met with lawmakers of the House Committee on Environment and Energy to promote a “global deal for nature” aimed at preventing a “polycrisis” of environmental disasters.
Even if Vermont reduces GHG emissions to zero by 2050, the total reduction between now and then would be just over 100 million metric tons — one day’s worth of world emissions. So, nothing Vermont does will have any measurable impact on world climate.
The members of the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee are tying themselves in intellectual knots over why they don’t need to investigate how much the Clean Heat Standard they’re prepared to put into law will cost Vermonters or how it will work.
People can’t afford an apartment or house because they have to spend too much on health care, child care, property taxes, food, clothing, heat, electricity, internet, phone service, car registration, car insurance, etc.
The state’s senior economist presented a study to the Senate Economic Development Committee showing that early childhood programs under discussion would cost between $179 million and $279 million — and funding could come from either a payroll tax or a sales tax on services.
What if parents do not share Sen. Baruth’s conclusion? Is the right and duty of parents to make decisions for their minor children to be supplanted by government bureaucrats, medical “experts,” hospitals and pharmaceutical companies?
During a briefing from the Energy Action Network on Vermont’s progress for meeting its greenhouse gas reduction goals under the Global Warming Solutions Act (GWSA), Sen. Mark MacDonald, D-Orange, pitched a plan to lower the speed limit on state highways to 55 mph.
A bill introduced into the Vermont Senate last week would, in practice, break the sacred seal of the church confessional in cases of child abuse. According to the Catholic Education Resource Center, the seal cannot be violated for any reason. For a priest to do so is a crime against church law.
Last week, Agency of Natural Resources Secretary Julie Moore met with the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee to discuss the investments needed in heating and transportation technologies to meet Vermont’s ambitious emissions reduction goals.
The price increase will eventually be charged to consumers, and anybody offering milk for less will be hammered with “administrative penalties.” This is nothing less than a price control takeover of the Vermont dairy industry.
Legislative Counsel provided an overview of S.5 on Friday, which is meant to set out ways of “affordably meeting the mandated greenhouse gas reductions for the thermal sector through electrification, decarbonization, efficiency, and weatherization measures.”