If the total carbon output of Vermont’s miniscule population disappeared tomorrow, it would have virtually no scientifically registerable impact on climate change. In exchange the only thing we’d accomplish would be to drive a substantial portion of our population into financial distress.
California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, via executive order, is dictating what Vermont vehicle consumers can and cannot buy — if we go along. We don’t have to.
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.
H.715, a bill that would have mandated a switch of heating methods and fuels in an effort to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, fell one vote short of the two-thirds required for passage Tuesday in the Vermont House of Representatives.
“What the Legislature has passed is a bill that includes some policy, with absolutely no details on costs and impacts, and a lot of authority and policy making delegated to the Public Utility Commission (PUC), an unelected board.”
Our best hope now is a veto from Governor Scott who has indicated that the bill does not have his support. But after that we need to put pressure on just a few Democrats or Independents to sustain his veto of this new tax.
H.715, an act relating to the clean heat standard, passed in the State House of Representatives on May 3, 2022, by a vote of 88-37. It obligates the PUC to design the Clean Heat Standard program, and then check back with the Legislature in 2023 and 2024.
H.715, an act relating to the clean heat standard — Bray Amendment — passed in the State Senate on April 28, 2022, by a vote of 23-7.
Senate lawmakers decided against adding further amendments to the clean heat standard bill H.715 Friday morning before it passed on third reading on the Senate floor.
Coming off a long winter with record-high gasoline and heating oil prices, this flippant comment is far from amusing. Senators who would pass laws they can’t understand seem to have little understanding or compassion for the very real economic suffering of Vermonters.
There is still time to contact your senators and ask them to table H.715 and let the $200 million they are allocating for clean energy do the real world work. Vermont does not need more gimmicks and convoluted energy policies and requirements to buy more stuff.
That last point I have hammered on before. The hidden tax on your heating fuel will be set not by your legislators, who you can hold accountable at election time, but by three unaccountable strangers who sit on the Public Utility Commission.