Flemming: What the Vermont climate action plan will mean for you

Bruce Parker/TNR

Vermont’s global warming activists are about to get what they asked for when the climate council unveils its plan to reduce carbon emissions in December.

By David Flemming

Vermont’s Climate Action Plan to sharply reduce carbon dioxide emissions would supposedly combat Climate Change. It’s the yearlong product of the Vermont Climate Council created by the “Global Warming Solutions Act” of 2020 — passed over Gov. Phil Scott’s veto. The plan, due for public release later this year, likely will never be voted on by your representatives in the State Legislature.

It will burden every Vermont motorist, every business, every city and town and every school and hospital with new regulations, mandates, and taxes. It will likely cripple our economy struggling to come out of the painful years of COVID — and send you the bill.

Here’s a warning from Public Service Department Commissioner June Tierney, one of the Climate Council’s statutory members: “I don’t think Vermonters understand the Mack truck that coming at them. … They don’t understand how this is going to impact their lives and what it’s going to cost.” (After attending a Council meeting October 19, 2021)

Here’s what the Climate Action Plan will mean for you

  • Every motorist and every truck driver will face a sharply increased gas and diesel tax – to make gasoline and diesel fuel unaffordable – on top of the $3.40 a gallon price of motor fuel now. That’s the target of the Plan’s multistate Transportation Climate Initiative. You’ll pay $20 million a year – for starters. Vermont will get some of that back – but you won’t. It will be spent on other parts of the Climate Action Plan. This crippling tax will not even be voted on by the Legislature, which is blatantly unconstitutional.
  • No more natural gas, heating oil, and propane for cooking (after 2030), or for water heating (after 2035) or home heating (after 2040). You will be responsible for buying new kitchen ranges, hot water equipment, and home heating systems.
  • No more gasoline and diesel powered on-road vehicles. You won’t be able to buy or register a new gasoline or on-road diesel vehicle after 2032.
  • Huge subsidies to get people to buy electric cars and trucks. There are only 5,000 on the road now. The subsidies aim to put 42,000 EVs on the road by 2025 – only four years away. The State will pay for hundreds or even thousands of charging stations to address range anxiety and charging time trauma. (You won’t like it when your EV slows to a crawl in a below zero winter night.) And of course, EVs pay zero motor fuel tax – they ride free on our highways and bridges.
  • Weatherization of 120,000 more homes by 2030, at a cost of $10,000 per home (total: $1.2 billion.) Have he homeowners pay for it out of the heating savings? Of course not. Your taxes will pay for all of it.
  • Say goodbye to half of Vermont’/s cows. They emit methane from both ends, and our goal is to sharply reduce emissions from whatever source.
  • The Plan requires Vermonters to eliminate 80% of their current use of gasoline, diesel, natural gas, home heating oil and propane by 2050 – and replace it with… what?
  • Everything must be electrified. But heavily subsidized wind turbines and solar electricity farms will never generate enough to meet the demand. Whether our power grid can transmit that huge amount of electricity shipped in from somewhere else is extremely doubtful. Meanwhile, the utilities are forced to buy power from net metered solar panels at or near the retail cost of power, leaving other electricity consumers to pay the utility’s cost of poles, wires, maintenance, and profits.
  • And if we fall behind in emissions reductions starting in 2025, what happens? A group like the Conservation Law Foundation is authorized to sue the State , to get a judge to force the State to take even more drastic action – more regulations, mandates, subsidies and taxes. (CLF did just that, and won, under the Global Warming Solutions Act in Massachusetts.) The law allows a judge to order the State to pay part or all of the legal costs of plaintiffs suing the State, that taxpayers will have to pay along with paying the Attorney General to defend the State.
  • Will all these regulations, mandates and new taxes have any detectable effect on “climate change? No. They will just trumpet to the world the sacrifices Vermonters are willing to endure to be able to crow about how they fought against the menace of climate change. How much is that worth to the ordinary Vermonter?

David Flemming is a policy analyst for the Ethan Allen Institute. Reprinted with permission.

Image courtesy of Bruce Parker/TNR

19 thoughts on “Flemming: What the Vermont climate action plan will mean for you

  1. These advocacy Idjots did not have 12 thoughts, when they created these hundreds of disasterous mandates

    If they want all this, Only NUCLEAR ELECTRIC POWER CAN PROVIDE!

  2. Vermonters will have bought about 5,000 PLUG-IN hybrids and PLUG-IN EVs by end 2021.
    It took about 10 years to get to that total.

    EARLY ADOPTERS

    Almost 50% of Vermonters who buy EVs, also have solar panel systems, and they already drive high-mileage vehicles, such as a Toyota NON-PLUG-IN Prius, that get 54 mpg, EPA combined.

    They are the well-off, higher-income, climate change fighters, in the front lines, aka VOLVO Democrats.

    They buy VOLVOS, because they are made in Sweden, a Socialist country;.
    VOLVO is now owned by a deep-pocketed, Communist Chinese car company.

    When they trade in their DIRTY gasoline vehicles, they would not be reducing CO2 by much each year, because utilities draw almost all of their electricity supply directly from the NE grid, which had 317 g CO2/kWh in 2019, as calculated by ISO-NE, based on fuel consumption by power plants connected to the grid.

    CHEVY BOLT CATCHES FIRE WHILE CHARGING ON DRIVEWAY IN VERMONT
    https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/chevy-bolt-catches-fire-while-charging-on-driveway-in-vermont

    GWSA-MANDATED PURCHASES OF EVs BY OVER-TAXED, OVER-REGULATED VERMONTERS

    Unconstitutional GWSA mandates Vermonters have to buy about 42,000 EVs by end 2025, 4 years.

    Without a doubt, this is a number picked out of a hat, because EAN claimed 90,000 EVs would reduce CO2 by 0.405 million metric ton, or 4.5 metric ton/y per EV (WHICH IS AN UNREALISTIC ESTIMATE), by 2025, “to meet Paris” See page 4 of URL
    https://www.eanvt.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/EAN-report-2020-final.pdf

    VERMONT’S GLOBAL WARMING SOLUTIONS ACT, A DISASTER IN THE MAKING
    https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/vermont-s-global-warming-solutions-act-a-disaster-in-the-making

    HIGH COST AND DISMAL PERFORMANCE RANGE IN WINTER

    In Vermont, a person would need to buy a $40,000 EV (less subsidies paid by OTHERS), that gets at least 250 miles on a charge, UNDER IDEAL CONDITIONS.

    That EV would have about a 150-mile range during colder days in winter.
    Driving on snowy roads, up and down hills, with some cargo, and one or two passengers, would be very sluggish and challenging.

    POOR ECONOMICS AND MINIMAL CO2 REDUCTION OF ELECTRIC VEHICLES IN NEW ENGLAND
    https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/poor-economics-of-electric-vehicles-in-new-england

    ELECTRIC VEHICLES COMPARED WITH GASOLINE VEHICLES
    http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/electric-vehicles-compared-with-gasoline-vehicles

    ELECTRIC TRANSIT AND SCHOOL BUS SYSTEMS REDUCE LITTLE CO2, ARE NOT COST-EFFECTIVE
    https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/electric-bus-systems-likely-not-cost-effective-in-vermont-at

  3. We have surrendered our sovereignty to the United Nations.

    Aka corporatists, globalists, communists, NWO pimps. Our state officials have literally sold us out, we are not in control of our destiny.

  4. A majority of the people in Vermont can drive east, west or south and be in another State in less than an hour. Amazingly, those States sell the very same appliances that Vermont wants to ban.

    Who’s going to function as the hot water heater or kitchen range police? Nobody.
    Who’s going to stop propane from entering the State? Nobody. Who’s going to go door-to-door checking for illicit products? Nobody’s dumb enough to sign up for that dangerous job.

    • They can shut down natural gas

      They can shut down heating oil

      They can price gasoline and diesel thru the roof

      BUT, will THEY want their grocery stores to be fully stocked – by Magic!

  5. And yet, over 90% of our sitting legislators will still be re-elected next November. You can all grouse about until the (soon to be disappearing) cows come home, but you’ll still keep sending the liberals back to Montpelier.

  6. Why aren’t we hearing anything from Governor Scott on the course the Climate Plan is apparently taking?…….Why the silence from the Governor and other leaders in the state on the impact the Climate plan will have on all of us?

    Why aren’t the oil dealers screaming because they are going to be put out of business and replaced by someone selling heat pumps that don’t work very well in northern areas?

    I have asked people what they think of the Climate Council work and the impact it will have….Not surprisingly, a lot of people have no idea of what is going on, they don’t pay attention and don’t understand how they will be impacted. Impacted by a group of little qualified lay people who were appointed to the Climate Council by others who don’t know not much more. These folks are now deciding how we will live beginning in a few months and for the rest of our lives.

    Beyond a small group of web sites there is very little being said about the impact the Climate Plan will have on us…….It appears that we’re all like a bunch of unsuspecting frogs swimming around in a pot sitting on top of a stove…….Slowly being cooked……Just the way the renewable energy wants it.

    Time for Governor Scott and other leader to speak up.

    • Governor Scott vetoed the legislation creating the Climate Council. His vetoe was overridden and would not have been if there were five more Republicans in the House.
      Since that time Governor Scott has repeatedly warned about the problems with this legislation most recently during one of his weekly press conferences. He has had not only this but other impractical legislation passed over his vetoes ( the most of any governor in Vermont history) and is not the problem.

      There will be an opportunity, once the actual report of the Climate Council comes out by December 1 and their decisions made public, to focus on running strong candidates in 2022 in every district who are opposed to this legislation and will do everything in their power to either repeal or eliminate the mandates. It is there a real difference, should we be willing to do the needed work, that can be made.

      • A warning at a recent press conference by Gov. Scott is not enough…….Much more needs to be said about the consequences of the coming Climate Council recommendations……..Too many Vermonters are not aware of what the entire climate change process is all about and the impact it will have.

        It’s also interesting how little we’re hearing from those in the Legislature who pushed through the Global Warming Solutions Act and the subsequent veto of Gov. Scott’s veto……..Based on the silence of the legislators who originally passed the GWSA, one has to wonder if even they are becoming concerned with the Frankenstein they have created……..More needs to be said about this monster.

      • John,
        You forget.
        The Dem/ Prog legislature changed the election laws.

        Vermont now has universal mail-out of ballots.
        No request is needed, but a filled-out request form is needed in Arizona, etc.

        That means about 150,000 to 200,000 ballots will be floating around, because they will not be returned by non-voters, dead people, people who have moved out of state, etc.

        Vermont also have universal harvesting of ballots.
        That means left-leaning VPIRG, etc., can go to any place, nursing homes, etc., and harvest mail-in ballots, filled in or not, and take them to a Town Clerk for counting.

        The possibilities for mail-in fraud are endless.

        What is to prevent CONDOS from sending extra mail-in ballots for people who never vote (CONDOS has lists of these people) to various Dem/Prog entities, for them to fill in, and take to a Town Clerk?

        Signature checking is no longer allowed
        IDs checking is no longer allowed
        Document checking is no longer allowed.

        VERMONTERS ARE SOOOO SCREWED

    • For the same reason Welch Leahi in Sanderson nothing about our open southern border. Posers, each and everyone of them.

  7. Telling people the kind of vehicle they are allowed to have, the way they have to heat their homes and cook food, etc., is COMMUNISM. Call it what it is or be part of the problem.

  8. Anyone living in this State today should have an action plan to remove every legislator, every bureaucrat, every politician supporting the Climate Hoax…aka money laundering for the elites as they fly in private jets to discuss climate crisis around the globe.

    • Anyone living in this state should have an exit plan. The immediate effects of the “climate council”will be slight, election year coming. The long term damage will effect everything from cost of a stick of gum to your homes resale value. The real damage comes in 2023- 2025. Once the lawsuit clause is effective, VPIRG and others will quickly become the largest NGO feeding from the legislature’s trough.

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