The Senate may be about ready to vote on the Global-Warming Solutions Act (H.688). The bill, heavily promoted by the Energy Action Network, would create a counterfeit government within the government, instruct state agencies to issue rules (that no legislator would ever vote on) governing anything and everything needed to drive down Vermont carbon dioxide emissions to arbitrary levels, and authorize law suits against the state if the process isn’t fast enough to suit the climate warriors. Responsible Senators should consign the democracy-shredding GWSA to a place of eternal rest.

Proposal 9 declares that the people have a right to a clean environment and gives the green light to the Conservation Law Foundation to sue to get it. The state’s natural resources, it states, are “the common property of all the people”. Here comes the feudal King, and there goes  243 years of freehold and liberty.

On its 50th anniversary Vermont’s Act 250 is being updated to propel the people of the state into the new era of menacing climate change. The new bill tightens the regulatory grip over rural areas, expands the jurisdictional threshold, creates a three-person Super Board, and even requires applicants to assure “environmental justice”, whatever that may mean.

The 2020 legislature is racing ahead on a new course: pushing forward with three sweeping measures to defeat the Menace of Climate Change: Transportation and Climate Initiative, Global Warming Solutions Act, and injecting a climate change criterion into Act 250 development permits. What would Vermont’s economy look like after five years of this program?

The Global Warming solutions Act (H.688) purports to combat the Menace of Climate Change by authorizing unaccountable bureaucrats to regulate any and everything to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to impossible levels. The bill gives the Conservation Law Foundation standing to sue the bureaucrats for not oppressing people fat enough – at taxpayer’s expense if the plaintiff “substantially prevails.” It would shred democracy by exempting every legislator from ever having to vote on the results.

Singapore’s health care system, dating back to 1955, works wonderfully well. Clearly this small city state differs in many ways from the US, but there are many useful principles and practices we could take from its successful forced savings plan.