I was looking for something on the Vermont legislature’s web page the other day when it crossed my mind to check into the Joint Carbon Emissions Reduction Committee. Last year the legislature created, over Gov. Scott’s veto, a pseudo government called the Climate Council to devise a plan to beat down the carbon dioxide emission s of everybody and everything in the state of Vermont by eighty percent by 2050, to stamp out the menace of global warming.

At the October 19 meeting of the Vermont Climate Council, Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Public Service and Council member June Tierney made a frightening – and honest – assessment of the proposals the Council is preparing to unleash in December: “I don’t think Vermonters understand the Mack truck that’s coming at them when you start matching up resources to priorities this plan is going to embody. I just don’t think they understand how this is going to impact their lives and what it’s going to cost.”

Vermont had the highest percent increase of drug overdose deaths from March 2020 to March 2021, 85.1%, according the most recent Center for Disease Control data available. Overdose deaths increased from 114 to 211.

On or about April 2021, the character of human immunity changed. It is when the prestigious Mayo Clinic decided that the immunity acquired after COVID-19 infection is inconsequential. Before this paradigm shift, scientists believed that exposure to infections resulted in powerful and enduring protection known as adaptive or acquired immunity. The adaptive immune system is after all, a complex and integrated physiological marvel that protects the body by targeting threats with precision and accuracy.

There has been a reported uptick in bad behavior in Vermont’s public schools, highlighted this past week by incidents in Bristol, where a second grader in the local elementary school destroyed a classroom. If you see the pictures, it is difficult to believe a seven-year-old could be capable of inflicting this kind of damage. And, according to multiple reports, this is not an isolated incident.

On October 6, Hank Kim, of the National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems testified in front of the Pension Benefits, Design, and Funding Task Force, which is responsible for finding a way to reduce Vermont’s massively underfunded state employee and teacher pensions.

Last week I received a “Dear Fellow Vermonter” newsletter from Senator Bernie Sanders. It appeals for support of Bernie’s $3.5 trillion dollar social entitlement bill. Writes Bernie “this $3.5 trillion investment will be paid for by demanding that the wealthiest people in our country and large profitable corporations, start paying their fair share of taxes.”

At the October 5^th meeting of the Vermont Climate Council, paid consultant David Hill provided a sector by sector rundown of what and where emissions must come if the state is to avoid a self-invited lawsuit for failing to meet its self-inflicted emissions reduction targets. When the subject turned to the agriculture sector, Hill informed the Council that 70% of Agriculture GHG emissions comes form “enteric fermentation” which is the politely scientific term for cow burps and gas releases from the other end of the animals. This, Hill proclaimed, must be reduced by just under 50% by the year 2030.

The Vermont Climate Council is going to recommend that Vermont fully participate in the Transportation Climate Initiative (TCI), an multi-state agreement that would lead to a de-facto $20 million gasoline and diesel tax on Vermont drivers (in addition to existing gasoline and diesel taxes) with the cost increasing every year thereafter. The revenue collected by the state would be used to pay for programs associated with the Global Warming Solutions Act. 

Should the Vermont legislature and the Governor accept or reject the recommendation to join TCI? 

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Last week I watched news reports on WCAX and WPTZ, featuring the “Facebook whistleblower” Francis Haugen. She’s the former Facebook employee who copied thousands of pages of internal documents to prove that Facebook designs its products to attract customers, whose fees pay their bills and generate lots of profit for CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Well, duh.