Here’s an interesting news item from last Friday. The Burlington City Council has banned backyard wood burning fire pits  due to concerns about air pollution.

On October 14 Gov. Phil Scott and four other New England governors – not including New Hampshire’s  -  announced their support for major changes in the governance of the New England electricity market, which is conducted by the Independent System Operator ISO-New England.

As the Vermont legislature shepherded the Global Warming Solutions Act into law, we at the Ethan Allen Institute pointed out some of the many possible places the law could lead: the banning of ATVs, snow machines, and other fossil fuel burning recreational vehicles, the banning of gas powered lawnmowers and lawn maintenance equipment, fireplaces and barbeques, etc. One of the red flags we raised concerned oil and gas heating systems and the possibility that they could be banned from new construction, renovation, or with the sale of a property. Well, on that front Burlington has fired the first shot.

For the past two years, how many times have we had to hear from Global Warming Solutions Act (GWSA) advocates that Vermont’s 2005 goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions “lack teeth,” and this dentally challenged nature of our policies is why Vermont has consistently failed to meet those goals. We need big, sharp, serious teeth! And those teeth were going to be the citizen lawsuit provision of the GWSA. This allows that if Vermont isn’t on track to meet the targets in the law, “any person” can sue the state at taxpayers’ expense. 

Here’s just a sampling of the bicuspid obsession from the last biennium…  

Vermont Digger’s liberal political columnist Jon Margolis recently weighed in on the recently enacted – over the Governor’s veto – Global Warming Solutions Act.  Here’s the interesting part:

Two weeks ago, when Gov. Scott was about to veto the Global Warming Solutions Act, the media was quick to interview activists strongly opposed to the veto – but of course at least to my knowledge the media didn’t bother to interview anyone outside the Scott administration who had said for nine months that this bill was really bad for Vermont.

I took some time last week to work through the photo book of registered lobbyists at the Vermont State House, with a particular eye for the number of them announced as working for “climate change” legislation.

Yesterday the Vermont House of Representatives voted in favor of the Global Warming Solutions Act (GWSA), sending the controversial legislation to the Governor’s desk for either his signature or a veto stamp.

California has just suffered electrical blackouts affecting over 200,000 people, and there will be more to come on hot summer evenings. Why? Because California has become infatuated with subsidizing solar and wind powered electricity, which disappears when the sun goes down and the wind stops. Vermont is heading down that same mistaken path.

California is suffering a major heatwave with temperatures coming in at significantly over 100 degrees. Compounding the danger is the unfortunate reality that California’s electricity capacity – arguably the most “green” in the nation – can’t handle the demand needed to run the air conditioning. California Governor Gavin Newsom admitted that California’s extreme shift to renewable energy sources is at the root of the current crisis.