Resolution on Town Meeting Day includes Green New Deal for Vermont

On Town Meeting Day, residents in select towns across the state will be voting on climate resolutions promoted by the climate-activist organization 350 Vermont.

The group got 39 towns to vote favorably on such resolutions last year, and this year it expects to persuade 25 more.

The resolution “aims to find local solutions to reduce emissions, improve efficiency, and transition away from fossil fuels,” a press release from the group states. “In a year that saw the IPCC release a report calling for radical reductions in CO2 emissions by 2030, Vermont emissions are still rising. 350VT sees the resolutions as important next steps towards a Green New Deal for Vermont.”

Wikimedia Commons/Senate Democrats

COMING TO VERMONT: 350VT is bringing the infamous Green New Deal to Vermont on Town Meeting Day.

350VT solutions organizer Jaiel Pulskamp and other volunteers will be present at Town Meeting Day locations to track voting trends.

Roger White, a member of 350VT’s Writing for Climate Justice group, wrote that there are three bills at the Vermont Statehouse that the organization also wants to promote.

“A strong showing at this year’s Town Meeting Day could galvanize discussion around three bills currently before the state legislature: H.746 and S.66 (which would prohibit the construction of new fossil fuel infrastructure in the state), and H.175 (which would restrict the use of eminent domain by utility companies for fossil fuel infrastructure),” he wrote.

The resolutions will remind Vermonters of the state’s Comprehensive Energy Plan for reducing greenhouse emissions. Pulskamp is optimistic about Rutland County, where 350VT has been especially active.

Matt Cota, executive director of the Vermont Fuel Dealers Association, told the House Energy and Technology Committee he has concerns with restricting new carbon-based fuel infrastructure, and he said fossil fuels continue to play a central role in energy in Vermont — especially for home heating during bitter cold temperatures.

At the federal level, the Green New Deal, a non-binding resolution crafted by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., looks to overhaul energy and guarantee income and services for all Americans, including those “unwilling to work.”

Rough cost estimates for the societal overhaul are in the trillions. At least 40 U.S. House Democrats have stated their support for the proposal, including Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt..

Republicans have called for a vote on the resolution in an apparent effort to get all its supporters on the record. So far, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has balked at the notion of a vote.

Elsewhere in the world, where the green energy push is well underway, the results have been largely negative for the economy. One example is Germany, which gets 35 percent of its energy from renewables.

“The change isn’t cheap,” a 2017 Fortune.com report states. “Germans will have to pay the energy hikes during this transition which since 2007 have risen by 50 percent [not including state subsidies]. There’s also the multi-billion Euro expansion of the electricity grid which moves wind energy from the north to the southern states.

“The government will also have to compensate their energy companies to shut down their coal and nuclear plants early, and then there’s the lack of affordable storage. Batteries are still too expensive to be economic.”

Stories much closer to Vermont offering similar warning signs. California, a national leader in the green energy push under the state’s Democrat supermajority, now pays two-fold the national average in energy prices.

“Resource-rich California can do so much better than what the supermajority Democrats in the state Legislature have done to working-class families in this state,” the Orange County Register reported in 2017. “There is simply no excuse for Sacramento’s endless stream of policies that increase the cost of energy when we have all of the innovation, natural resources and opportunities to make energy more affordable.”

Towns with 350VT rresolutions on the ballot include Bradford, Castleton, Chester, Hartland, Middlebury, Middlesex, Chittenden, Norwich, Shrewsbury, Tinmouth, and Woodstock. Other towns will be introducing the resolutions as other business, these include Charlotte, Barnet, Hardwick, Hinesburge, Hyde Park, Jericho, Reading, Salisbury, Stannard, Underhill, Townshend, Weathersfield, and Westminster.

Michael Bielawski is a reporter for True North Reports. Send him news tips at bielawski82@yahoo.com and follow him on Twitter @TrueNorthMikeB.

Images courtesy of Public domain and Wikimedia Commons/Senate Democrats

8 thoughts on “Resolution on Town Meeting Day includes Green New Deal for Vermont

  1. PARTIAL CAPITAL COST OF GREEN NEW DEAL

    The Green New Deal, GND, to be implemented by 2030, appears to be an accelerated version of the wind, water, sun, (WWS) Plan by Jacobson, published in 2015, which is aiming to be implemented by 2050.
    http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/partial-capital-cost-of-green-new-deal

    The GND Plan is more extensive in scope and has a shorter timetable than the WWS Plan. Here are some quotes from the GND Plan:

    – “Upgrade and/or replace every building in America”
    – “Replace every internal combustible engine vehicle”
    – “Connect every corner of America with high-speed rail”
    – “Replace all fossil energy with alternative energy sources”

    The GND and WWS Plans would use no fossil fuels (coal, gas, oil), no nuclear and no bio fuels. The latter would be providing just a small percentage of US annual energy, but would require at least 3 times as much area as all of US cropland! See URLs

    NOTE: If fossil fuels were banned, how would the people deal with the loss of all plastics, including smart phones, laptop computers and wide screen TV’s? Everything in our modern lives is composed of fossil fuels. Imagine hospitals with no medical/surgical equipment and roads and runways with no asphalt pavement. That would be the 100% renewables future.
    Significantly increased, near CO2-free, nuclear electricity would be a much better approach than wind and solar, if GND folks want to maintain their standards of living.

    The GND and WWS Plans would use electricity for light duty vehicle transportation (cars, minivans, crossovers, SUVs and 1/4-ton pick-ups), and low/high-speed rail, and would use hydrogen for much of other transportation, including water and air transport.

    The GND and WWS Plans are for 100% of US primary energy to be supplied by mostly wind, solar and hydro; primary energy for electricity generation is only 40% of all primary energy.

    The GND and WWS Plans claim ALL of US energy requirements would be met with the below listed energy sources. The WWS Plan list shows the following:

    30.9% onshore wind,
    19.1% offshore wind,
    30.7% utility-scale photo-voltaic (PV),
    7.2% rooftop PV,
    7.3% concentrated solar power (CSP) with storage,
    1.25% geothermal power,
    0.37% wave power,
    0.14% tidal power, and
    3.01% hydroelectric power.

    • So, on a calm cloudy day we would all relax in the dark and watch our refrigerated stuff rot and spoil? Marvelous… just marvelous. So the GND plan B is …………………..zzzzzzzzzzzzzzcrickets aye? AOC, her crew , sponsors and supports need to be restrained and cared for.

    • “The government will also have to compensate their energy companies to shut down their coal and nuclear plants early, and then there’s the lack of affordable storage. Batteries are still too expensive to be economic.”

      “Batteries are still too expensive to be economic” is not what the all-knowing GMP is promoting with their battery-in-your-basement deals. Either they didn’t get the memo or they’re all good with it as long as the homeowner/consumer finances them and hosts the space for the batteries.

      The Green New Deal is from the bottom of the deck.

  2. If we allow 350VT, GunSenseVT and MoveOn to control what we do, how we think, what we drive everyone can start calling each other “Comrade”, they are nothing more than Socialist Terrorist groups. These three groups are influenced by, paid for and organized by out of state interests so they have no place in Vermont which has the lowest carbon footprint in the country, the 3rd lowest gun crime rate and would do fine without all the Progressive & Liberal ideologies. #802VTALLIANCE

  3. What I find amazing is that these liberals that are pressing for all these changes are mostly out of Stater’s that have moved here and their agenda is to change Vermont to the State that they came from.
    Is it because they couldn’t achieve their agenda from their previous State.
    They are ruining our way of living, our culture and our Vermont values. We need to vote these fools out before before everything is lost.

  4. As usual our flatlander overlords have determined that the Excessively expensive war on climate is a more important Agenda to address in the, cleanest state in the Union, then the reality of Cost of living in VT, Vter’s running away from VT, infrastructure of VT, failure of schools in VT, ..

    What I’d like to see for VT is all conservative minded in upstate NY to move here and we ship all the leftarded flatlanders to NY..It’s a win win, the leftards get a failing state
    with all their agenda taken care of and we get Vermont back as a independent free thinking state living within it’s means again… like it was before the flatlander invasion.

  5. The Green New Deal and it’s variance are headed into Vermont, It’s ” Political Field ” headed by
    Vermont’s own Peter Welch, giving this boondoggle his ” Approval ” It sounds like the congressman favors his parties ” Socialist Agenda ” instead of his home state, Vermont’s well being !!

    Oh that’s right, his home State is Massachusetts and it shows. Wake up Vermont Vote these fools
    out ……… we deserve better.

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