From the governor to Native leaders to maple syrup producers, Vermonters aren’t sitting still for climate change

March 2012, http://www.sierraclub.org | When the hard rains slowed and the winds calmed, Vermont governor Peter Shumlin climbed into a National Guard helicopter at Knapp State Airport. As the chopper lifted off, Shumlin looked down at a landscape reshaped by the violence of water. It was the aftermath of Irene, a tropical storm that unleashed a torrent over the state last August. The rains rushed down mountainsides and engorged rivers and streams that charged over their banks and rampaged through towns. Homes were torn from their foundations, cars were flung into walls, and farmers’ fields were turned into lakes. More than 500 miles of roads were ripped up or made impassable, and at least 20 bridges were washed out, among them several historic covered bridges.

A lot of things raced through the governor’s mind as he gazed down—among them, the logistics of getting food and water to stranded communities and the need to get Federal Emergency Management Administration officials in on this as soon as possible. But not too far off in his thinking was the belief that there was more to come. In the eight months since he’d taken office, Shumlin had dealt with a major blizzard in March, unprecedented flooding in April and May, and now Irene. He put the blame for the frequency of these events squarely on climate change.

Shumlin is no recent climate change convert. He is, however, among a handful of politicians willing to talk about the issue with any sense of urgency. In the two decades since scientists started coming out with reports showing how a warming Earth destabilizes global weather patterns, the conversation in this country has devolved into a partisan debate over whether there is a problem at all. In 2006 the Pew Research Center found that 79 percent of Americans believed there was solid evidence that Earth was warming. By 2010 that number had dwindled to just 59 percent. A couple of cold winters, an economic crash, and the power of the fossil fuel lobby had conspired to diminish the threat’s importance.

[Shumlin] asserted that the country’s leaders, “influenced by the extraordinary economic power of oil, coal, and automobile companies, equivocate about climate change.” Then he hit the hopeful note that has been his mantra since: his belief that Vermont would “provide the brainpower, make the products, and seize the job opportunities a lower carbon economy requires.”

Lindy Rose shared a link.