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It was strangely fitting that Wednesday’s Climate SOS Rally held at the Vermont Statehouse to ask lawmakers to quickly address the climate crisis was also plagued by soggy conditions and wild temperature swings and rapidly melting snow and ice.
It was almost as if Mother Nature herself was making a point.
“The weather is certainly weird, and we’re going to help show [lawmakers] that,” said Rebecca Schwarz, one of the event’s organizers.
At noon, about 75 activists from around the state arrived on the statehouse lawn wearing life preservers, pool floats and snorkels and carrying banners and signs urging the legislature to declare a climate emergency. To create the illusion that rising seas, activists waved large blue tarps and bags and urged policymakers to prioritize a rapid and equitable transition from fossil fuels towards renewable energy sources.
The rally was cosponsored by a coalition of organizations, including 350Vermont, the Vermont Youth Lobby, the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, Rights & Democracy, the Vermont AFL-CIO, Standing Trees, and Extinction Rebellion Vermont.
The rally didn’t focus solely on the climate crisis; it addressed a constellation of related issues, including the proliferation of plastics in the world’s oceans, reform of the state’s bottle bill, labor rights, social justice and theft of land from Indigenous peoples. However, many protest signs and speakers made clear that failing to address rising global temperatures poses an existential threat to humanity.
Gabe Groveman, an 18-year-old senior from Montpelier High School and a member of the Vermont Youth Lobby, expressed his frustration and exhaustion from growing up inundated with dire news about the worsening climate emergency while little gets done at the state or federal level.
“Every day that we do nothing is a day of my future, the future of Vermont and the future that all young people are going to live in [that] grows darker,” Groveman said. “My generation did not create this crisis. Yet we’ll be forced to live with the consequences if another legislative session goes by without bold and just climate action.” As many speakers noted, there is little doubt that the effects of the climate emergency will impact the Green Mountain State and will be felt most acutely by low- and middle-income Vermonters.
A recent University of Vermont StudyPublished in the journal’s January 10 issue People and Nature, bears out that assertion. Researchers at UVM estimated that climate-induced flooding would cost the state more $5.29 billion in the next century. Researchers found that the most vulnerable are low-income families and mobile home residents who live near flood-prone areas.
Organizers from 350Vermont decried what they called “false climate solutions,” such as the sale of renewable energy credits, which, they said, provide corporate loopholes that allow greenhouse gas emitters to profit at the expense of the most vulnerable. They condemned so-called “renewable” energy sources, such as biofuels and Hydro-Québec’s hydroelectric dams, for releasing significant amounts of methane, flooding indigenous lands and destroying communities.
It was not clear that state legislators were paying attention outside the rally. Rep. Heather Surprenant (P/D. Barnard), who is a member the House Agriculture and Forestry Committee, was one of the few legislators to attend the rally to listen to speeches and speak with activists. Surprenant, a small-scale organic farmer expressed disappointment that less of her colleagues were present.
“I don’t think they’re coming out,” she said. “This is less their comfort level and domain. Oftentimes, policy is slower than the pace I would appreciate.”
While acknowledging the abundance of gray-haired activists in the crowd, the 30-year-old Surprenant suggested that there’s generational divide in the legislature between younger lawmakers who “get it” and their older colleagues.
“It’s just newer for the older folks. It feels less dire to them than younger generations,” Surprenant added. “We want to meet them where we’re at, but we also don’t have time.”
