About — #ActOnClimateVT

The #ActOnClimateVT Coalition is comprised of over 30 Vermont based organizations working together to build support for equitable and just climate solutions.

In 2020, our coalition organized thousands of Vermonters in a unified call for climate action, mobilizing around a suite of climate policies that would work together to transform Vermont’s economy and future. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic sidelined many of these policies, but as a result of our many months of organizing, we were able to secure the passage of the Global Warming Solutions Act, ensuring a path forward for some of our most ambitious climate goals.

In 2021, we plan to build on this success by holding the VT Climate Council, as established by the Solutions Act, to account, and expanding our work to reduce carbon emissions from the transportation and heating sectors while building the resilience of our communities to the effects of climate change, which are already being felt across the state.

OUR MISSION

Vermonters know that global warming is our largest threat and climate action is our greatest opportunity. We share a responsibility to reduce the pollution that is driving global warming while strengthening our economy, protecting public health, and advancing equity. Calls for urgent action to reduce climate pollution have been issued by the world’s climate scientists, all levels of government, business leaders and medical professionals, religious communities and low-income advocates, and most clearly of all, by young Vermonters who will either live with the costly consequences of a forever altered planet or prosper in a transformed energy future.

The stakes could not be higher.

Vermonters are experiencing the intensifying, negative impacts of a warming world and these changes threaten our every pursuit. Mild winters and early springs are straining our economy, putting our farming, forestry, maple sugaring and winter sports economies at risk. More frequent and intense storms are causing flood damage, including an intense,

warm 2019 Halloween rain storm which resulted in a $5 million+ price tag for Vermonters and the fifth largest outage event in Green Mountain Power’s history. Warmer average temperatures are diminishing water quality, degrading critical wildlife habitat, and have dramatically increased the number of tick and mosquito borne diseases while invasive plant species thrive, affecting crops and forests. The public health consequences of global warming have led the World Health Organization to declare climate change as “the greatest threat to global health in the 21st century.”

Advance equity by investing in our clean energy future.

The injustice of the climate crisis is that those least responsible for pollution are the most susceptible to the dangers of an unhealthy planet. Around the world and in Vermont, climate catastrophes often affect marginalized communities first and worst – as we saw when mobile home parks across the state were devastated in Tropical Storm Irene. We can protect those most vulnerable to climate change by strategically investing in clean energy solutions and public infrastructure and by harnessing the power of our natural systems both to sequester and store carbon and to foster climate resilient communities.

We cannot afford inaction.

The extraction and combustion of oil, gas, and coal is harming the people of Vermont today, and a continued reliance on these fuels will lead to greater damage and more costly consequences in the future. There are clean, local, affordable energy solutions available now. Investing in these solutions will put Vermonters to work in 21st century clean energy jobs and retain far more of the $1.5 billion that Vermont sends out of state every year to pay for imported fossil fuels. In doing so, we can also build on the success of existing programs we have long benefitted from, like Low Income Weatherization, and expand workforce opportunities, lower cost burdens, improve building efficiency and more.