This commentary is by David L. Deen of Westminster. He served 30 years in the Vermont Legislature and 19 years as river steward for the Connecticut River. He is now a trustee at the Connecticut River Conservancy. Sec. Julie Moore, in her commentary about the Conservation Law Foundation and their pressure to increase our response to climate change, shows she does not like having advocacy groups telling her and the Scott administration to get the job done, now! No one is criticizing our valued state employees as they work to address climate change. Any criticism speaks to the lack of leadership by our state employees’ elected and/or politically appointed bosses. Yes, work has begun on addressing climate change, but the administration’s first clean heat report stated that a cost for the clean heat standard was almost double what the actual cost turned out to be once that first report was challenged. Once they redid it with appropriate costs and benefits, the estimates said there would be a long-term benefit to Vermonters. No one has ever said that redressing climate change and its horrific effects on our planet would be easy and cheap! Humans have spent 175 years messing up our air, rivers, land and now the climate, and we do it to this day — so why would anyone think that we could address this situation overnight and that it would not cost us anything? The only claim advocates have made is that we must either address climate change or we will lose our gentle, loving, blue home planet. Her argument that we are at a dead-end cul-de-sac is a dead end of their own making, done in the interests of continuing their political supremacy. They would have us believe that there are ways with few costs and no […]