Chris Morrow represents the Windham-Bennington-Windsor district, which includes the Windham County town of Londonderry, in the Vermont House of Representatives. Keep in touch with him at morrowforvt@gmail.com.
WESTON-So much is going on in the world! Where to start?
I am a bit overwhelmed by the brazen, successful takedown of our First Amendment by the president and his minions at the Federal Communications Commission and elsewhere. It is staggering.
Despite my many disagreements with the president, I took solace in the fact that we had constitutional protections to bolster our civil society. Now those protections are threatened. Trump said in recent days that networks that air content critical of the president "should have their license revoked."
And ABC/Disney capitulated and, by suspending talk show host Jimmy Kimmel for several days, the company has been complicit in this dangerous degradation of our government institutions and our media ecosystem.
I wish George Carlin were alive to comment. These are dangerous times.
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What I had planned on discussing, given my assignment on the Energy and Digital Infrastructure Committee, is federal energy policy and its impact on Vermont energy prices.
The Trump administration is irrationally against so-called "alternative" energy, which supplied 92% of the new energy coming online last year in the U.S. Why? Because renewable energy is the least costly, cleanest, quickest, and easiest to deploy.
The president is waging a war on solar and wind in favor of fossil fuels, even to the point of shutting down an offshore wind farm in Connecticut that is 80% built with billions already invested.
There is no economic argument for his doing so - it is purely ideological. This decision will cost New England ratepayers an estimated $500 million annually! Even from Connecticut, this one decision will raise your electric rates in the coming years, because Vermont regularly buys electricity from the New England pool.
After decades of flat overall electricity demand due to increasing efficiency of appliances and lighting, we are now anticipating significant demand growth into the future due to data centers, AI, and the overall electrification of the economy (cars, water heaters, heat pumps, etc.).
So, from a policy perspective, we need to be doubling down on the least-cost options to quickly deploy more generation. Instead, the administration is promoting expensive, dirty, and slow-to-deploy generation options such as coal and gas. This policy will raise your electricity prices for years to come.
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The macro perspective is that just as the United States was beginning to develop a robust group of solar, wind, and battery companies, with many tens of thousands of good jobs, the Trump administration's actions are undermining U.S. competitiveness and ceding the solar and battery industries to China. This will undermine our competitiveness for many years.
I haven't even brought up climate change yet.
The world needs a massive transition to carbon-free energy sources to slow the progression of disruptive weather. Looking to the sky for some rain? This is not abstract; due to the wet spring and the severe drought since then, the apple crop in Vermont is expected to be half its usual yield. Our farmers are hurting.
Remember the big Paris climate deal reached 10 years ago to limit global warming to just 1.5 degrees Celsius? We are at 1.5 degrees now! And global emissions continue their incessant rise.
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I apologize for my gloomy mood, but I hope I was able to help show the implications of abstract federal policies on Vermont and on your cost of energy going forward. Needless to say, there is work to do!
Later in the fall I will comment on the implications for Vermont of the Big, Beautiful Bill that Congress passed a few months ago - namely, cuts in food, heat, and health care assistance for our most vulnerable neighbors and the large hole these policies will put in the state budget. Lean times ahead.
Right now, it is more important than ever that we take time for gratitude, joy, and celebration of the small and big things that are good. We live in a great state, and we can make it even better.
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