Editor’s note: This commentary is by Rebecca Foster, who is a member of the 350Vermont board, the Charlotte energy committee, and Just Power, and writes the periodic column Carpe Greenum.
I queued up White House online streaming to watch the president reject the Keystone XL pipeline project earlier this month. After seeing the president advocate for an “all of the above” energy strategy countless times over the years, I was interested but not overly excited, and somewhat skeptical. “If we want to prevent the worst effects of climate change before it’s too late, the time to act is now.” Yes, yes, nice words; we’ve heard them before.
And, then, he took my breath away: “Because ultimately, if we’re going to prevent large parts of this Earth from becoming not only inhospitable but uninhabitable in our lifetimes, we’re going to have to keep some fossil fuels in the ground.”
The president of the United States thereby accepted the argument Bill McKibben has been making for three years: Our very survival depends on keeping a large portion of known fossil fuel reserves in the ground. The impact of that moment — not the rejection of the Keystone pipeline itself — cracked the skepticism that had become ossified over increasing anxiety about climate change, and especially over the last 15 years of parenting along the treacherous razor’s edge of over- and under-informing my kids about the future. Into that crack poured the balm of hope that then filled my eyes — so uncharacteristically my husband asked, “What’s up, do you have a cold?”
At the Paris Climate Conference that begins today, world leaders are meeting for two weeks to grapple with a binding, universal agreement to prevent global temperatures from exceeding 2 degrees Celsius. We don’t know what will happen at the conference but, regardless, we are moving into a new era, and it’s not just the Keystone pipeline.
Ten days later came proof that investing in the fossil fuel industry is a catastrophic business decision. A new investor calculator tool called the Portfolio Decarbonizer found, for instance, that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation had lost almost $2 billion in three years because they remained invested in oil, gas and coal. “Not divesting has destroyed billions of dollars of investor wealth,” according to Corporate Knights, developer of the Decarbonizer. Closer to home, 350Vermont was able to calculate that Vermont’s pension fund lost $77 million in three years, shorting over 40,000 Vermont retirees, because it failed to divest. Those fossil fuel reserves that we know about but we’re going to leave in the ground, because we must? Bad investment — really bad.
Also this month, Climate Change Superhero Bernie Sanders co-sponsored the Keep It in the Ground Act that would prevent oil, gas and coal extraction in a variety of circumstances. Nobody with as high a profile as Bernie has linked climate change to global geopolitical dynamics, such as the refugee crisis. When a major presidential candidate has declared that climate change is the most pressing security issue, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund has divested, and Exxon is being investigated by the attorney general for lying, then climate change has emerged as the winner on The Planet’s Got Talent.
Amid all this, a quiet revolution in climate history was made in Portland, Oregon, when a resolution to end all new fossil fuel infrastructure within city limits was passed. As far as anyone can tell, it was unprecedented in the world, and now the buzz is about replicating the strategy in other cities. Who will be second? Could Vermont do such a thing?
People talk about Oregon and Vermont in similar, green, outdoorsy, progressive, foodie, slightly misty ways, and the population of Portland is about the same as the entire state of Vermont’s. Let’s use, then, the campaign to stop the expansion of the gas pipeline as a point of comparison and see how Vermont holds up to Portland.
How, in a little over a year, could the mayor of a major port city important to the fossil fuel industry go from advocating for a propane export terminal to pushing to stop all new fossil fuel infrastructure, while in three years the governor of a small state is unmoved by public outcry of the same magnitude?
The pipeline campaign has done everything here that activists did in Portland. Over the last three years (while the state pension fund was bleeding $77 million to the carbon industry), Vermonters have written thousands of comments to the Public Service Board; dominated every single public hearing held; successfully called for more hearings; emailed, called, and met with the governor (the equivalent of the mayor of Portland); filled foot after foot of column space in the papers; turned out hundreds for rallies while dozens put their bodies on the line, just like the “kayactavists” in Portland last summer. All this in a challenging geographic environment spread out across a rural state.
How, in a little over a year, could the mayor of a major port city important to the fossil fuel industry go from advocating for a propane export terminal to pushing to stop all new fossil fuel infrastructure, while in three years the governor of a small state is unmoved by public outcry of the same magnitude? If Shumlin had entered a cycle of virtue, like the mayor, and changed his position, he, too, might have been invited to the Vatican to meet the pope. But Shumlin threw in his lot with the outmoded fossil fuel industry and is relegated to trips to Gaz Metro headquarters in Montreal.
I doubt there is more determination among the activists in Portland than in Vermont, nor more heedless corporate abandon in Vermont’s gas utility than in the industry elsewhere. So what explains it?
It would be understandable if Shumlin and the gas company had a good case, but they don’t. The company has proven itself incapable of such a complex project, doubling its cost, changing engineers and contractors frequently, insisting that a project with a 35-plus year payoff is fiscally responsible, not admitting to future rate hikes, hiding project cost hikes, using figures that don’t reflect the lower cost of oil, and so on. The numbers are laughable, and more laughable all the time. None of it holds up to serious scrutiny, and that’s without even questioning the big picture wisdom of building more fossil fuel infrastructure when history is turning against it.
The problem with going ahead with a mistake such as the pipeline is that it lasts forever. As one lead activist from 350PDX said, we’ve run out of time and we can’t afford to treat gas as a bridge fuel. Understanding this too, Vermonters will not give up even though the task is requiring more than rational arguments.
I find myself thinking about the recent study on each state in the union by the Center for Public Integrity and how Vermont came in 48th out of 50 in executive accountability. That point resonates, at least assuming that the accountability being measured is to the public. Judging by how enthusiastically Shumlin’s Department of Public Service greases the skids for the gas utility, Vermont would surely get a top score in accountability to the utilities.
No question that the pipeline has faltered. It was supposed to be completed by now so that Vermont Gas could start collecting its guaranteed almost 10 percent profit. But it’s not definitively dead. It would seem that the pipeline has endured not because it’s rational or good, but because once the governor and his department decreed it, they made themselves unaccountable to the public.
The state’s problems revealed by the Center for Public Integrity are surely deep and will take some undoing. There is one way, however, that the Public Service Board can show immediately that it stands apart from the poor performance of Vermont’s executive branch: Reject the blatant gambit by the utility and the department to concoct a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that pretends to hold costs down while committing to nothing and pressuring the board to affirm the pipeline.
Four days’ worth of taxpayer money is being squandered Dec. 1, 2, 9 and 10 at PSB hearings in Montpelier to decide whether or not to admit the MOU as valid evidence. Vermonters will be there, yet again, calling for the rejection of the MOU and, with it, the beginning of a new era of straight dealings, transparency and accountability.
No wonder Vermont Gas wants a decision quickly. Time and history are against them. Throwing more money at fossil fuels is becoming harder to defend by the day, and acknowledging that is Vermont’s moment of truth.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Rebecca Foster: Fossil fuel reality check.