Climate change–fueled weather demands action now, sez Sarah Copeland Hanzas — annotated

Sarah Copeland Hanzas was a Vermont House member for 18 years before being elected as Secretary of State in 2022. This commentary, reproduced here in full with notes following, was published in several news outlets (without the notes).

Vermonters have always rallied to protect and care for our friends and neighbors in a crisis. I am grateful for Governor Scott’s calm and measured response when Vermont is in crisis. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Governor Scott followed the science and took the appropriate steps, despite considerable opposition,^a to keep Vermonters safe and to prevent a greater tragedy. Now, we need the same courage and focus as we grapple with flood recovery and take action to address the underlying forces of climate change^b that drove its severity.

So far this summer, Vermont has seen a record heat wave in May,^c the state’s worst air quality in history in June, and recently a record rainstorm^e that dumped as much as two months of normal rain on towns around the state in just over a day.

And this is clearly the new normal^f for Vermont as the impacts of global warming hit us. Nolan Atkins, the former chair of the atmospheric sciences department at Vermont State University said: “In a warmer world and a warmer climate, [we should expect] these more frequent and more intense weather events.”

Yet despite the science, and clear evidence of increasingly severe weather, the Governor has vetoed every major piece of climate legislation the Vermont Legislature has put before him in recent years. We need Governor Scott to direct state agencies to recognize the climate emergency and treat climate action with the same emergency response and focus we are seeing right now during the floods, and that we did during Vermont’s Covid response.^g

As the former co-chair of the Legislature’s Climate Solution Caucus, I traveled throughout the state listening to Vermonters’ concerns about the looming impacts of global warming and the urgent need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. I heard over and over that if we don’t act on climate and curb our emissions we will run out of time; we will be too consumed by the effects of climate change to focus on transitioning to renewable energy.^h

I have seen our pragmatic Governor do a policy pivot when faced with an emergency. After the shooting threat in Fair Haven High School, he was a constructive and supportive partner for meaningful gun safety reforms.

It is time for the Governor to pivot on climate policy. There are a few simple things the Governor can do right now to make a difference and help Vermont be a leader in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. And more importantly, prevent greater tragedy.

First, the Governor should direct his appointees on the Climate Council to shift to an emergency response.ⁱ The most immediate and constructive action he could take at this moment is to make sure Vermonters whose heating systems were destroyed in the flood are encouraged and incentivized to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy.^j Let’s help provide loaner heating systems to get through the upcoming heating season and accelerate our investment in our green energy workforce. This will not only speed up Vermont’s green energy transition but also create jobs; we can combat climate change and help Vermont’s economy at the same time.

Second, direct his Agency of Natural Resources and Department of Public Service to become willing partners in implementing the Clean Heat Standard to help all Vermonters transition from fossil fuels for heating and cooling their homes and businesses. Over one-third of Vermont’s greenhouse gas emissions come from heating and cooling our homes and businesses. Despite this, Governor Scott and his administration have inexplicably been an anchor in getting this groundbreaking initiative into action.

And third, support legislation to ensure Vermont gets 100% of its electricity from renewable energy by the end of the decade. With the passage of President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, wind and solar power are cheaper than ever^k and price competitive with new natural gas. Vermont needs to do its part to clean up its electric sector and end our environmentally unjust practice of importing our power from oil- and natural gas–burning plants in low-income communities in Massachusetts and Connecticut.

I’m not saying it’s simple and easy, I understand firsthand the challenges rural Vermonters face in heating their homes and getting to work. But if we think transitioning to renewable heating and transportation is inconvenient or possibly a little more expensive, just look around at what we will be facing if we don’t.^l Can we afford not to?

-------------------

^a“despite considerable opposition” — Actually, the considerable opposition was that he wasn’t draconian and dictatorial enough.

^b“to address the underlying forces of climate change” — The earth revolves around the sun with a tilted axis, thus causing the seasons, and turns on that axis, thus causing day and night. These cause weather.

^c“Vermont has seen a record heat wave in May” — And then it was over. We’re looking at a rather cool end of July and early August.

^d“the state’s worst air quality in history in June” — Canadian forest fires, which we can hardly do anything about.

^e“a record rainstorm” — Well, no, it wasn’t.

^f“clearly the new normal” — If you were born yesterday.

^g“We need Governor Scott to direct state agencies to recognize the climate emergency and treat climate action with the same emergency response and focus we are seeing right now during the floods, and that we did during Vermont’s Covid response.” — That “emergency response” to Covid was futile and harmful, as indeed is almost all of the “climate legislation” that the legislature has passed. In fact, Montpelier, along with other towns on rivers regularly floods and businesses bounce back. But they are only now recovering from that Covid response and don’t have the resilience and resources they would have otherwise.

^h“transitioning to renewable energy” — From normal New England weather to CO₂ emissions as the culprit to renewable energy as the solution, this is a study in non sequitur. It is telling that as co-chair of the Legislature’s Climate Solution Caucus, she heard only people clamoring for what she is here clamoring for.

ⁱ“shift to an emergency response” — If everyone is already clamoring, it most certainly does not require an emergency response to force it on them. This “emergency response” is required precisely because people like to make their own decisions about how their homes are heated, weighing costs and benefits for their individual situation. Again, that “Covid emergency” was similarly imposed precisely to prevent people from making personal risk-benefit decisions, even to punish people for insisting on their right to make such decisions for themselves.

^j“replace fossil fuels with renewable energy” — What is she talking about? She means replacing systems that burn fuel on site to provide warmth with electric space heaters. Granted, in Vermont, much of that electricity is from Canadian hydro, but the expanded demand of electric heat (and cars) will be provided by burning natural gas, converting a fraction of the released energy to electricity, transporting that electricity over powerlines at further loss, and then converting it back to heat. The inefficiency compared to burning fossil fuels on site is staggering, not to mention insanely bad policy.

Furthermore, every Vermonter knows that they need to be prepared for power outages, which can sometimes last for days. Depending on electricity for anything that you don’t have to is simply foolish. You will effectively be replacing efficient fossil-fuel systems with increased reliance on fossil fuel–powered back-up generators.

^k“wind and solar power are cheaper than ever” — In fact, wind and solar are only getting more expensive. They completely depend on subsidies from taxpayers and ratepayers to be built at all.

^l“just look around at what we will be facing if we don’t” — And we close with the veiled threat, based on the false premises the whole essay started with. “We’ll make sure you can’t afford not to make the choices we make for you.”

[[[[ ]]]]

From The History of Athens Vermont, Lora Wyman, 1963:

«Freshets and floods occurred too frequently down the years to mention more than a sample of them. A few that did the most extensive damage to Athens were the freshet of Oct. 4, 1869; the great blizzard of Mar. 12, 1888; the floods of 1927, 1936; and the great hurricane of 1938. Practically all adults living today can remember the destruction caused by the hurricane of 1938. In Athens countless trees were blown down, the roof on Henry Ward’s milk house and one side of the barn were blown off. A small bridge near Camp Nai-neh-ta was washed away and abutments on others were weakened. About one-half mile of the main road to Cambridgeport, parallel with the brook above Brookside bungalow was washed away. Traffic was detoured around the road past the David Karlson farm. Two of Ned Wyman’s 10′ × 12′ chicken houses on the lower road, floated down stream, one lodging in a tangle of brush. Next morning, expecting to find the 50 or more chicks housed inside drowned, Mr. Wyman happily discovered them all perched on the roost above the water, waiting for breakfast.»

Also see: 1816: The Year Without a Summer

ICE protesters – the Koch brothers’ useful idiots

(comments on article by Bob Audette, Brattleboro Reformer, July 30, 2019: ICE protesters won't be 'complicit')

‘A pair of southern Vermont women were among the 20 people arrested and cited with disorderly conduct for protesting at the Law Enforcement Support Center on Harvest Lane in Williston on Sunday.

‘The center is operated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and according to its website is "the largest investigative agency in the Department of Homeland Security." ...’

[Photo Provided by Nancy Braus]

Yes, seeking asylum is legal. But working while your case is being considered, not showing up for your hearing, and staying in the country after your application is rejected – that’s illegal.

‘Chapman estimated more than 700 people attended the Never Again Means #ShutDownICE march and protest.

‘The 20 people were arrested after they formed two human chains to block employees of the facility from coming and going into the building.

‘"History clearly displays the horrors of what happens when civilization does not stand up to a government that has fixed on dehumanizing and stripping a select group of people of their civil and human rights," wrote Chapman on her personal Facebook page. ...

‘"It was not right in 1940s Germany, it was not right when the American government put Japanese-Americans in internment camps, it was not right when we colonized indigenous people and kidnapped their children, and it is not right now," [said Karlyn Ellis of Bennington]. ...’

Why the worry now? Nothing like that is actually happening.

‘Ellis said the local police, by arresting the protesters, "support concentration camps by default."

‘"There is no longer any room for nuance," she said. "Any citizen who does not take action against ICE who has the means to is complicit in fascist violence, complicit in the abuse of children."

‘Chapman said she knows she will be subject to criticism for her "lawlessness," but is willing to engage in a conversation with people who don't agree with her or her methods.’

Conversation requires room for nuance, so her engagement would likely be along the lines of this demonstration: not only nuance free, but largely fact free as well.

‘"I would ask them to put themselves in their shoes and imagine if they had to flee to Canada and Canada was treating them the way we are treating refugees and asylum seekers," she said.’

Canada actually enforces their asylum laws: You can’t work while awaiting a decision, they keep track of you, and they deport you and forbid your entry ever again when your application is rejected.

‘... "The economic and political policies of the Trump Administration," reads a statement issued at the time of the Sunday protest, "have devastated Latin America and other parts of the world, driving millions of people to find sanctuary in the U.S. Once here, they have been met with super-exploitation as cheap criminalized labor, racist and xenophobic discrimination, threats of detention and deportation, and now under Trump, incarceration in concentration camps throughout the country."’

Unlike the previous administration and its first Secretary of State (say their names: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton), Trump has not overthrown any elected governments in Latin America. The current surge of migration began 10 years ago, after Obama and Clinton helped oust Manuel Zelaya from Honduras. Corporatists like the Koch Brothers then welcome the cheap exploitable labor they provide to undercut the bargaining power of U.S. workers. Illegal labor is exactly what both Dems and Repubs have turned a blind eye to for decades, as it keeps their investments growing. It is the opposite of compassion that argues for opening the floodgates. (Obama and Clinton also helped overthrow Lula da Silva and then Dilma Rousseff in Brazil and ensured the election of reactionary Lenín Moreno in Ecuador. They also caused the overwhelming refugee crisis in Europe after their destruction of Libya and attempted destruction of Syria.)

‘"Grabbing children and babies from their parents and throwing them in cages without diapers or mattresses is not something we should accept," said [Nancy Braus, who owns and operates Everyone's Books on Elliot Street in Brattleboro]. "We can't live with this level of injustice." ...’

First, thanks to useful idiot denial there aren't adequate facilities for housing families going through the asylum process. Second, if it can’t be proved that the adult (usually just one – who is traveling with one child, separated from their family) is in fact the parent or legal guardian, they must by law be separated. Third, “without diapers or mattresses” – mostly a blatant lie, and again, any shortage is due to useful idiot denial that there is any crisis – the same false compassion that actually protested a company providing needed new beds.

The misjudgement of history

The ever-tedious columnist at Vermont Digger, David Moats, 2001 Pulitzer Prize winner, invokes a fire and brimstone judgement of history on border detention facilities. He even pulls in 2005 Pulitzer Prize winner Marilynne Robinson to argue how loving and tolerant the Puritans were.

Reader Ruby Bode commented:

Marilynne Robinson’s apologia for the Puritans would appear to be an apologia in fact for the new McCarthyist witch hunt triggered by Trump winning the 2016 election, an attempt to bestow the moral righteousness of, e.g., John Brown (cf. Robinson’s “Gilead”) on antidemocratic sore losers. But she compares two actual governing codes (both from the south, of course [no apologia for those bastards!]) to a “list of proposals for good government written by the Puritan Hugh Peter”. Since the Puritans are indeed “commonly viewed as sexually repressed, witch-burning hysterics” (because they were), it would have been more interesting to explore the differences between Peter’s ideals and the realities of Puritan government.

[That’s exactly what the border issue is about: ideals versus reality.]

Bode also commented:

When you cross any border with a child, you have to have proof that you are the parent or legal guardian. That’s why “families” are separated until it can be determined that they are in fact families. If that weren’t done, there would be an outcry for not bothering to check. Furthermore, it’s rarely a whole “family” coming over. It’s usually just one parent and one child, who has been separated from the rest of the family to be used cynically as a prop to better game the famously laxly enforced border laws of the USA. As to the conditions of detention, Trump has been requesting [from day 1] the needed funding to adequately respond to the surges of would-be refugees, but the Dems (and many Repubs) have refused. One might think they would rather see children suffer so they can have something to grandstand on and beat up Trump about. Finally, there’s a big difference between immigration and illegally crossing the border.

[I would add that nobody among these New Puritans seems to be suggesting any solution other than shutting the whole legal system down, opening the borders (in only one direction of course) and giving anybody coming in full rights of residency, no limits, with no concern for American workers (immigrants recent and long ago) and plenty of profits for Wall St.]

Another reader, William Workman, commented:

Over and over, Democrats have overplayed their hands. They used the outrage over child separations to push catch-and-release of another 100,000 illegal immigrants. Trump blurs the line between illegal immigrants and hardened criminals, so Democrats blur the line between legal and illegal immigrants. Now every major Democratic candidate is on record as supporting decriminalizing border crossings, offering free health care, no deportations even for illegals violating court orders, and a path to citizenship. Now this column, which equates safely and respectfully deporting Vermont’s illegals with concentration camps. As though the law itself were immaterial.

Here’s another comment by Bode, to a commentary by writer Dan Close:

What about everyone who has refused to accept the result of the 2016 election? The elected and other officials who have pursued witch hunts and domestic regime change instead of embracing the workings of democracy? Those, like Dan Close, who cannot be honest about anything concerning President Trump, as if we have not had an increasingly imperial Presidency since Reagan? Trump is actually more lawful, much more transparent, and more progressive (regarding trade to benefit American workers instead of Wall St and war – no new ones, not even an actual coup, so far) than his predecessors, both Republican and Democrat. If any[one] burns down the Reichstag, so to speak, it will be the Dems themselves – after committing to the destructive agendas of neoliberalism and neoconservativism – so they can blame it on Trump. It is dangerous projection.

Trump said that wind turbines cause cancer!

Do stress and lack of sleep contribute to the development of cancer, as with other diseases?  Yes.

Does wind turbine noise raise stress levels and disrupt sleep?  Yes.

The World Health Organization has recognized the importance to health of uninterrupted sleep and has recommended outdoor noise limits for wind turbines: <https://wind-watch.org/doc/?p=5227>

It’s very difficult to be definite about any environmentally caused illness, because so many variables are involved. But reports have been consistent since around 2000, when the size of wind turbines increased dramatically, of many people suffering a similar set of symptoms after nearby wind turbines start operating. When they leave the area, they experience relief from the overt symptoms (eg, headache, dizziness, feeling of pressure, stress, depression, irritability). The cause is thus quite obvious.

Pets and other animals are similarly affected.

Dr. Nina Pierpont coined the term “Wind Turbine Syndrome” for those symptoms, which also include sleep disturbance and deprivation, tinnitus (ringing in ears), ear pressure, vertigo, nausea, visual blurring, tachycardia (fast heart rate), irritability, problems with concentration and memory, and panic episodes associated with sensations of movement or quivering inside the body. She attributed these effects to inner ear disturbances caused by infrasound and low-frequency noise (ILFN), akin to motion sickness.

As with motion sickness, people have different sensitivities, which also complicates the epidemiology.

Interested acoustical engineers then began measuring ILFN near large wind turbines and did indeed find that pulsing ILFN is a characteristic component of their noise.

In fact, the phenomenon had been documented in the early 1980s by NASA scientists investigating complaints by neighbors of an experimental large wind turbine (which size was not available commercially until around 2000).

See: “Health Effects of Noise from Large Wind Turbines”

In December 2011, Denmark added a 20-dBA limit on low-frequency noise (10–160 Hz) inside homes.

In Portugal, researchers led by Mariana Alves-Pereira have studied longer-term physical changes in the lungs, heart, and muscles caused by ILFN. They called it “vibroacoustic disease” and have documented conditions near wind turbines that are as bad as for the cases they studied of people living near heavy industrial sites.

The science is still relatively new, but the effect of noise, whether audible or infrasonic, is increasingly recognized as a valid concern in siting wind turbines near homes and places of work.

For example, in 2017 Vermont implemented a nighttime limit of 39 dBA 100 feet from any nonparticipating residence with the goal of keeping the interior sound level below 30 dBA. See also: <http://wndfo.net/ords>

[Also see:  “Wind farms do make you sick” (Irish Daily Mail, 16 Oct 2015)]

Viewpoints

This week’s The Commons, out of Brattleboro, Vermont, dedicates its “Voices” section to “The Supreme Court Hearings and the Trauma of Sexual Assault”, asking “What do the Kavanaugh hearings say about our politics and how our society treats survivors who have suffered in silence?”

Although there are 5 “Viewpoints”, 1 regular column, and 3 letters, only one viewpoint is presented, however. There is no questioning of the assumptions behind their theme. For example, maybe the Supreme Court hearing had nothing at all to do with the trauma of sexual assault except in the minds of those forcing the issue in to derail it. And maybe that’s what speaks more about our politics and how our society treats survivors, such as cynically using them to achieve a political end – or mere campaign event – that has nothing to do with actually helping victims of sexual assault.

Of course, in this atmosphere, who would dare to raise such views, such a voice, and incur the wrath of the whipped-up mob?

Shortsighted and dangerous

Olaf Errwigge writes in The Commons in response to Michael Bosworth, “Which price do we pay? Keeping additional industrial-scale wind power out of our region is shortsighted and dangerous. Is there any middle ground?”:

Bosworth’s earnest appeal first requires that his premises be examined. Is wind energy actually “economically efficient” or “acutely needed”? Is the price actually just “some soil disturbance, some bird mortality”? Does it actually bring “significant benefits”?

Wind is a diffuse, intermittent, and highly variable resource, so there is no way that it can be economically efficient or have only moderate adverse impacts, because massive machines over vast (rural and wild) areas are required to collect any meaningful amount. The Windham Regional Commission Energy Plan clearly notes the unavoidable habitat destruction and fragmentation as well as many other environmental impacts:

“Wind turbine placement can be difficult and controversial because of natural resource impacts, aesthetics, noise, and the need for placement at elevations of 2,500-3,300 feet, locations in Vermont that tend to be sensitive with thin soils and steep slopes. The windiest areas in the region are most often on the higher-elevation ridgelines that are sensitive habitats for plants and wildlife, and are the source of the region’s most pristine headwaters. In areas where road access does not exist, new permanent roads must be built to service the wind facility. Other potentially negative environmental impacts include bird and bat mortality, habitat disruption and fragmentation, erosion, pollution from facility maintenance, turbine noise, and visual flicker.

“Given the nature of utility-scale wind development, which involves considerable blasting, road building, and other permanent alterations of the landscape and surface hydrology, it is deemed to be incompatible with the two aforementioned land use designations [ie, Resource Lands and Productive Rural Lands].”

And benefits? Its intermittency and high variability require that wind be 100% backed up by other sources. Wind serves as only a feel-good add-on to an electrical system that has to be able to work without it anyway, ready to kick in when the wind drops, and standing by to continuously balance its erratic feed. Those other sources do so at a cost to their own efficiency.

In short, the benefits of large-scale wind power are virtually nil, and the adverse impacts are substantial. It is certainly not "shortsighted and dangerous" to recognize that reality and to discourage such a destructive and unhelpful form of energy development.

The (dishonest) madness of George Harvey

Once again (actually, no doubt more than once (see next paragraph), but once more it comes to this writer’s attention) George Harvey betrays his inability to acknowledge any adverse impacts of the energy alternatives he advocates for by setting up a straw man from which he launches an ad hominem dismissal and proceeds to change the subject with his usual non sequitur pabulum.

Harvey maintains a blog, cohosts a community television show, and writes for Green Energy Times, and the first piece referred to here was reprinted in The (Windsor County, Vermont) Commons newspaper from the Clean Technica web site. In fact it was reprinted also in the issue of Green Energy Times (in which issue 13 articles were penned by Harvey) that this writer picked up for another headline (see next two paragraphs). Thus the central example here is unlikely to be unusual.

The headline that caught our eye was “Hanover [N.H.] Pledges to Go 100% Renewable: How Are They Going to Do It?” by Rick Wackernagel. It is not a short article, yet it does not describe how “they are going to do it”. The few plans mentioned are, besides throwing up solar panels everywhere, mostly installing heat pumps, thus switching from fossil fuel burned efficiently on site to electricity (fossil fuel burned inefficiently off site). The one specific plan is that Dartmouth College will replace diesel in its steam heating system with “biofuel”, possibly from Dartmouth’s forests in the White Mountains in the ridiculous accounting by which mowing down forests is credited as “green”. Even this very issue of Green Energy Times mentions (in a book review) the importance of forest protection in reversing climate change and (in a rant against noise regulations for giant wind turbines) the contribution of deforestation to global warming. (The latter writer apparently exempts turning forested mountain ridgelines into energy plants.)

Nowhere is there mention of cutting the town off from the regional grid, so the fact is that they will still get the same electricity as everyone else in New England. Commendably, they plan to use less of it – along with less of other fuels – but “100%” will doubt rely mostly on buying the Enron-invented scam of “green tags”.

Back to George Harvey, ... actually, we have already said all that needs to be said about the piece of his originally mentioned, titled “The Sound of Wind Turbines and the Horror of Genocide”: He sets up a straw man from which he launches an ad hominem dismissal of all dissent and proceeds to change the subject with non sequitur pabulum.

There is, however, another piece by Harvey in the same issue that is actually informative. It is about research to reduce methane emissions from ruminant – particularly cows’ – digestion by adding seaweed to their diet. The results are reported to be quite dramatic, even to the claim of eliminating 99% of the methane.

Yet Harvey neglects to mention that the methane from cows is only part of the climate change contribution and environmental destruction of animal agriculture, which is the leading cause also of deforestation, species loss, water depletion, and ocean dead zones – none of which are due to their flatulence. The subtitle of Harvey’s article invokes helping to save the planet, but it is only about reducing one source of methane emissions, not at all about actually saving the planet. It is about “greenwashing” one of the planet’s primary destroyers.

VPIRG and its sham of a carbon tax

It gives 90% of it back, so what was the point? And it doesn't tax cows.

The carbon tax is part of VPIRG's summer campaign focus, so here's a short piece about it from 2014:

Comments on the Vermont campaign for a carbon tax
In short, it's a merely symbolic gesture primarily designed for fundraising.

Letter in support of proposed wind turbine sound rules

To the Clerk of the Vermont Public Service Board:

I support the proposed wind turbine sound rules as a first step to protect the aural environment of our mountains.

As you know, a quiet rural night in Vermont is likely to have a sound level of only 25 dBA or even less. An increase in ambient noise of 5 dB is recognized as a cause of widespread complaints. So limiting the sound level at night to 35 dBA is not severe but actually rather lenient.

The proposed rule does not address low-frequency noise, which Denmark (the world's leader in wind energy technology and implementation) since 2011 has limited to 20 dBA indoors (10-160 Hz).

Infrasound (which is not heard but instead felt) is also a concern, with many acoustic engineers determining that a C-weighted indoor limit of 50 dB is necessary to protect health.

Nor does the proposed rule address amplitude modulation, the distinct "swish" or "thump" of large wind turbines. In the UK, planning permission for the Den Brook project included a rule to limit amplitude modulation: A 125-ms pulse of 3 dBA or greater (3 dB being the difference in noise level detectable by the human ear) can not occur in any 2-second period five or more times in six or more minutes of any hour, when those minute-long average noise levels are 28 dBA or more.

While these limits, as well as the proposed setback of 10 times the total height from residences (which should be at least 15 times the height, and from property lines, so that people can enjoy all of their property), begin to protect human neighbors, they do nothing to protect the wildlife of the mountains, who in most cases are much more sensitive to sound than humans.

[See also:  Proposal and comments for implementing a rule regarding sound from wind generation projects, by Stephen Ambrose]

Vermont Digger and Vermont politicians aid and abet anti-Russia hysteria

Erin Mansfield at Vt. Digger, while mostly furthering the dangerous, hysterical, and utterly unfounded ‘Russia is attacking’ narrative, nevertheless wrote:

An attempt to reach Neale Lunderville, the general manager of Burlington Electric, was unsuccessful. ...

Both Burlington Electric and state officials say the grid was not affected. ...

Green Mountain Power and Vermont Electric Co-op also participated in the Department of Homeland Security’s rigorous “risk vulnerability assessment” and found no threat to electric grid systems.

Gov. Peter Shumlin said his office has been in communication with the federal government and Vermont utilities about the incident.

Despite that reported communication, Shumlin stated:

Vermonters and all Americans should be both alarmed and outraged that one of the world’s leading thugs, Vladimir Putin, has been attempting to hack our electric grid, which we rely upon to support our quality-of-life, economy, health, and safety. This episode should highlight the urgent need for our federal government to vigorously pursue and put an end to this sort of Russian meddling. I call upon the federal government to conduct a full and complete investigation of this incident and undertake remedies to ensure that this never happens again.

Sen. Patrick Leahy stated that ‘he believes the Russian hackers were “trying to access utilities to potentially manipulate the grid and shut it down in the middle of winter. That is a direct threat to Vermont and we do not take it lightly.”’

Rep. Peter Welch stated that ‘the attack “shows how rampant Russian hacking is. It’s systemic, relentless, predatory. They will hack everywhere, even Vermont, in pursuit of opportunities to disrupt our country. We must remain vigilant, which is why I support President Obama’s sanctions against Russia and its attacks on our country and what it stands for.”’

The Editor of Vt. Digger, Anne Galloway, who ‘believe[s] the [Washington] Post to be a reputable source’, casuistically defended the article and lack of retraction even after the Post itself published a correction after days of ridicule:

VTDigger never reported that there was a hack of the grid, only that Russians had used malware to hack a computer at BED. ... We did not report that the Russian government was behind the attack. Vermont politicians appear [to have] jumped to that conclusion, as did the Obama administration. We have no way of knowing if the Russian government was involved. That’s the purview of security officials. We can only quote others on that score. Based on these facts, our story is correct. Other news outlets, including Bloomberg, NPR, AP and ABC News, among others have published stories nearly identical to ours. ... While BED was not hacked, one of the utility’s computers, which was not attached to the grid, or the company’s customer information system, was. A nuance that seems to have been missed by many astute readers. ... At this point, I don’t see the need for a correction.

In short, ‘Russians’ is just a friendly word for all hackers, just as all malicious code is ‘Russian’ and any random infection is ‘hacking’. Any suggestion that the Russian government is implied is the fault of the reader, who should pay more heed to the opinions of their own government and its media mouthpieces.

One commenter wrote in reply (edited for sense):

The article begins: ‘Russian hackers penetrated a computer at the Burlington Electric Department that is not connected to the electrical grid, officials say. Burlington Electric found out about the malware when the U.S. Department of Homeland Security notified the utility about a hacking campaign called Grizzly Steppe.’

Acceptance – and reinforcement – of both the DHS storyline and the anti-Russia hysteria of the Democratic Party and their Republican allies could not be more clear.

A more neutral report might read: ‘A virus scan of computers at BED, prompted by the DHS, recently found malware code on one laptop. The laptop was not connected to the electrical grid. The code matches samples provided by the DHS as evidence of an alleged Russian-government hacking campaign that the DHS calls “Grizzly Steppe.” Independent cybersecurity experts, however, have characterized the malware as “off-the-shelf” code that is years old.’

Social, economic, and environmental justice are not just words.

State Representative Mike Mrowicki writes in The (Brattleboro, Vt.) Commons …

In this coming election, Donald Trump is only the tip of the iceberg.

The bigger problem we face in this election are all the Donald Trumps, who collectively tanked the economy in 2007 by behaviors that (as the presidential candidate Trump said) represented a good way to make money. In his words, it was “good business.”

It sure says something when trashing the world economy is thought of selfishly as “good business.”

[But who is the candidate of Wall Street, as reflected in her close – and personally very lucrative – relationship with Goldman Sachs and others?]

Similarly, it is all the Donald Trumps who use war and the military-industrial complex as the biggest drain on our economy and sense of safety.

[But who is the candidate of Endless War, as reflected by her overwhelming support by imperialist neocons? Which candidate is demonizing Russia in a throwback to McCarthyist jingoism?]

It is all the Donald Trumps of this country (and world) who are the real welfare cheats. If you look at tax breaks or tax expenditures for the wealthy, what just one of them withholds from tax and hides offshore would probably cover any aid to needy families for this whole state.

[But what candidate’s campaign does not depend on the riches available from those (legal) arrangements? And which candidate runs a “charity” (with its tax benefits) as a bribe-laundering service?]

It is all the Donald Trumps of the world who maintain the current medical system that profits on those who can afford it least and, in essence, creates rationing of health care and a two-tiered system of care: one for the wealthy and the other for those who can’t quite afford insurance, co-pays, deductibles, or medicines.

[But which candidate consistently mocks the idea of single-payer (while Trump has expressed support)?]

And it is all the Donald Trumps of the world who reinforce the current status quo of economic, social, and environmental injustice. In that way, they maintain their oligarchic, neo-Calvinist stranglehold on the inequities that allow them to hold the power of the pocketbook and keep the system as is.

[But which candidate is running precisely on continuing that status quo, on expanding those injustices, who defends NAFTA and praises the TPP and similar trade treaties, who promotes fracking, who (after promoting welfare and crime and bankruptcy “reforms” that particularly harmed minorities and women) exploits identity politics to divide people from each other, whose supporters attack and demean everyone who doesn't fall into step behind her?]

When now-Sen. Bernie Sanders started his Vermont campaign for justice back in the 1980s, he spoke of the same inequities and injustices that he carried forth into his presidential campaign this year.

His influence on changing and growing the Democratic platform has moved the mainstream to recognize those injustices. He is keeping the effort moving toward real progress on these issues that all the Donald Trumps are fighting against.

[Along with his supporters, Sanders was smeared and mocked and derided by the Clinton campaign. Whereas Trump is squarely against NAFTA-like trade deals that harm the middle class, and is squarely against imperialist military escapades that squander our common wealth to benefit only the military industry (and their investors [see Wall Street]). There was more in common between Trump and Sanders than between Sanders and Clinton, but Sanders, too, derided Trump and betrayed a shameful snobbery.]

I will be voting for those issues of social, economic, and environmental justice as I cast a vote for Hillary Clinton and down-ticket Democrats. ...

[With every election cycle since Bill Clinton’s first year as President, the Democrats provide more reason not to vote for them. Any of them. Social, economic, and environmental justice are not just words. And the actions of Democrats betray them. (See Obama and whistleblowers, drones, pipelines, arctic drilling.)]

[How would Mike Mrowicki respond to this Justin Raimondo piece at antiwar.com, “Trump’s Three Points for Peace”?]

[The iceberg of deplorable government includes Democrats as well as Republicans.]

Vermont Health Connect: “Current wait times are 90 minutes”

We have had working health insurance coverage for the past couple of years (unlike in 2014), but now we have moved and need to change the billing address.

I go to the Vermont Health Connect web site and click "Report a Life Change" to learn: "These changes should be reported by calling Vermont Health Connect toll-free at 1-855-899-9600 or by logging into your account and reporting your change online." I log in with the result: "An unexpected error occurred. Please contact an administrator." And "Contact Us: Have questions or want to find out more? Tel: (855) 899-9600."

I call. I wait. I give up. I call again a couple days later, wait, give up. I call again and add my number to a queue to be called back "within 3 business days". [Update:  One week later, no callback.]

[Update, Sept. 12:  Two weeks later, no callback. The web site now says that one can report "life changes" on line. So I logged in to my account (trying Opera after receiving the message that "There was some technical error processing your request" in Firefox, and then in Opera being forced to reset the password), got to the irritating terms page, and clicked "Next" — to receive the message that "An unexpected error occurred. Please contact an administrator." Called: "Estimated wait time is greater than 90 minutes." Left another request for callback (an option that is offered only after a couple minutes of waiting).]

[Update, Sept. 23:  They called back! But we were out. That was on Sept. 15. Nothing since. Governor Shumlin defended the whole mess yesterday: "nearly 9 in 10 customers seeking to report a life change 'experience a smooth process,' he said." So I went on line again to report my change of address, and now I couldn't even log in. So I called again (to set up another callback). One of Shumlin's improvements appears to have been to no longer provide an estimated wait time, and after a few minutes there was no longer an option to request a callback. I was planning to wait 5 minutes, and just before that cut-off, someone answered! They have our new address!]

[Update, Oct. 21:  This month's premium notice was sent to our old address. I called VHC (no wait at all!) to confirm that they have the new one, which they do, so maybe it will arrive correctly next month.]

Meanwhile, this month's premium invoice was sent to our old address and instead of being forwarded to us by the Post Office it was returned to Vermont Health Connect who then sent it to our new address with a note about changing the address. We at last received it 1 day before payment was due.

So I called the telephone number provided with the invoice for credit/debit card payment. I should not have been surprised to learn that here, too, "current wait times are 90 minutes".

So I will send the premium payment by mail, trust the assurances from last year that there is a 90-day grace period before coverage is cancelled and current implications that a change of address does not require a complete new application. One also hopes that the address change manages to be made before next month's premium invoice goes out.

Again, before the "Affordable Care Act", so-called Obamacare, Vermont had an excellent functioning state-run health insurance program that through an income-based range of premiums provided near-universal coverage. It wasn't perfect, but it was a system that made living in Vermont very worthwhile. To improve on it, the state had long pursued a true universal single-payer system, electing Peter Shumlin as Governor in 2006 on the promise to implement it. Because of Shumlin's belief, however, that people could not handle the information that they would pay taxes for health insurance instead of paying more in premiums to private insurers whose business is to deny care, the details – and final legislative action – were continually postponed.

Then came Obamacare in 2010, with no provision for states with better systems to keep them. There was no effort by Shumlin or the state's Congressmembers to protect Vermont's system. So money and effort had to be spent to set up the "Obamacare Exchange" (which still doesn't work), and delays and ballooning expenses were justified by the 2-track project of preparing for the coming single-payer system. On May 26, 2011, Shumlin had signed the bill to enact single-payer health insurance.

Finally, Shumlin was re-elected (barely) in 2014 for a third term on the promise that the final plan was to be revealed in December (after the election). Instead, on December 17, he announced that single-payer was dead. It was dead because he was never ready to fight for the payroll taxes to pay for it. He pretended that the need for those taxes was a new discovery, but it was well known from the beginning that such taxes would be the means of funding it. Public advocacy groups had long been explaining to people that the new taxes would be substantially less than current premiums, but the state took no part in that information program. Business owners praised Shumlin, and a few months later he endorsed Hillary Clinton for President and then that he would not seek re-election in 2016.

Shumlin was elected to enact single-payer health insurance in Vermont. Instead, he killed it. Never trust a Democrat.

[Update, Oct. 24:  “Obama administration announces double-digit premium hikes for Affordable Care Act” (PBS News Hour): ‘Before taxpayer-provided subsidies, premiums for a midlevel benchmark plan will increase an average of 25 percent across the 39 states served by the federally run online market, according to a report from the Department of Health and Human Services. … Moreover, about 1 in 5 consumers will only have plans from a single insurer to pick from, after major national carriers such as UnitedHealth Group, Humana and Aetna scaled back their roles. … While many carriers are offering a choice of plan designs, most use a single prescription formulary and physician network across all their products, explained [Caroline Pearson of the consulting firm Avalere Health]. “So, enrollees may need to change doctors or drugs when they switch insurers,” [s]he said.’ (Our premium is going up 10%. [Update, October 2017: premium for 2018 going up another 10.8%.])]

[Update, Dec. 14:  The first bill for 2017: The amount due has increased by 291%! For no apparent reason, the "advanced premium tax credit" (APTC) was slashed to 38% of what it was throughout 2016, despite the renewal notice dated Dec. 7 stating that it would actually go up. I called and waited 10 minutes and was told that the new amount is what I accepted of the new year's APTC. There was no record of when I did that (because I never did). I arranged to accept quite a bit more of the APTC that we are eligible for, so that the monthly premium will now actually be less that the past year's, but I was also told to go ahead and pay the current bill and hope that the extra will be credited ...]

[Update, Dec. 20:  A second first bill for 2017, dated 8 days after the first one (see previous note) arrived, but now with the amount due increased 18% from last year. It does not reflect the APTC that I arranged to accept (see previous note), so it is only adding to the confusion and one more thing to hope: that ignoring this superfluous bill won't cause trouble.]

[Update, Dec. 21:  A second renewal notice for 2017, dated 12 days after the first one (see two notes above) arrived: nothing different from the first one (though slightly different formatting), just more waste and confusion.]

[Update, Dec. 27:  Notice of partial premium payment. Which in fact was an overpayment (see three notes above). Isn't this fun.]

Why is choice desirable for health care, but not for K–12 education?

Here are some comments in reply to a comment posted at a campaign press release published at Vermont Digger concerning school choice in Vermont.

If public schools are the foundation of a civil society, then shouldn’t private schools be banned? Or is freedom of choice – another foundation of civil society – to be available only for the rich? Furthermore, it is disingenuous in the extreme to equate most private schools, particularly in Vermont and neighboring communities, with for-profit schools preying on a very real need in failing urban school systems. Traditionally, private schools are not run for profit, and school choice in Vermont makes many of them as “free and open to all” as public schools. In fact, school choice makes public schools more open to all as well. Not just for the sake of civil society, but more importantly for the sake of every child’s unique and immediate education needs and interests, such opportunity needs to be expanded, not curtailed.

Finally, the commenter’s comparison with health care couldn’t be further off. Again, most hospitals and clinics are not for-profit. And school choice is analogous to single-payer, which is both more progressive and more efficient than for-profit insurance, which limits choice and drives up costs.

New York Times’ transparent spin of Sanders visit to Vatican

Newsdiffs.org [link] has archived 6 versions of the New York Times article at http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/us/politics/bernie-sanders-pope-francis-vatican.html. The first was archived at 6:48 a.m. (EST), April 16, and the sixth at 9:56 p.m. the same day. If anyone linked to the original story when it first appeared, the link is now pointing to a completely different one (compare them below).

The first change, recorded at 11:43, began with the title, changing it from "Bernie Sanders Met With Pope Francis, Campaign Says" to "Sanders Says He Met With Pope, Discussing a ‘Moral Economy’ and Climate Change" (no humanizing first names, but also no campaign).

And although more reporting by Jim Yardley (now listed as co-author) was added to Yamiche Alcindor's original, other parts were removed. Notably, the original quoted Jeffrey Sachs in describing the brief meeting, and that was almost completely replaced by the Pope's description of what is now called an "encounter".

In the version recorded at 3:03 p.m., the title was changed again, to "Sanders Briefly Meets Pope at Vatican After Uncertainty Over a Visit" – hinting at the new article to come that will play up a sense of desperate political maneuvering and downplay the actual purpose of the visit, ie, the conference on social and economic justice to commemorate John Paul II's 1991 encyclical "Centesimus Annus".

Here are the original article and the completely different one – now by Jason Horowitz as first author – recorded at 9:56 p.m. Besides the issue of obvious bias in presenting Sanders' trip to the Vatican in as petty a light as possible, it is contemptible that the latter version replaces – without any notice about, let alone a link to – previous versions.

Bernie Sanders Met With Pope Francis, Campaign Says By YAMICHE ALCINDOR VATICAN CITY — Senator Bernie Sanders, the Democratic presidential candidate, met briefly with Pope Francis at the Vatican on Saturday morning before the pontiff’s trip to Greece, a spokesman for the senator’s campaign said. “The senator and the pope met this morning as the pope was departing for Greece — the goal is to highlight the refugee crisis that affects this part of the world, and all over the world. They talked about that,” said the spokesman, Michael Briggs. The meeting lasted about five minutes, said the economist Jeffrey D. Sachs, an adviser to the Sanders campaign, who said he had been present. Mr. Sachs said the pope had thanked Mr. Sanders, who arrived Friday at the Vatican for a conference on social and economic issues, “for coming to the meeting and for coming to speak about the moral economy.” The senator’s wife, Jane Sanders, and Msgr. Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, who organized the conference, were also present at the brief meeting, Mr. Sachs said. Mr. Briggs said no photographs were taken, in accordance with rules at the Casa Santa Marta, the Vatican City guesthouse where the meeting took place and Francis lives. The Vermont senator had hoped to meet with the pope during his short trip to Rome, for which he interrupted his campaigning for the New York primary on Tuesday. But as recently as Friday it appeared unlikely to happen, after the pope sent a note saying he would not be able to attend the conference because of his trip to the Greek island of Lesbos. Mr. Sanders confirmed in an interview with The Associated Press that the meeting had taken place. “It was a real honor for me, for my wife and I to spend some time with him,” he said. “I think he is one of the extraordinary figures not only in the world today but in modern world history.” Politically, a trip to Rome without a meeting with Francis would have been a blunder, Costas Panagopoulos, a political-science professor at Fordham University who is currently teaching at Yale, had said Friday. “The point is to make sure you are going to get an audience with the pope,” he said. “Anything short of an actual visit will probably be a mistake.” Mr. Sachs, who spoke with a Reuters reporter as journalists traveling with the pope in Greece listened on a speaker phone, said the meeting was “absolutely not political.” “This is a senator who for decades has been speaking about the moral economy,” he said of Mr. Sanders. Jim Yardley contributed reporting from Mytilene, Greece.

Bernie Sanders Meets With Pope Francis By JASON HOROWITZ and YAMICHE ALCINDOR VATICAN CITY — For a while, Senator Bernie Sanders’s Roman holiday seemed less than it was cracked up to be. Immediately after his campaign announced that he would leave the United States for a “high-level meeting” at the Vatican, questions arose about the wisdom of the trip. The critical New York primary was just days away. One official of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, which hosted the conference Mr. Sanders would attend, even suggested he had fished for the invitation. Most critically, there seemed to be little chance that Mr. Sanders would meet the Vatican resident whose name he frequently invokes. Pope Francis, it turned out, would not be visiting the conference of the academy, an in-house think tank of the Vatican. Politically, a trip to Rome without a meeting with Francis would have been a blunder, Costas Panagopoulos, a political science professor at Fordham University who is teaching at Yale, had said on Friday. “The point is to make sure you are going to get an audience with the pope,” he said. “Anything short of an actual visit will probably be a mistake.” Mr. Sanders continued to hold out hope. “I certainly would be delighted and proud if I had the opportunity to meet with him,” he said before leaving New York. He also had two things going for him: his host, Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, an Argentine who is the chancellor of the academy and happens to be close to Francis, and his hotel room, also close to the pope. Mr. Sanders was to stay in a second-floor room at Casa Santa Marta, the Vatican guesthouse where Francis keeps his residence. “So it won’t be difficult to find the pope,” the bishop said last week, seeming to hint at something. On Thursday, the day before the conference, a Vatican spokesman appeared to end all speculation, saying, “There won’t be a meeting with the Holy Father.” Bishop Sánchez Sorondo dismissed the statement as “Roman gossip.” But final word, it seemed, came Friday afternoon in the form of a handwritten letter from the pope apologizing to conference attendees for his absence. “I will keep them all in my prayers and good wishes, and send them my heartfelt thanks for their participation,” he wrote. “May the Lord bless you. Fraternally, Franciscus.” Around 5:30 p.m. Friday, the conference’s business ended and Mr. Sanders made an appointment for dinner at the Casa Santa Marta with his foreign policy adviser, Jeffrey D. Sachs, the economist and a fellow conference participant. Mr. Sanders and his wife, Jane, sat with Mr. Sachs and his wife, Sonia, for a soup and buffet dinner, where they were joined by Bishop Sánchez Sorondo and Cardinal Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga of Honduras, the pope’s right-hand man and one of the Vatican’s top power players. “It was a wide-ranging conversation,” Mr. Sachs said. “It was about issues of the church and its history, about Honduras and foreign policy.” Clinton vs. Sanders vs. Trump: Who Is the True New Yorker? But the most important words occurred in the middle of dinner, when a personal secretary for Francis arrived with the news Mr. Sanders had been hoping for, Mr. Sachs said. If Mr. Sanders were in the foyer of the Casa Santa Marta at 6 a.m. the next day, he would be able to speak briefly with Francis as the pope headed to the airport for his Saturday trip to Greece, where the pope would be addressing the migrant crisis. So early Saturday morning, Mr. Sanders stood in the marble foyer, which looks out onto a large cobblestone drive just inside the Vatican walls. Joining him were his wife, Mr. Sachs and his wife and Bishop Sánchez Sorondo, the senator’s de facto Vatican fixer. The pope, speaking to reporters on his plane later in the day, described the meeting. “This morning when I was leaving, Senator Sanders was there,” he said, adding, “He knew I was leaving at that time, and he had the courtesy to greet me.” No photos of the encounter were permitted, but Mr. Sachs said the senator was delighted all the same. He was beaming as he left the guesthouse, and celebrated the informal audience with a victory lap of sorts in St. Peter’s Basilica along with Mr. Sachs and the bishop, passing Bernini’s Baldacchino, a monumental bronze canopy over the papal altar, and Michelangelo’s Pietà. Aware that his every statement is parsed for deeper meaning, Francis said he was simply being polite, not political. “I shook his hand and nothing more,” he said. “If someone thinks that greeting someone means getting involved in politics,” he added, laughing, “I recommend that he find a psychiatrist!” But the candidate was excited to talk about his coveted souvenir. “I conveyed to him my great admiration for the extraordinary work that he is doing all over the world in demanding that morality be part of our economy,” Mr. Sanders told reporters aboard the plane as it rushed him back to the campaign in New York. Jim Yardley contributed reporting from Mytilene, Greece.

Changing Everything

Steven Gorelick writes at Counterpunch:

Among climate change activists, solutions usually center on a transition to renewable energy. There may be differences over whether this would be best accomplished by a carbon tax, bigger subsidies for wind and solar power, divestment from fossil fuel companies, massive demonstrations, legislative fiat or some other strategy, but the goal is generally the same: replace dirty fossil fuels with clean renewable energy. Such a transition is often given a significance that goes well beyond its immediate impact on greenhouse gas emissions: it would somehow make our exploitative relationship to Nature more environmentally sound, our relationship to each other more socially equitable. In part this is because the fossil fuel corporations – symbolized by the remorseless Koch brothers – will be a relic of the past, replaced by ‘green’ corporations and entrepreneurs that display none of their predecessors’ ruthlessness and greed.

Maybe, but I have my doubts. Here in Vermont, for example, a renewable energy conference last year was titled, “Creating Prosperity and Opportunity Confronting Climate Change”. The event attracted venture capitalists, asset management companies, lawyers that represent renewable energy developers, and even a “brandthropologist” offering advice on “how to evolve Brand Vermont” in light of the climate crisis. The keynote speaker was Jigar Shah, author of Creating Climate Wealth, who pumped up the assembled crowd by telling them that switching to renewables “represents the largest wealth creation opportunity of our generation.” He added that government has a role in making that opportunity real: “policies that incentivize resource efficiency can mean scalable profits for businesses.” If Shah is correct, the profit motive – in less polite company it might be called ‘greed’ – will still be around in a renewable energy future.

But at least the renewable energy corporations will be far more socially responsible than their fossil fuel predecessors. Not if you ask the Zapotec communities in Mexico’s Oaxaca state, who will tell you that a renewable energy corporation can be just as ruthless as a fossil fuel one. Oaxaca is already home to 21 wind projects and 1,600 massive turbines, with more planned. While the indigenous population must live with the wind turbines on their communal lands, the electricity goes to distant urban areas and industries. Local people say they have been intimidated and deceived by the wind corporations: according to one indigenous leader, “They threaten us, they insult us, they spy on us, they block our roads. We don’t want any more wind turbines.” People have filed grievances with the government (which has actively promoted the wind projects) and have physically blocked access to development sites.

It seems that a transition to renewable energy might not be as transformative as some people hope. Or to put it more bluntly, renewable energy changes nothing about corporate capitalism.

Which brings me to the new film, This Changes Everything, based on Naomi Klein’s best-selling book and directed by her husband, Avi Lewis. I saw the film recently at a screening hosted by local climate activists and renewable energy developers, and was at first hopeful that the film would go even further than the book in, as Klein puts it, “connecting the dots between the carbon in the air and the economic system that put it there.”

But by film’s end one is left with the impression that a transition from fossil fuels to renewables is pretty much all that’s needed – not only to address climate change but to transform the economy and solve all the other problems we face. As the camera tracks skyward to reveal banks of solar panels in China or soars above 450-foot tall wind turbines in Germany, the message seems to be that fully committing to these technologies will change everything. This is surprising, since Klein’s book flatly contradicts this way of thinking:

“Over the past decade,” she wrote, “many boosters of green capitalism have tried to gloss over the clashes between market logic and ecological limits by touting the wonders of green tech…. They paint a picture of a world that can function pretty much as it does now, but in which our power will come from renewable energy and all of our various gadgets and vehicles will become so much more energy-efficient that we can consume away without worrying about the impact.” Instead, she says, we need “consume less, right away. [But] Policies based on encouraging people to consume less are far more difficult for our current political class to embrace than policies that are about encouraging people to consume green. Consuming green just means substituting one power source for another, or one model of consumer goods for a more efficient one. The reason we have placed all of our eggs in the green tech and green efficiency basket is precisely because these changes are safely within market logic.”

Overall, Klein’s book is far better at “connecting the dots” than the film. The book explains how free trade treaties have led to a huge spike in emissions, and Klein argues that these agreements need to be renegotiated in ways that will curb both emissions and corporate power. Among other things, she says, “long-haul transport will need to be rationed, reserved for those cases where goods cannot be produced locally.” She explicitly calls for “sensible relocalization” of the economy, as well as reduced consumption and “managed degrowth” in the rich countries of the North – notions likely to curdle the blood of capitalists everywhere. She endorses government incentives for local and seasonal food, as well as land management policies that discourage sprawl and encourage low-energy, local forms of agriculture.

I don’t buy everything about Klein’s arguments: they rest heavily on unquestioned assumptions about the course of ‘development’ in the global South, and focus too much on scaling up government and not enough on scaling down business. The “everything” that will change sometimes seems limited to the ideological pendulum: after decades of pointing towards the neoliberal, free-market right, she believes it must swing back to the left because climate change demands a huge expansion of government planning and support.

Nonetheless, many of the specific steps outlined in the book do have the potential to shift our economic system in important ways. Those steps, however, are given no space at all in the film. The focus is almost entirely on transitioning to renewables, which turns the film into what is essentially an informercial for industrial wind and solar.

The film starts well, debunking the notion that climate change is a product of human nature – of our innate greed and short-sightedness. Instead, Klein says, the problem lies in a “story” we’ve told ourselves for the past 400 years: that Nature is ours to tame, conquer, and extract riches from. In that way, Klein says, “Mother Nature became the mother lode.”

After a gut-wrenching segment on the environmental disaster known as the Alberta tar sands, the film centers on examples of “Blockadia” – a term coined by activists to describe local direct action against extractive industries. There is the Cree community in Alberta fighting the expansion of tar sands development; villagers in India blocking construction of a coal-fired power plant that would eliminate traditional fishing livelihoods; a community on Greece’s Halkidiki Peninsula battling their government and the police to stop an open pit gold mine that would destroy a cherished mountain; and a small-scale goat farmer in Montana joining hands with the local Cheyenne community to oppose a bevy of fossil fuel projects, including a tar sands pipeline, a shale oil project, and a new coal mine.

Klein implies that climate change underlies and connects these geographically diverse protests. But that’s partly an artifact of the examples Klein chose, and partly a misreading of the protestors’ motives: what has really driven these communities to resist is not climate change, but a deeply-felt desire to maintain their traditional way of life and to protect land that is sacred to them. A woman in Halkidiki expresses it this way: “we are one with this mountain; we won’t survive without it.” At its heart, the threat that all of these communities face doesn’t stem from fossil fuels, but from a voracious economic system that will sacrifice them and the land they cherish for the sake of profit and growth.

The choice of Halkidiki as an example actually undermines Klein’s construct, since the proposed mine has nothing directly to do with fossil fuels. It does, however, have everything to do with a global economy that runs on growth, corporate profit, and – as Greece knows only too well – debt. So it is with all the other examples in the film.

Klein’s narrative would have been derailed if she profiled the indigenous Zapotec communities of Oaxaca as a Blockadia example: they fit the bill in every respect other than the fact that it’s renewable energy corporations, not fossil fuel corporations, they are trying to block. Similarly, Klein’s argument would have suffered if she visited villagers in India who are threatened not by a coal-fired power plant, but by one of India’s regulation-free corporate enclaves known as “special economic zones”. These, too, have sparked protests and police violence against villagers: in Nandigram in West Bengal, 14 villagers were killed trying to keep their way of life from being eliminated, their lands turned into another outpost of an expanding global economy.

And while the tar sands region is undeniably an ecological disaster, it bears many similarities to the huge toxic lake on what was once pastureland in Baotou, on the edge of China’s Gobi Desert. The area is the source of nearly two-thirds of the world’s rare earth metals – used in almost every high-tech gadget (as well as in the magnets needed for electric cars and industrial wind turbines). The mine tailings and effluent from the many factories processing these metals have created an environmental disaster of truly monumental proportions: the BBC describes it as “the worst place on earth”. A significant shrinking of global consumer demand would help reduce Baotou’s toxic lake, but it’s hard to see how a shift to renewable energy would.

Too often, climate change has been used as a Trojan horse to enable corporate interests to despoil local environments or override the concerns of local communities. Klein acknowledges this in her book: by viewing climate change only on a global scale, she writes, we end up ignoring “people with attachments to particular pieces of land with very different ideas about what constitutes a ‘solution’. This chronic forgetfulness is the thread that unites so many fateful policy errors of recent years … [including] when policymakers ram through industrial-scale wind farms and sprawling… solar arrays without local participation or consent.” But this warning is conspicuously absent from the film.

Klein’s premise is that climate change is the one issue that can unite people globally for economic change, but there’s a more strategic way to look at it. What we face is not only a climate crisis but literally hundreds of potentially devastating crises: there’s the widening gap between rich and poor, islands of plastic in the oceans, depleted topsoil and groundwater, a rise in fundamentalism and terror, growing piles of toxic and nuclear waste, the gutting of local communities and economies, the erosion of democracy, the epidemic of depression, and many more. Few of these can be easily linked to climate change, but all of them can be traced back to the global economy.

This point is made by Helena Norberg-Hodge, founder of Local Futures, who explains how a scaling-down of the corporate-led global economy and a strengthening of diverse, localized economies would simultaneously address all of the most serious problems we face – including climate change. For this reason, what Norberg-Hodge calls ‘big picture activism’ has the potential to unite climate change activists, small farmers, peace advocates, environmentalists, social justice groups, labor unions, indigenous rights activists, main street business owners, and many more under a single banner. If all these groups connect the dots to see the corporate-led economy as a root cause of the problems they face, it could give rise to a global movement powerful enough to halt the corporate juggernaut.

And that really could change everything.

Also see: : Oaxaca on this blog, and “Exploitation and destruction: some things to know about industrial wind power”

The Lie of “100% Renewable”

It’s been recently reported that Georgetown “plans to be the first city in Texas entirely powered by renewable energy”. Of course, “plans to be” is a long way from “is”, but the first problem in most such reports is that they are talking only about electrical energy. Other energy consumption, such as for heating and transport, is not affected, so it is misleading indeed to say “entirely powered by renewable energy”.

Earlier this year, it was more accurately reported that the city of Burlington, Vermont, “became the first in the country to use 100 percent renewable energy for its residents’ electricity needs”. The news was further spread with far less care (and predictably) as, e.g., “the first city in the U.S. to be powered 100 percent by renewables”. Again, it is about electricity only, which is only about a third of our overall energy use. (Note should also be taken of the qualifier of “residents’ needs”: The University of Vermont, for example, is not included in this accounting.)

Even stated accurately, however, it remains misleading. Georgetown will be purchasing wind and solar power from faraway facilities. That means that they will in fact be using the same electricity on the grid as neighboring towns. The decision was strictly financial, not because wind and solar are cheaper, but because the country as a whole subsidizes them and the required new powerlines so that they can sell the power relatively cheaply. Furthermore, for Georgetown to find the price particularly attractive, as well as considering their non-ideological view, they will probably not be buying the Enron-invented “renewable energy credits”, i.e., they will not actually have the “right” to claim the purchase as “renewable”. (Instead, someone else, who also gets the same electricity from the grid as everyone else, will buy the RECs to claim the “green credit”.)

Sale of RECs also benefits Burlington, which sells them for its woodchip-fired plant and their ownership of wind plants in Georgia and Sheffield. Technically, they can therefore no longer claim that electricity themselves as “renewable”, although they account for almost two-thirds of the city’s electricity. As Burlington Electric itself shows, in 2013, ignoring their selling of RECs, 95% of their electricity was renewably sourced. After selling the RECs, that percentage dropped to 39%. And 67% of that was represented by the purchase of RECs.

Again, everything these cities do not generate themselves is taken from the regional grid, a pool of electrical energy that does not distinguish among its many sources. Georgetown will be using the same electricity as its “nonrenewable” neighbors. Burlington generates about half of its own electricity from wood chips, a little hydro, and negligible solar and wind. The rest is from the same pool as its “less renewable” neighbors.

And besides the charade of exclusive claims on renewable electricity that everyone shares equally on the grid, electricity is itself only about a third of their total energy use.

Comments on the Vermont campaign for a carbon tax

The Vermont Public Interest Research Group (VPIRG) and friends in business and the legislature have proposed a tax on fossil fuels used in heating and transportation, starting at $5 per metric ton (“tonne”) of CO₂ and rising to $50 in 10 years (or $150 in 15 years).

Ninety percent of the revenue would be returned as tax cuts to businesses and households, which would rather nullify the incentive. The concern for reducing the burden on lower-income people is a sham, because getting a tax cut or even rebate in May won’t help to pay for gas or heating oil back in January.

The VPIRG press release trots out hurricane Irene as a warning of future extreme weather due to climate change. That is flat out bullshit. Hurricanes are a normal feature of the weather, and Irene was not even extreme — New Yorkers scoffed at its dissipation. Irene's damage was so great simply because it stalled over the Green Mountains. Climate change — as one part of our general environmental depredation — is a serious issue that is not well served by baseless fear mongering.

Finally, what about the second major greenhouse gas, methane? Besides every one of Vermont’s cows exhaling about 1 tonne of CO₂ per year, each of them also emits methane by belching and farting (not counting that contained in their manure) with a greenhouse gas equivalence of about 7 tonnes of CO₂ per year. With some 150,000 cows in Vermont, that's some serious emissions (1,200,000 tonnes of CO₂ and equivalent: $60 million at the proposed $50/tonne). And ignoring it is a serious omission in any plan claiming to address climate change.

If taxing cows as well as fossil fuel is not an option, how about giving some of the 10% of the revenues earmarked for energy improvements to subsidizing alternatives to animal agriculture. Much like the state makes it cheaper to buy CFLs and LEDs, why not also make it cheaper to buy vegan meat and dairy substitutes?

Vermont: Vote Liberty Union!

Liberty Union Party statewide candidates — Governor: Peter Diamondstone, Brattleboro Secretary of State: Mary-Alice Herbert, Putney Attorney General: Rosemarie Jackowski, Bennington State Treasurer: Virginia Murray Ngoima, Pomfret Liberty Union Party statewide federal candidate — House of Representatives: Matthew Andrews, Plainfield Liberty Union Party local candidates — State Senate: Aaron Diamondstone, Marlboro (Windham County) Jerry Levy, Brattleboro (Windham County) Ben Bosley, Colchester (Grand Isle County) Sheriff of Orleans County: Thomas Farrow, Orleans Assistant Judge, Windham County: Lynn Russell, Brattleboro Alice Landsman

Sorry, your health care coverage can't actually be used.

=================================

Subject: Important Information About Your Health Coverage
Date: Fri, 6 Dec 2013
From: vthealthconnect@state.vt.us
To: [ ]@[ ].net

Dear [ ],

Hello! We are writing to let you know that you have a new notice regarding your bill for health care benefits from Vermont Health Connect. To view your notice, please click on the link below and log in to your account.

Your notice is: Premium Invoice

www.vermonthealthconnect.gov

After logging into your account, click on ‘My Account’ and select the ‘My Profile’ tab. Once there, click on ‘View Documents’ from the ‘Quick Links’ box. If you have any questions regarding this notice, please call Vermont Health Connect Customer Support toll-free at 1-855-899-9600, Monday-Friday 8am-8pm and Saturdays 8am-1pm (except holidays and holiday weekends).

Thank you,

Vermont Health Connect

=================================

Subject: Re: Important Information About Your Health Coverage
Date: Fri, 06 Dec 2013
From: [ ] <[ ]@[ ].net>
To: vthealthconnect@state.vt.us

There doesn't appear to be a way to log in. There is a "logout" button, which remains "logout" after clicking it. No "login" button or pane.

In fact, because of the consequent inability to check my account and the lack of reply by telephone [since applying on line], I just sent in a paper application today. Which I guess is now unnecessary as far as setting up an account.

I think I would like a paper notice/statement/bill.

Thanks.

=================================

Subject: RE: Important Information About Your Health Coverage
Date: Mon, 9 Dec 2013
From: AHS - VT Health Connect
To: '[ ]' <[ ]@[ ].net>

Dear [ ],

Thank you for writing.

To log in to your account, please go to https://portal.healthconnect.vermont.gov/ and click on “Start Here” found next to where you see “Are you looking for coverage for yourself or your family?” On the next page, please click either on “Login to your Account” or “Apply Now” as either will bring you to the log-in screen. Once you are logged into your account, you will be able to access your invoice using the directions in your original e-mail.

[Makes sense? Even if you have an account, you have to illogically click "Are you looking for coverage for yourself or your family?" to get to it. But perhaps that was an admission of the truth recorded here.]

As you've requested, we'll send a paper invoice to you in the mail. You can expect to receive this invoice within a week.

Please let us know if we can help you with anything else.

Kind regards,
Rebecca

Vermont Health Connect
Customer Support – 855-899-9600

Check out our website for updated information!

Links:
Vermont Health Connect: http://info.healthconnect.vermont.gov/
YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/vthealthconnect

=================================

Subject: Your Vermont Health Connect Invoice
Date: Tue, 17 Dec 2013
From: Vermont Health Connect
To: [ ] <[ ]@[ ].net>

Dear [ ],

Thank you for completing your application for health insurance coverage through Vermont Health Connect. You may have received two invoices this month – one for your new (2014) Vermont Health Connect health plan, which begins January 1, 2014, and one for your former (2013) health plan, which was recently given the option of extending up to March 31, 2104.

You only need to pay the bill for the plan you wish to have effective on January 1. You do not need to pay the other bill. If you want help making the choice of which bill to pay, please call our Customer Support Center toll-free at 1-855-899-9600 and reference the code “VHC1215.” A customer service representative will then talk you through your options. Please note that our call volume is high at this time. We thank you in advance for your patience. If you applied through a Navigator, you could consult him or her as well.

Please note that you do not need to take any additional steps to cancel your former plan. Your 2013 health plan will automatically expire after you pay your premium and your 2014 plan takes effect.

We are open from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Mondays-Fridays and 8:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on Saturdays.

Sincerely,

Vermont Health Connect Customer Service

=================================

Subject: Starting coverage in February
Date: Sat, 11 Jan 2014
From: [ ] <[ ]@[ ].net>
To: vthealthconnect@state.vt.us

I set up my account and selected a plan very early and received an invoice by mail (as requested) in December. However, I had already paid my Catamount Care premium for January, so I did not pay the premium for the new plan.

Now I need to make sure that I will get another invoice (by mail, please) for the new plans, to start coverage in February.

=================================

Subject: RE: Starting coverage in February
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2014
From: AHS - VT Health Connect
To: '[ ]' <[ ]@[ ].net>

Dear [ ],

Thank you for writing. We're so sorry for the delay in replying to your email.

I've reviewed your account and see that you also called and spoke with someone about this last week. As they told you, it is fine for you to just pay your premium for February. Your account has been marked so that your policy will start in February.

Please let us know if we can help you with anything else.

Kind regards,
Rebecca

Vermont Health Connect

=================================

Subject: Important Information About Your Health Coverage
Date: Wed, 5 Feb 2014
From: vthealthconnect@state.vt.us
To: [ ]@[ ].net

Dear [ ],

Hello! We are writing to let you know that you have a new notice regarding your bill for health care benefits from Vermont Health Connect. To view your notice, please click on the link below and log in to your account.

Your notice is: Premium Invoice

www.vermonthealthconnect.gov

After logging into your account, click on ‘My Account’ and select the ‘My Profile’ tab. Once there, click on ‘View Documents’ from the ‘Quick Links’ box. If you have any questions regarding this notice, please call Vermont Health Connect Customer Support toll-free at 1-855-899-9600, Monday-Friday 8am-8pm and Saturdays 8am-1pm (except holidays and holiday weekends).

[Steps to view invoice:
• Click "Are you looking for coverage for yourself or your family?"
• Click "Log in"
• Click "My Account"
• Click "My Profile"
• Find the "Quick Links" box and Click "View Documents"
• Click the listed documents until you reveal the current invoice]

Thank you,

Vermont Health Connect

=================================

Subject: Re: Starting coverage in February
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2014
From: [ ] <[ ]@[ ].net>
To: AHS - VT Health Connect

Today I received a "Payment past due/Termination Notice" from BCBS [Blue Cross/Blue Shield]. As noted below, this is because I was assured that it was OK to ignore the January premium and that the new policy was to begin in February. This was necessary because the invoice for January coverage under Catamount Care was due (and paid) before the invoice for the new BCBS policy under VHC was available.

According to the BCBS notice, "Vermont Health Connect has reported that full payment has not been received for your health insurance."

Please resolve this.

=================================

Subject: RE: Starting coverage in February
Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2014
From: AHS - VT Health Connect
To: '[ ]' <[ ]@[ ].net>

Dear [ ],

Thank you for contacting us. We're very sorry that you received the past due notice from BCBS. I see that you have paid each of your invoices well in advance of the due dates, and as you noted, the fault is entirely ours for not yet making that change to your coverage start date. Unfortunately, we don't have that functionality to make the change once your plan is in force, but we are working on it and will correct your account as soon as we are able.

You actually have a 90 day grace period, so there is no danger of your plan being terminated as long as you keep paying your monthly premiums as you have been doing.

Please let us know if we can be of any further assistance.

Kind regards,
Ellen

Vermont Health Connect

=================================

And so I have been paying the monthly premium to Vermont Health Connect, ignoring the monthly "PAST DUE/NOTICE OF TERMINATION" notices from BCBS.

Secure in the knowledge that we do indeed have continuing "affordable health insurance" (which Vermont was already providing for almost everybody, effectively and without major problems: the "Catamount Care" referred to above). Secure, that is, as long as we would never need it, as it turned out.

I had an annual check-up scheduled in early October and was told by the doctor's office that a check of insurance status revealed it to be "pending". For that reason, they would not be able to submit the bill. I learned from a call to BCBS on Oct. 1 that "pending" in this case meant that I was behind in payments, because they still considered my coverage to have begun on Jan. 1 instead of Feb. 1, and therefore still expected an extra month of payment. In other words, despite the reassurance from Vermont Health Connect 8 months before that "we are working on it and will correct your account as soon as we are able", they still had not. Furthermore, the reassurance that "there is no danger of your plan being terminated as long as you keep paying your monthly premiums as you have been doing" turned out to be meaningless, since my regular doctor wouldn't risk billing to a "pending" insurance account. The person I talked with at BCBS helpfully transfered me to Vermont Health Connect, noting that she had heard that they may be "a few months" behind.

Thank goodness we have not been in any emergency situation or in urgent need of a prescription refill.

From Vermont Health Connect I now (!) learned that changing the start date required a new application because it is a "change of status". And so I was transfered to another office to handle that. The woman there, like everyone I have talked with at every step, it should be said, was very helpful and was able to use the original application to make a new one for coverage starting Feb. 1, ie 8 months earlier, to expire Dec. 31, ie in less than 3 months.

Now we were expected to have "new" insurance active in a couple of weeks, a new card in a week after that. Just in time to start the whole charade over again for coverage next year.

We essentially have had no usable insurance coverage since Feb. 1, despite regularly paying monthly premiums for it. What surprises lie in wait for us in the new cycle beginning Jan. 1, 2015, with a promised automatic renewal of coverage? Or in April, when the IRS recalculates everybody's share of their previous year of premiums?

The faster we move to a single payer system the better! Federally, Medicare was supposed to steadily expand in the 1960s to cover everyone, not just the elderly (but then it would have covered draft dodgers and black panthers along with "deserving" citizens like oneself). If the US government can not or will not provide that very basic service to all those who live within its borders, then the states need to go it alone. And I mean not just setting up some mash-up of federal support and state-provided health coverage, although that would be a welcome step despite the likelihood of its being as dysfunctional as the current private-public mash-up — I mean breaking away altogether from the government of Washington. Because health care is just one of its many failures, and war to gain world hegemony seems to be its only goal, war ordnance its only economy, squandering our common wealth as well as our lives, sacrificing them to an end that can only be catastrophic.

[Update:  Two and a half weeks later, we've received no notice about the "new" coverage, but instead a series of premium invoices (up to 4 so far), each one different from the last and none of them reflecting a resolution.]

[Update:  Four weeks later, we haven't received a new insurance card or any notice about the "new" coverage.]

[Update:  A month later, BCBS remains uninformed of the change, which Vermont Health Connect says was "finalized" on Oct. 14 (under a different "service request" no. than the "confirmation no." originally provided).]

[Update:  Five weeks later, the "change of circumstance center" has promised to notify BCBS today, which was supposed to have been done on Oct. 14 but was not. The reason another 2 weeks was required in the first place was because there is a child on S-CHIP, and that "start of coverage" (despite being continually covered under the auspices of the state for some 13 years already) was not supposed to change from January to February, so a new "change of circumstance" (the only change being the system's, not ours) had to be created to disinclude the S-CHIP part — it was done, but then someone neglected to tell BCBS. Oh, and a new "master case" number. Could it be more complicated? More counterproductive (unless, of course, prevention of care is precisely the intention)??]

[Update:  Five-and-a-half weeks later, BCBS remains uninformed of the change, which the Vermont Health Connect "change center" now says was "finalized" on Oct. 29 and confirmed that it was sent to "billing" who would then notify BCBS, which process could take 15 days, likely more as they are busy starting enrollment for next year. Vermont Health Connect customer service confirms the change, that the start date has been changed, billing reconciled, and BCBS informed. However, BCBS finds no change -- and it's not on the latest weekly confirmation list from Vermont Health Connect, waiting to be processed. BCBS suggests checking in another week.]

[Update:  A month and a half later, the "last invoice for 2014" has arrived, showing a "balance forward" of 10 times the new premium amount, presumably representing the charges for February through November of our "new" coverage, ignoring the year of payments for our "old" coverage for those same months. Then, inexplicably, the amount due adds only the SCHIP charge, not the next month's premium. Aieee!]

Further notes from 2015: 

May 13:  "Use this updated form [1095-A] when you complete IRS Form 8962 and file your federal income tax return [last month]."

Premiums due:  January 26: $627.52. February 26: $313.76. March 26: ($2.30). April 26: $311.46. May 26: ($238.36). June 26: $75.40. July 26: $313.76.

June 8:  Notice from Blue Cross–Blue Shield: "Payment Past Due." Go to newly launched Vermont Health Connect web site for any information that might be there: My Health Plans: "No current plans found."

June 25:  "A refund has been issued to you in the amount of $20.00."

July 16:  Notice from IRS: "Our records show that you did not file a 2014 tax return to reconcile advance payments of the Premium Tax Credit. … We received a copy of form 1095-A, Health Insurance Marketplace Statement, issued to you by your Health Insurance Marketplace showing … You are required to file a a 2014 federal tax return with Form 8962, Premium Tax Credit, to reconcile …" So it seems that filing Form 8962 with the correct information from one's own records — because the 1095-A form originally provided was obviously incorrect — instead of the updated 1095-A that came a month after the tax filing deadline (and which was still incorrect) [see May 13, above] is not recognized as a possibility, is as good as failing to file at all, and in fact nullifies the 1040 and everything as if never filed at all!

See a new report from 2016:  Vermont Health Connect: “Current wait times are 90 minutes”