Vermont’s Global Warming Solutions Act

The Global Warming Solutions Act, HB 688, requires the state to reduce greenhouse gas pollution to 26% below 2005 levels by 2025. According to the Global Warming Solutions Act, Vermont’s emissions would need to be 40% below 1990 levels by 2030 and 80% below by 2050. In September 2020, the Vermont House (103-47) and Senate (22-8) both voted to override the Republican Governor Phil Scott’s veto of the Global Warming Solutions Act. Democratic lawmakers made this issue a priority, as Vermont’s emissions have increased in recent years, with the most recent data from 2016 showing emissions 13% above 1990 levels (Landen and Norton, 2020). “The governor has said he believes Vermont should meet the goals set out in the Paris climate agreement, and rightly gets favorable headlines when he does.  But these goals don’t just meet themselves.  You need to take action.  To have a plan”, said Vermont Senate President Pro Tem Tim Ashe (Landen and Norton, 2020). 

In the last decade, other states including Connecticut, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Maine have enacted similar legislation requiring them to cut emissions in the coming decades.  If the Vermont government fails to meet these goals, the bill allows individuals to sue the state, to force it into compliance. While the legislation sets up new emissions reduction requirements, it does not spell out or dictate how the state will meet them. Instead, it forms a 23-member climate council, with the governor’s secretary of administration acting as the chair, and other members including state government officials, representatives from the manufacturing sector, citizen experts and others, to come up with a pollution reduction plan (Landen and Norton, 2020). 
 

References:

Landen, X. and Norton, K. (2020). Senate overrides veto of Global Warming Solutions Act, making it law. VTDigger. Retrieved from https://vtdigger.org/2020/09/22/senate-overrides-veto-of-global-warming-solutions-act-making-it-law/ 1

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