We believe that, in order to address the climate crisis effectively, we must address its root cause. Our world is built on resource extraction, worker exploitation, and overconsumption; our economy prioritizes profit over the well-being of people and planet. True climate solutions must bring about a Just Transition to a regenerative economy. This economy will more fairly recirculate wealth, promote the health and resiliency of communities and ecosystems, and provide jobs in sustainable stewardship and low-emissions energy.

The climate crisis impacts all of us, but it disproportionately impacts the survivors of systemic injustice—particularly lower-income and BIPOC communities. True climate solutions will prioritize not just emissions reduction, but also the equitable redistribution of decision-making power, resources, and opportunities.

Volunteers in 350VT's network have spent thousands of hours researching, discussing, and collecting input on the climate action steps that will best serve Vermonters (along with the rest of life on Earth!). We’ve identified true climate solutions that keep energy dollars in our local economies, improve our quality of life and resilience to disasters, safeguard our health and the health of our planet’s ecosystems, and reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions.

To lead us through a Just Transition into a thriving future, any climate response should at minimum:

• Significantly cut energy use and greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions, and phase out combustible fuels.

• Strengthen natural systems’ ability to draw down and sequester carbon from the atmosphere.

• Strengthen human and ecological resilience to climate change and catastrophic events.

• Serve community well-being, not corporate profit.

• Meet the needs of everyday people in Vermont, particularly low-income, BIPOC, and other vulnerable communities.

• Avoid energy alternatives that simply export damages to elsewhere in the world.

To effectively address the climate crisis, we need to stop burning things and invest in a regenerative economy. Promoting combustible fuels and other high-emissions, unjust energy alternatives does not solve our problems. Instead, it creates the illusion of progress while wasting the resources needed to advance more effective, equitable solutions. Many proposed alternatives to fossil fuels come with their own set of thoroughly documented harms. For example:

• Palm oil, the cheapest and most market-friendly liquid biofuel, is produced on land that was once climate-preserving, biodiverse rainforest.

• Biomass at large scale requires deforestation and emits both high levels of carbon and harmful particulate pollution.

• “Renewable” natural gas (RNG) and green hydrogen increase costs, create greenhouse gas emissions, and support a fracked-gas industry and leaking pipeline infrastructure.

• Large-scale hydropower is produced by flooding vast swaths of land, which releases methane, displaces communities, and destabilizes ecosystems.

• Solar energy and battery storage are essential climate solutions. However, the mining for the required metals currently violates Indigenous and human rights in ways that need to be addressed in order for these solutions to be truly just.

Vermont’s current energy policies:

• Allow or promote GHG-emitting fuels like liquid biofuels, biomass, RNG, and green hydrogen, keeping our emissions high and draining our energy dollars away into out-of-state corporate pockets.

• Rely on energy credits from existing large hydropower rather than actually investing in new renewables.

• Too often base our energy transition on the individual choices of the relatively affluent (through electric vehicle purchases, for example).

• Fail to prioritize low-emission solutions — such as weatherization, solar, and heat pumps — and make them affordable and accessible to all Vermonters.

• Overlook local solutions that build community and ecological resilience.

• Fail to address the needs of BIPOC and low-income Vermonters.

• Neglect system-wide measures to reduce our overall energy consumption, an essential aspect of transitioning off fossil fuels.

For more on “false” climate solutions, check out a video series of workshops that 350VT’s White River Node produced along with our friends at BALE-VT called Hoodwinked in the Greenwashed Mountains.

350VT is growing and organizing the political will and grassroots power needed to bring about a Just Transition and ensure a thriving future for all. Our goals include:

• Produce electricity locally and regionally from low-emission renewable energy: solar and wind. We should not meet new energy demand through more large hydropower.

• Meet heating and cooling needs through the rapid deployment of weatherization, heat pumps powered by locally and regionally produced low-emission renewables, and thermal energy networks that optimize geothermal and other non-combustion heat sources. We do not support investing in biofuels to replace fossil fuels.

• End the unbundling of renewable energy credits, a policy that is being used to justify expanding the use of dangerous energy sources like fossil and nuclear energy.

• Develop energy-efficient communities that are affordable and powered by community-based energy including solar and non-combustion thermal energy networks, with protected agricultural lands and open space.

• Support pedestrian, bicycle, and free micro-scale and mass public transit to improve quality of life and reduce the use of resource-intensive individual cars.

• Invest in local, regenerative economies that provide green jobs for Vermonters and support workers and families.

• Build a movement in which we can live our values:

  • Justice: A more equitable distribution of social and economic burdens, benefits, and decision-making power.

  • People power: Collective action for the collective well-being.

  • Relationships & Community: Taking time to build relationships of integrity, trust, care, and respect, with ourselves and each other.

  • A Healthy Planet: Living in, learning from, and working for a vibrant, diverse ecosystem.

350VT’s 2024 Legislative Session priority bills aim to:

• significantly reduce Vermont’s carbon pollution by increasing the amount of low-emissions electricity and thermal (heating and cooling) sources produced in the state and the region (solar, wind, thermal energy networks);

• make electricity affordable to low and middle income households; and

• reduce electricity and new heating demand through the adoption of municipal thermal energy networks.

Specifically, we are asking the Vermont Legislature to:

• Pass the Renewable Energy Standard Bill - H.289 with an expanded study for community solar carried out by an independent contractor to ensure our electricity is low-emissions, just, and community-based.

• Pass the Ratepayer Protection Bill (H.668) to protect low and middle income Vermonters from high electricity bills

• Pass the Thermal Energy Networks Bill (S.252 and H.669) to provide low-emissions heating for Vermont’s buildings and decrease our need for electricity.

For more details on these bills and our asks, please click here.