VNRC's 2008 Energy and Climate Change Legislative Goals

VNRC will be working hard in the 2008 legislative session to help Vermont save energy, save money and generate clean, renewable supplies of power by pushing for implementation of the 38 recommendations of the Governor’s Commission on Climate Change.
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VNRC Asks for Leadership on Climate Change

VNRC's Executive Director Elizabeth Courtney recently wrote about the remarkable Step It Up day of climate action. She points to the day, where tens of thousands of people gathered across the nation, as a great example of the powerful grassroots movement growing around climate change. Read Elizabeth's editorial, where she describes the need to respond to climate change and embrace the new opportunities it will offer for prosperity and independence.
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Al Gore on Vermont's Climate Change Bill: "Put This Terrific Law Into Place"

Former Vice President Al Gore recently called on the Vermont Legislature to advance a bill to help Vermonters save money in home heating costs, create new jobs, expand renewable energy opportunities in Vermont and tackle climate change. The comments from Gore - one of the world’s foremost advocates for action on climate change - came over a live video feed into Vermont a day after Gov. Jim Douglas vetoed H.520, the big energy bill passed by the Legislature this spring.
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Vermont Energy and Climate Action Network

The Vermont Energy and Climate Action Network — VECAN — is a collaborative of statewide nonprofit and membership-based organizations that share a vision. What is that vision?
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Town Energy and Climate Action Guide

The Vermont Energy and Climate Action Network's "Town Energy and Climate Action Guide" offers an important resource to communities interested in establishing, or currently working on, town energy committees.
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VNRC Co-Hosts 'Step It Up' Rally in Montpelier

On April 14 - the National Day of Climate Action - over 50 rallies will take place across Vermont to call on lawmakers to 'Step It Up' and commit to an 80 percent reduction in global warming emissions by 2050. Last fall, over 1,000 people attended the largest demonstration on climate change to date at the culminating rally of a five-day walk led by author Bill McKibben. Now, again catalyzed by the renowned McKibben, over 1,000 events will take place simultaneously across the nation, including one co-hosted by VNRC in Montpelier.
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VNRC's 2007 Legislative Agenda to Combat Climate Change

To help tackle the monumental challenge of climate change, VNRC is working on many levels to help combat climate change and foster renewable energy opportunities. We are marrying our roots in conservation with new, locally-based and innovative solutions. We continue to advance conservation strategies that will help keep Vermont’s forests and farmlands working and free from development. We remain deeply involved in state and local land use efforts that will foster compact, walkable, vibrant communities surrounded by open countryside. And we're working alongside legislative leaders to advance policies that will help meet the energy needs conservation alone cannot.
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Climate Change Work Gathers Momentum

VNRC celebrates three recent advances which promise to bring much-needed focus to the world's most pressing environmental issue - global climate change. Read more about the appointment of VNRC Policy Director Patrick Berry to the Governor's new Climate Change Commission, Vermont's support of a regional agreement between Northeastern states to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and the launch of a statewide partnership to galvanize citizens at the local level to design and implement community climate action plans.
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Commentary - Wind Energy In Vermont

While Vermonters have been talking a lot about wind power in recent weeks, there hasn’t been much focus on our energy appetites: we consume just too darn much. We need to pay significant attention to efficiency and conservation at the same time that we talk about new generating sources like wind.
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Global Climate Change

There is no longer a dispute that the earth is warming and that the implications of a changing climate will have far-reaching consequences for the world’s economies, cultures, and quality of life. Anticipated temperature increases of 2 degrees centigrade over the next century, experts say, will be enough to trigger erratic weather patterns, widespread drought, crop failure, and rising sea levels. Impacts on water and food supplies, increased pestilence and disease, and the changing composition of the world’s communities and forests promises to result in serious changes to life as we know it.
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