The Trump administration officially announced its repeal of the Environmental Protection Agency’s  “endangerment finding,” the bedrock scientific determination that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare. This shortsighted retrenchment is a direct attack on public health, our economy, our communities, our planet and our future.

This unprecedented move seeks to deny what we already know: greenhouse gas emissions are harming public health, destabilizing our planet, and costing U.S. taxpayers significantly by catalyzing climate-intensified natural disasters with billion dollar price tags. The endangerment finding, established in 2009 based on overwhelming scientific evidence, is the legal foundation that allows the EPA to regulate climate pollution from cars, power plants, and other sources under the Clean Air Act.

Here’s what we’re doing:

VNRC and VCV remain committed to ensuring Vermont does its part to curb planet-warming pollution. We are working to ensure successful implementation of Vermont’s Global Warming Solutions Act, which requires our state to lower climate-damaging emissions while creating jobs, improving community resilience, and reducing burdens on rural and marginalized communities. Ongoing efforts to curb fossil fuel use are also essential to lower costs and energy bills for Vermonters today – and into the future. They are also critical to fostering greater energy independence and resilience, since Vermont imports all of the fossil-fired energy we use, an increasingly precarious place to be with growing rifts in global geopolitics. 

Through our close collaboration with communities, our partnerships across the state, and our representation on Vermont’s Climate Council, we remain committed to ensure Vermont meets its emission reduction mandates – for all the many economic, public health, job creation and other benefits such action provides – regardless of federal rollbacks.

We continue to champion energy efficiency, the most cost-effective strategy to keep the warmth in while minimizing waste, saving money, and reducing greenhouse gas pollution. Efficiency creates jobs for Vermonters while helping families lower their energy bills.

We’re fighting to expand access to clean, renewable energy – now the lowest cost power on the planet– as well as  weatherization programs that make Vermont homes more affordable and comfortable while reducing our reliance on the fossil fuels responsible for climate change.

We urge Governor Scott to step in and step up at this moment; collaborating more closely with allies in the U.S. Climate Alliance and states across the nation that recognize an affordable, habitable and globally competitive future is premised on clean energy. We look forward to working with the Scott Administration and the Legislature to double down – not rollback – climate action efforts. This work is more important than ever.