Burning the Furniture: Vermont, Climate Change and the Human Condition (NATURE)

Did you catch the new NATURE report out this week? Worth a read. The energy upshot? If the world wishes to prevent “catastrophic” climate change, then we must “abandon most of our coal reserves, half of our gas, and a third of our oil.” Does anyone honestly think the world is capable of walking away from all of this energy? That the U.S. will stop fracking? That Canada will cease tar sands production, whether or not the Keystone XL pipeline goes forward? That the Middle East will “walk away from 260 thousand million” barrels of oil? Etc.? Our best way forward, here in Vermont, is to aggressively move our homes, businesses and towns off of fossil fuel energy and into conservation and renewables – home by home, business by business, town by town – in the months and years ahead. Decentralized electrical energy grid building and CSA projects (see SunCommon, for example) can help. And as Guv Shumlin stated in his inaugural address this week, it is already happening. But make no mistake – given the choice between saving our planet – or keeping it hospitable for human life – and burning the furniture, the world will probably play to the latter option. Here in Vermont, getting serious about energy independence is our best option.