Climate Matters: Climate activism in the toilet

What is the carbon footprint of human defecation? This oddball question comes to me as I continue this journey of exploring what I as an individual and what we as a community can do to combat the climate crisis.

Climate Matters: A carbon bomb in our Green Mountain National Forest?

I believe that the staff at the Green Mountain National Forest are good, well-meaning professionals who care deeply about our forest, but that they are locked into outdated science and policies in a 2006 Forest Plan that works directly against efforts to … (read more)

Letter to the editor: Time is now for action on Affordable Heating Act

I read with dismay in the most recent edition of the Independent that the Affordable Heating Act, S.5, has been put on hold, and will become another study for the two years, of what to do to address climate change.

Letter to the editor: A look at migrant workers through a climate prism

As to “playing a vital role in the health of the state’s agricultural industry” let’s put sympathy momentarily aside and have a cold, hard look at an underlying problem. 

Letter to the editor: Our schools need to be part of the climate solution

All three of our school districts in Addison County, and the Hannaford Career Center, have many substantial buildings that need heat (and air conditioning) and are currently major consumers of fossil fuels.

Vt. Senate modifying Affordable Heat Act to make it a study

Faced with widespread concerns about potential costs to Vermonters, authors of the proposed Affordable Heat Act have decided to pump the brakes on the sweeping bill.

Climate Matters: To Florida and back in our EV!

A well-known saying on bicycle touring trips is, “Drink before you’re thirsty, eat before you’re hungry, and shift before you have to.” 

Ways of Seeing: Time for divorce from fossil fuels

It’s not that Mr. Fossil Fuels hasn’t provided me with a comfortable and delightful life; he has.

Letter to the editor: USFS logging proposal would have negative impacts

I wish to comment on the informative op ed by Howard Jennings on Feb. 16th, 2023 about the effort to sequester carbon in old and mature forests in Vermont and nationwide.

Matthew Dickerson: Of long skating rinks and big snakes

The same climate change that is dramatically shortening the season for outdoor skating across the north — including places like the Rideau Canal Skateway — is also opening up new habitat for Burmese pythons to move northward.

Climate Matters: Our young people’s future, our forests, our changing climate

I have examined the findings of the 2022 report from the International Panel on Climate Change and other authoritative research, and what I have found is downright terrifying for our young people’s future. 

Climate Matters: Try the 30-Day Low Carbon Diet and save

According to the Low Carbon Diet Program, a group of five- to eight households agree to meet consistently once a week over a month for an hour to motivate each other to take energy saving actions listed in the “Low Carbon Diet” workbook by David Gershon o … (read more)

Climate Matters: Too late for business as usual

Do you remember when Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth” came out? I saw it in a crowded movie theater almost 20 years ago. Recently I wondered how our local climate data in Vermont look now compared to then. Quick answer: things have gotten worse. 

Climate Matters: The Knoll is a place of nourishment and wellbeing

Founded by students in 2003, the Knoll, Middlebury College’s educational garden, has become a vitally important center of climate justice, resiliency, education and community nourishment.

Letter to the editor: Thinking about climate change

If you believe in climate change as I do, I refer you to the New Yorker publication “The Fragile Earth.”

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