We already knew Gov. Phil Scott has called for a full-scale retreat from fighting climate change. But in his January 30 press conference, he made it clear he not only wants to eliminate any mandatory emissions reduction targets this side of 2050, avoid any potential legal challenge over the state’s failure to meet 2025 or 2030 targets, extract all the teeth from the Climate Action Council, implement a much more permissive measuring stick for emissions, and weaken the Renewable Energy Standard, but he overtly stated he wants no further action at all for another two years.

Yep. He had already tasked his officials with devising a plan to meet the 2050 emissions targets. But in his presser, he specified the delivery date for that plan.

December of 2026.

Sure, let’s put a freeze on climate policy while his administration takes its sweet damn time coming up with a 25-year plan — and finalizes it after the next election. When Scott might well be on his way out of the corner office. If this term is his last, this marvelous two-year effort is bound for the dustbin of history.

But really, the point is not to create an actionable blueprint. It’s to take himself off the hook for climate action anytime soon.

Let’s pause for a moment to give full credit to Vermont Public’s Peter Hirschfeld, who came to the presser armed with a fistful of precise, well-researched questions* that often had the governor searching for answers and Natural Resources Secretary Julie Moore looking distinctively cringey.

*Stay tuned for one hell of a question about Scott’s education plan. It’s worth your time.

This image isn’t a carefully selected outlier. Moore often looked like she was sprouting a migraine as the governor tried to explain his climate policy. That is, when she wasn’t delivering some real howlers of her own.

Like, for instance, her assertion that the Democrats’ ambitious climate agenda “was rejected by a majority of voters last fall.” Uhh, nope. Sure, Scott won handily, John Rodgers won the bucket of warm piss and the Dems lost ground in the House and Senate. But they retain substantial majorities in both chambers. I guess I have to say this again: The Democrats didn’t lose the election. Their climate agenda was not rejected by a majority of voters.

Or like when she claimed that the governor’s proposed changes to climate legislation “do not delay progress, rather they support continued strong forward momentum without forcing unknown costs on Vermonters.”

Okay, what part of shitcanning the 2025 and 2030 targets and delaying further action for at least two years “support(s) continued strong forward momentum”?

When the time came for questions, Hirschfeld came out strong. He noted that in 2017 when Donald Trump withdrew from the Paris Climate Accords, Scott promised to abide by them — including those 2025 and 2030 emissions targets he’d now like to ignore.

As he has done before, Scott called those targets “arbitrary,” which is a goddamn lie. They were the result of careful climate science. “In 2017 you didn’t think that these [targets] were arbitrary deadlines,” said Hirschfeld. “Eight years on you’re calling those milestones arbitrary.” He asked the governor to “reconcile” his positions then versus now.

“The details have changed in some respects,” Scott replied. He mentioned how emissions were measured; he’d like to see Vermont switch from gross emissions to net emissions, which would allow us to claim credit for having forests and farms. None of which is in the Paris accords, by the way. He also pointed to the provision in GWSA allowing people to sue the state for failing to hit emissions targets. “I don’t think that was in the Paris climate agreement,” he said. “There’s been things that have happened since then that have made it even more difficult to achieve those goals.”

Both of those points are irrelevant. The Paris Climate Accords stand as a science-based global commitment to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Our governor is in full retreat from his own commitment.

Moore then compared climate action to the state’s waterways cleanup, an effort that was allowed to proceed at an acceptable pace, not weighed down with “arbitrary” (again, they’re not) deadlines. What she didn’t mention is that the state only implemented the waterways cleanup after losing a lawsuit filed by the Conservation Law Foundation — precisely the kind of action the governor desperately seeks to avoid when it comes to climate.

Not to mention that climate change is an authentic global crisis, not the localized unpleasantness of cyanobacteria and such.

Well, we know where Phil Scott stands on climate. His agenda is long on lip service and criminally short on action, and he wants to keep it that way for another two years at least. Now we’re waiting on the Legislature. Will it swallow Moore’s interpretation of the election results and fold like a cheap card table under the pressure, or will it stand firm on climate action?

Postscript. Unrelated to climate but it must be mentioned. Hirschfeld noted that the conservative organization Americans for Prosperity was celebrating “School Choice Week” and had issued a press release praising Scott’s education plan. Scott claimed to be unfamiliar with the organization.

It is to laugh. AfP spent big in Vermont’s 2024 campaign season on advertisements targeting the Legislature’s big climate bills. Otherwise AfP is a huge, generously-funded group, one of the biggest in the conservative political ecosystem. It beggars belief that Scott doesn’t know who they are.

The point of Hirschfeld’s question was this: In the current system, any local school district can choose not to operate the full K-12 range of classes and give unserved students the option to go elsewhere at state expense — often to a private approved independent school such as St. Johnsbury Academy or Burr and Burton Academy. Under Scott’s plan, there would only be five school districts in the entire state. It’s likely that most or all of those districts would include some places that don’t offer classes at every grade level. So, Hirschfeld asked, would all those districts be open to sending students elsewhere?

In other words, would Scott’s plan effectively open the door to statewide school choice?

That would certainly explain why Americans for Prosperity thinks so highly of Scott’s plan. It would also be political poison in Vermont.

Scott’s answer was a cornucopia of hems and haws. He claimed not to have the details. He said “I’m not sure” his plan would create statewide school choice.

He’s… not sure?

Hoo boy.

You know, I run hot and cold on monitoring Scott’s press conferences. They can be a real slog. But this one was definitely worth the time, thanks in large part to Peter Hirschfeld.