 I thought you might be interested in cooperating on it, but I might have to pass for that. Uh-huh. Why did you leave your voicemail? I can tell you about it briefly afterwards. Okay. There may be a possibility to provide it in some form. A good fit for your show. For my show. Or also a Josephus facilitator. Interesting project. When did you leave it? Because I checked my mail yesterday. I mean, the voicemail on my phone. Isn't there something? Huh. Doesn't matter. I'll bring it to you tonight. Okay. Are you our city representative? Yeah. All right. I guess there's probably other people that go to the city. Okay. I guess there's other publics that go to the city. Okay. I think everyone should feel free to sit around the table, too. This is not a one-way... I'll come to the station. I'd like to be. I'll be Senator Carson. Oh, who am I? Who am I? Who am I? I'll be Senator Carson. All right. Oh, who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? You're gonna be the history of everything? I hope so. Absolutely. Like, right back. All right. Perfect. Pretty good. You're good. You're so there, by far. So that's it. So I'd like to... And then the other thing that I think will probably try and capture... We try to capture people as if it's very clear what an idea is. Individual action or city action or a state policy or something, trying to kind of capture what kind of action is going to be prioritized. Looking at it, hopefully it makes up some of the different kinds of things. So, I'm going to do some things, but focusing on it, is that as a community, I think I'm going to go on. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Did you get my thoughts on that? Yes. Some, you didn't get it as well. You're still going? Do you think you should correct or read it and put it on yourself? Yeah, we did that. We did that. Right. All right, well, it's looking like I would be surprised if a couple more people trickle in, but I know that we've only got so much time, so let's get started. So my name is Lauren Perot, and I'm going to help facilitate us this evening. I am one of the facilitators and counselors, but I'm not here with any agenda. I'm just helping run the meeting, collect and listen to ideas. Carl Admeyer has kindly offered to describe for us, so he's going to be taking notes. So we're going to capture all the ideas that come out. We are looking, as Paul said, to leave this room in a little over an hour with a handful of priorities. We have a massive topic, so if there's more than the one to three things that we absolutely need to share with a big group, that's OK, but we're looking to narrow down to like two to three big things. It would be great if those could be, for example, something that we could act on quickly as a community, something that we could see really taking action on and make something longer term. Just, ideally, it's not like two things that are going to take 10 years to act on, for example, like some things that we can really kind of dig right into. But we'll see where the conversation goes. We do have some climate policy experts in the room who work in a range of algorithms from V-PIRD, who does lots of climate policy, Jared Duvall, and the Action Network, John Miller, the Natural Resources Council, Kate Stevenson, who does all kinds of green building. I don't know your official title, but it's like a major effort in all kinds of climate and has been part of the Molecular Energy Advisory Committee for countless years. Chris Lumbrough from the city is our sustainability. And I recognize lots of you who also have your own expertise. So we have amazing resources in this room so I think can help keep us focused. The rundown for what we're going to do, we're going to spend the first 15 minutes or so talking about what's going on right now, some land of the land, so people can share things that are in the works on climate action, things that we know about so we can get the landscape of what's already happening so that that can ground us. Then we're going to be looking at your ideas for what could or should be done for either shorter term recovery or longer term resilience. And Carl's going to kind of capture them under one of those buckets so that we can again make sure we're kind of keeping an eye on both of those so we're being responsive to immediate needs but also looking at resilience. And then we're going to spend the last 15 minutes as a group coming out with one of those handful of ideas that we want to share with a bigger group as priorities that we're excited or the community to work on together. And then we'll go back to the house floor. So let's start out. So if people could just share and just try to I guess talk loudly because we don't have a microphone or anything. And just share what do you know is happening now that relates to this idea so again our topic is described as action in the face of climate change. And that was described as actions, residents, businesses, property owners can take to reduce carbon impacts and address climate change. Changes in lifestyle, purchasing power or energy used to help address climate change. What can we do as a community, as a city, as a state? So that was what we're planning ourselves in. Yes. Let's start. I've been doing a little research on carbon footprint kind of. There's a lot of carbon footprint calculators on the internet. And I don't think I found one that seems like really includes everything and I feel really good about it. So I was hoping that with some expertise in this room maybe there is one that is the best because I've been thinking like I really want to know my carbon footprint and I really don't, I really personally feel like I need to make some changes so this won't happen to Montville. And I think the more good data we get out there, the more people that do their carbon footprint, the more people that know, hey, if I don't take this for like, hey, if I do this, hey, if I do this, then with that data, I mean, we can start like a whole thing in Montville, you know, I think of those like charts if we're raising money, you know how it kind of goes up. But if we had some kind of calculation like this is our carbon footprint in Montville, you're right now of whatever a billion times of carbon it is and then we're working our way down by people pledging or something based on a carbon footprint calculator that we're all using. I think we could really get some interest in the community and people taking kind of an individual responsibility for that and I would really, you know, kind of like to work on that end. Cool, great. My name's Kirk, really got that for a second to where we are. You're dealing with the most important issue is if we don't find a way to resolve the question of how to stop climate change and how to deal with the impact through driving climate change, nothing else anybody else is willing to do will make any kind of difference because we're going to go from problem to problem. So the question is where are we? Where we are right now is that we don't believe it's a problem except that people in charge of things have buying the current line that the GOP and our conservatives are running, which is, yeah, we've decided it is a problem but it's not a serious problem. It is a terribly, terribly serious problem and we have to be aware of how serious it is to begin to drive that issue into people's minds. What we miss mostly when we think about this problem is the huge number of positive feedbacks that are built into it. What we miss is the fact that, for instance, one of the most important climate change driving guests is not carbon dioxide, it's water vapor, half of it is, half of the climate change is from water here. How does it get there? Because of the carbon dioxide in the air, more in the air, that warms up the loaded water, it warms up the atmosphere, there's more atmosphere and moisture, don't worry, the atmosphere and moisture is green outcast, so it warms up, and around, around and around and around. Same here, same problem, right, just stop there. Same problem with the methane. Methane has a whole bunch of positive feedbacks to integrate carbon dioxide. Nobody really is talking about how important this problem is, what's actually driving it. So where does it go? I believe Montpelier's in a position in the National Spotlight, and I believe that we are well enough informed about what's going on, that we could create a national model, that you're global model, on how to react to this kind of fault, to this point, specifically how to drive down climate change. There are a bunch of things we can talk about today, but I'm going to set that modelist. We can do something here that's important. Are there freeing in contests? Yeah, from my perspective, as much as this is a terrible thing, it also leaves us in something of an opportunity to rebuild in a greener way, and I'm a climate activist with the Vermont Youth Lobby, so I have some experience in community organizing, but I don't know a ton about climate technology, and smarter people than me can talk about how to rebuild in a climate-friendly way, and I just want to present that as a question, because I think that's one of the most important issues we can address in this room, is about building back our infrastructure in this city in a greener way, and I want to present that and ask all the very qualified people in this room, and if you have ideas about that. Hey, Graham, I've been here since 1985, moved from Plainfield in a lot earlier in 1992, and I've been up to reading Bill McKibben's The End of Nature and decided I didn't want to drive back and forth anymore. I have this crazy idea that my computer might want to make a plan where we try to move the central business because we've got Charleston where it's from around the area of the college, and set up some kind of either aerial tram or a frequent shuttle service back and forth between there and downtown. Whatever buildings are downtown can actually be torn down and turned into riverine forests in Parkland. Ideal, it would be much better if there's already the floodwaters that are gonna be coming more and more frequently in the future. And I know it's a crazy idea, but to me the crazier idea is actually doing the same thing over again and inspecting a different result and sort of the definition is crazy. So I think we can start this in a trickle and then try to actually develop some sort of a migration but you know, change the zoning of my college to encourage commercial development of a lot. Number two, when businesses downtown started talking about the noble and service at the cap and the coffee shop has already said he's not gonna reopen. Well, hey Glenmore, hey, you're successors. What about opening up at the college next to this, you've been going in there called the Greenway Institute for Sustainable Engineering. I mean, sustainable engineering, I think I love it because what's more sustainable engineering than moving downtown on a hill, right? It seems like there's a lot of synergy here. You know, put a coffee shop next to an academic institution how it's really convenient to them and the business has a greater customer and so on and so forth. I mean, I just think that we need to come up with sort of a solid short-term and long-term plans that are integrated, connected. And the short-term plan could be zoning changes to encourage commercial development out there. The long-term plan and obviously the short-term plan would have to include talking to the Greenway Institute about is there any room up there now? Are there possibilities for some of our small businesses moving up there now? Obviously, we're going to need transportation back and forth with public transportation and, you know, I think, first, I don't know whether the money would ever be available, but I think so. We're going to get an aerial train and be able to cool or just, you know, the small shuttle buses back and forth so that people who are downtown could still get off the hill and put in these other businesses, you know. Let's encourage, you know, so many, I drive through downtown in most days and I go around and I go for a month out and it's still looking like it goes down and I just have this horrible sense of discouragement and if we develop a plan and say, you know, resilient climate change avoidance is great but we also have to be mitigation resilience, planning for the fact that it's kind of already here and that's what's going to give us everybody's forecasting more frequent floods. So I'm starting to need myself to open up. Thanks, Niki. Oh, well this is, whatever, I think it means one of the groups, the riverine corridor, but I just see our town, I live whatever right on the north branch and all the hills coming down, the water is coming down like a river on the streets and I think we can do a lot to try and, whatever, get people to get rid of their lawns and plant things that are just way better at soaking up the rain and there's opportunities on the entire watershed to absorb the water better than what we have now because obviously these big rain events are going to be, whatever, our future but we can, there's a lot we can do to reduce the water going together. So I'm Nancy Scholes and I'm currently serving on the city's Complete Streets Committee which works, advocates for bike pad concerns and previous to my involvement with Complete Streets I was the director of the Vermont Bicycle and Pedestrian Coalition for about nine years. So I speak as a bike pad advocate and when you mentioned that one of the things we would be talking about are quick, immediate, inexpensive fixes or improvements, paint is a cheap, immediate help and we'll get more people biking in Montpelier and over the years I've worked in advocacy the number one thing people tell me is well I bike but I'm afraid, I'm afraid of the cars and so if we could, as a perfect example, the intersection of state and main, if you're biking along Main Street towards Shaw's and you come to that intersection, you have a choice of, if you want to go straight you don't really want to get in the right turn lane. If you get in the go straight lane behind the cars you get several lungs full of fumes and you might not even make it before the light changes. So what I typically do and it's perfectly legal is go up between the cars that are turning and the cars that want to go straight and position myself slightly ahead of the car that wants to go straight so I'm out of the way of everyone but there's a simple thing that would make most people feel much more comfortable which is painting that area that I'm describing green. It's a green box that is understood as a safe place for a cyclist to be and we did have a little bit of green on Bailey Avenue for a while. Kind of wears off, it doesn't get replaced. You know, fog lines, the white stripe on the road makes us feel like we have a place to be. It's not always smooth and free of debris and broken pavement but striping and creating those green boxes with paint just a super fast thing that could be done that would give people more confidence to ride. All right, so we're transitioning already and this is the perfect time so welcome everyone into the ideas for short term, how are we helping our community recover in climate smart ways and also longer term resilience measures that we can take as a community and we've already captured some good ones. Joseph Gainser from Marfield. I think something that's very easy to do but I think very important is to change the language, stop talking about it as climate change that does not elicit the sense of urgency that the actual effects require. So I think that when we start using language that's a little different and I'm old enough to remember the early women's movement when they talked about the need for changing language we change the way people think. I think that's what we should be starting to do. That's cheap and quick. Thank you. What's the change? Do you have a proposal like Christmas or what's the language change? Well I would not call it climate change. I would call it climate degradation, climate breakdown, something that speaks to the urgency of the times. Change in not just us. I'm not exactly sure where this fits. It was a lot of bleeping over I think in the different issues but Paul Berns would be heard. I kind of think that this problem that we face with climate action and the face of climate change I don't think anything significant is going to happen to really change the trajectory that we are on until the fossil fuel industry is made to help responsible, made accountable for the damage that they have caused here and let's you all know what has happened since the Montpelier flood. If you look at Maui and you look at California and you look at the South and on and on. We couldn't be an example I think for others. If we decided it is time to hold the industry that caused this problem accountable and as you said at the beginning we should take stock of what's already in the works. I do want to note that Senator Ann Watson from Washington County obviously former mayor of Montpelier has agreed to be the chief sponsor of legislation that we are doing to make big oil pay to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for the damages that they have caused here. Something on the order of $100 million a year for 25 years. That's not going to cover all the damages that have caused the $2.5 billion in the industry for Vermont would be a nice start to begin to hold accountable. Those numbers could change and all the rest but I do want to mention that Senator Watson is doing this and I would expect other members of the Washington County and Montpelier delegation and many others particularly those representing areas that have been so harmed this summer to step up and be part of that effort too. So I just wanted to know. Yeah, as people are identifying the kind of more state or federal could you just share your perspective on what the Montpelier community could do to support that so that as we think about what we're prioritizing it's the role that we can play to help advance that. And do you think big issues of change are often moved more by a sense of shared values and passion and stories and righteousness and they are very technical arguments that some of us like to make. But I think this if we are ever going to hold this industry accountable in Vermont I think this coming legislative session that we convenes in January in rooms just like this that's going to be the time to do it when we have the people of this community step forward talking to your legislators, your reps, your senators and similar conversations taking place around the state. You might have a chance of convincing legislators who might not otherwise typically be on the leading edge of a campaign to hold the world's most wealthy corporations responsible. I mean none of this is going to be easy. I can't recognize that. But if they're ever going to do it it would be because you all urge or demand that they do so. Leave a like and be passionate. It has not been so far. I'd be happy to talk to you about that. I'm happy that the children, the young people in Montana is just one of the victory there as they step in that process. But we need it all. We need it all. My name's Brian Powell. I live on Lower North Mystery. We've destabilized the climate. We will have more funds. I fear that it's retreatable. Oh, we have years and we can solve the problem. Well, we're not going to. But pretending that we will. And I prefer to act in a positive way. Though I think we do. I try to be conscious of like, I'm forced to drive a car. There are certain things that I just, I'm forced to drive a car. I'm not forced to force drive my clothing. I'm not forced to use a clothes dryer, a planet chilling piece of crap. Is there anybody in this room that does not own a clothes dryer? Bless you. Bless you. Oh my God, we are in all these senses. I am so self-righteous that I'm wearing nothing that has been forced to drive. I agree that we in Montpelier could get something going and we in Montpelier could be invisible. I think we should organize to tell people to kill their dryers. Your clothes will dry by themselves. It's happened since they're been textiles. Now, I know that there are people who live in small apartments for whom this would be. People who don't have deep sinks. You know, our infrastructure is not in favor of that. But you can do it. I have a clothesline on my front porch. I have a wood stove in the winter. I put my grandmother's old drying rack in front of the wood stove and my clothes are dried in a jiffy. That's sweet. All right. All right, well we've got this idea. I wanna keep moving, but it's on the list. Anyway. Kill the dryers. Kill the dryers. Kill the clothes dryers. We're under the carbon footprint. How are we doing camp? We can't do this. It would be Wednesday. Yeah. All right, what else? I think that a lot of people have mentioned that Montpelier and all of Vermont could definitely be a role model for the rest of the world, or America. And I think that's because, especially in the Montpelier community, like a big majority of people are already really careful about their carbon footprint and really good about it. And I think that it's not about changing other people at this point, it's about changing ourselves. And if everyone works on that, even just in a small place, I think you can really affect the rest of the nation or the world. Thank you. I'm not sure if this fits in a quick fix category. I'm not sure where. Well, we can do either long-term or short-term. We're just trying to categorize them. All right. Wonderful scratch. But something I've been working on about the past year is to get my high school to become, to go net zero. The school board, which I now serve on, is working on it and it's taking a lot of work. But one thing that we can work on as a city is making all our city and municipal buildings net zero. Of course, the dream would be to have all our buildings in town net zero, but one stuff at a time. Kate, I don't know if you want to talk about what the city has done in Chris Adams, but just a quick context. Right. Well, obviously, and Chris is here from the city, we're many years into making all the city buildings net zero and are about 50% there. My idea for my big idea, if money was no object. Dream big. Dream big. Dream big. To figure out how the city could support all the buildings that were flooded, moving their mechanical systems out of the flood zone and not being fossil fuel systems and so that whatever goes into replace is electric. And it's a big project and it's not the sort of thing that each homeowner or business owner should be figuring out on their own. And it would need a really concerted effort to go building by building and help design and find the team that can do the work, potentially filling in basements like they did in the Waterbury State Complex and really just making a long road and a hard-term change there. Assuming that the downtown is still downtown and that some of these buildings that are flooded are still gonna be there down the road. So that's my big idea. So my name is Jared Duvall. I work for Energy Action Network where we do a lot of research analysis and tracking on energy and climate issues and I also live on Elm Street. And just from a context perspective, I thought I would share like following up on, I'm sorry, I don't know. Tim's first comment, it's a phenomenally complex area. There are different methodologies for how emissions are measured from a life cycle basis to a kind of point of combustion basis. But I think that in a big picture, if you look statewide for Vermont and I think Montpelier is likely very similar, nearly three quarters of the climate pollution that is produced comes from our use of fossil fuels for how we get around, primarily driving single passenger vehicles and it's the fossil fuel we use to heat homes and buildings, primarily oil and propane boilers and furnaces. So nearly three quarters. Like if we're talking about doing our part, the biggest part of the problem, the most glowing fruit is the fossil fuels that are used for how we get around and how we heat our homes and buildings. And so related to that, one of the questions I have, which relates to something Kate said, is I think one of the challenges that we're seeing downtown right now is for folks who decide to rebuild, not having heating equipment, water heaters, et cetera, in basements that needing to be above grade and also not wanting everybody to have to figure this out themselves. I wonder if in addition to some of the custom building by building specific approaches, I wonder if this might be an opportunity. Again, this is money not being as much of an object. I think it would need some federal support, but is this an opportunity to extend the district heating system? And there's two co-benefits of that. The more users, the more cost effective it becomes for everybody, but then also not every building needs to have its own heating plant and they can just get heat in through a pipe and you don't have to worry about having a furnace or a boiler in your basement. So I think that that's an idea that should be explored. I don't know the numbers on it, I don't know the engineering feasibility, the cost effectiveness, but I think it's a question worth asking because if we're serious about building back better, it needs to be building back without fossil fuel heating systems as much as possible. Can I ask you a follow-up on that? I mean, do we already have it if so much is based on the transportation? You get me somewhere like if I bought a helmet in Undyne River, if I walked down to Undyne River and bought a helmet, bike helmet, versus having Amazon deliver a bike helmet to me. I mean, is there, could we put together like that kind of data to really support the localness of Montpelier trying to not only support businesses, but actually save carbon in that? I mean, is that data out there? I mean, if I was interested in mining that, I mean, could you give me some stuff and I could try to figure all that out? Yeah, I think that there is a big difference between the kind of big picture level, like what are the statewide emissions and then versus like the personal carbon footprint calculator. And I know Kate's done some research on this as well in terms of personal footprint calculators. And I have the same issue with you. It's difficult. Not great. Yeah, I mean, I almost wonder if though there could be, if we know that statewide and we presume in Montpelier our biggest emissions are gonna be transportation and fossil heating. So you could do a campaign of buying local that saving the transportation of the things, the goods that we're buying and also support their downtown. And I think you could come up with the kind of case studies even without the hard numbers, just knowing. So I think we can think about how do we capture our biggest uses of fossil fuels and the kinds of things we can do about it. I thought back there. I was just gonna say like, what about more incentives for electric cars? I mean, if we're all driving wrong vehicles, we need to drive or maybe like incentives for electric cars like sharing them with your neighbor. Let's say you go in on it and you can say you go over to your home. Like, I don't know. Just throwing that out. It's like none of us should be driving gas cars. Sounds like for what he said. Then if we none of us throw gas cars into the air, it's not really an idea. It's just like, I know there's some incentives, but could there be a local incentive? Yeah, you could do a city incentive. If the emissions are gone, could they help us get electric? Yeah. Like they do other things. So there are, yeah, both state and federal tax incentives and they just also announced that there's an additional one of you if your vehicle was damaged by flooding. They're adding to the incentive by an extra $1,000 or something. And could we need to make more charging stations and I'll kill you or something about to make it easier to work with one of those? Yeah, just without, yeah. I wanted to ask a follow-up on kind of a combination of follow-up on the heat in here. It's remarked because I think that I hear you correctly and say you'd like to go to all electric heat and probably heat pumps in downtown buildings, is that right? Mm-hmm. Or district heat potentially. I'm sorry? Or district heat, that is maybe an option in some buildings more than others. Right, and so, but district heat obviously, that's burning wood and so, which does have a carbon footprint of some time and obviously a different strategy than all electric. I've also had a question about the district heat, which is, isn't most of that infrastructure underground and the piping is all underground and how flood resilient is that? It's flood resilient. It's one issue that we did experience with district heat is some of the electronic controls, the heat meters, that type of thing were installed in basements and we lost quite a few of those. That's kind of a function of how the system is designed and how it works. So that was kind of an unfortunate setback. We're scrambling to order new heat meters and get the district heat system back online. To Jared's point, I will say that we've had more interest in new district heat connections since this event than we have at all previously. We're in meetings and talks with specific building owners who hopefully get them connected. Anybody that's not kind of very close to a building that's already on district heat or already has piping in it, the idea of getting district heat pipes to the building and up and running in time for this heating season is, it's a really, really tough lift. So the people are in the position of having to put in some kind of heating system to get through this winter when district heat's not instantaneously, right? So that's kind of a tough pill to swallow. Is there a possible combination of district heat that's got to be where it would be based on heat pumps? All right, we'll leave you with that. Is that the answer for the system? There are hot water geothermal systems that would be a complete change of the district heat system. There's no easy transition to different technologies for the district heat plant that I'm aware of. Hi, I'm Jolyne Diverton. I live here and I'm a music education coordinator at Monteverde Music School. So I have zero expertise in the climate and environmental science realm. So part of my coming here was just trying to understand the bigger picture. I have no idea what's possible, what's affordable. It's almost overwhelming, but what I do feel is a lot like what I love to paint. I love to paint? Yeah, me too. Sorry, I'm not even on it, but what you said about organizing people and advocating, I feel like the climate crisis or whatever better language that creates a better sense of urgency. What I'm really feeling is this is as much an education informational and communications issue. I talk to people all the time who are incredibly smart and well educated and have a great life experience who don't recycle, don't, you know, they're not remorseful, they don't have those, but you know, like it's just, it's not connecting what we're experiencing and what our daily habits are for so many people. Maybe a fewer percentage of them are maybe, but for me, that's like what gives me like this feeling of, you know, doing an existential despair is like, that not enough people are freaking out. We need more people to be freaking out, but then taking wise action. That's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm talking about. That's where we are. So that's one thing I'll just say, I am very interested in being part of any kind of rebranding of climate crisis that's freaking here. The other can happen too because I know nothing in the areas. There must be models so, cities and towns and places all over the world where they're doing a better job the best we are and I'm just so curious like in the interest of not reinventing the wheel, I'm sure you all probably know of them, but like what can you just do with the other studies you're doing that's working? A lot of these ideas I think are great and doable, but there must be so many more that they can, so I think that's the most. Or the other one. I just wanted to say, like, what's amazing is I was an exchange student in Switzerland in 1983. See, this is my hand. And I'll just tell you, literally, they took their own bags to the market, down the street from, and this was in the city, there was a big metal thing, put your bottles in here, your canes in here, I mean it was like, they have been doing it in Europe for so long, and they have been hanging their clothes dry. And everyone in the building gets one wash day, I mean it's like, there are so many models out there, and they have been biking to school, and go heading to school forever. And they're just so far behind, and we've just been so unwilling to make changes in our lives, because we're just vapes, and, but I think that we just looked across the pond, we just looked across the pond, and found any old city, and said like, what are they doing? And they don't need packaged food, they're just like, it's just like a completely different culture, and I think there are a lot of examples in places outside of this country. Question? Yes. Does Montalier have sister cities? Montalier, what? I have a sister city in Montalier, France, right? Yeah? Is there a formal sister city relationship? I don't know, so. No, so what is it? They sent us some stuff. I don't know. I don't know. They want to meet across the pond and pick a random city, if there's one that's up, they're already in a relationship. I don't think they're leading a climate. Yeah. What's that? Only if they're leading a climate. I was going to say, I think they're only allowed because they're across the pond. They're European. I'll want to hear you. To go stand and get up. I'll want to hear you for your part. Just swim there a little. So, I'm Johanna Miller. I lead the Energy and Climate Program with the Vermont Natural Resources Council. I'm on the Climate Council with Jared, but more so, I live on Redstone here in Montalier. Love so many of these ideas. I guess I would say too that my theory of change is really about changing the policies so that we can make it easy and affordable or incentivize or require people to do the right thing. I totally believe in individual change. I think that Kill Your Dryer inspired, but I also think we need a policy framework that drives the change at the scale and pace that we need. And thankfully, we actually have incentive programs like through the Inflation Reduction Act and through our partners at Efficiency Vermont. There are utilities who are exploring how can we help customers rebuild and rewire with clean electricity instead of locking into fossil fuels. So, one short-term idea, because I think it builds off a lot of really good ideas in this room is, because I do believe in the power of leadership and the power of models, I think one of you fabulous ladies, said that is there potential to do some sort of resolution from the capital of declaring climate emergency? I mean, I call it a little weirding. It is a climate emergency. We actually have a law in the state of Vermont called the World War Solutions Act that acknowledges that we're in climate emergency and says we have to cut pollution in line with the science and we are so far off it, largely because of heating and transportation. So, I do wonder if symbolically we could, in the short-term, have a resolution that says and recognizes and talks about the need for declaring it climate emergency. We can talk about, these are being fossil fuel disasters if you haven't read Jared's recent piece in Vermont Digger about stop calling these natural disasters, these are fossil fuel disasters. We get the knowledge, we need to focus on transportation and heating. We should ask our legislative leaders in this body, including Allison. We have a lot of champs in the state legislature and in our congressional delegation who we can lean on to ask them to help maximize the incentives that we should hold polluters accountable, that we should help people and businesses in Vermont in this moment access the funding and the solutions that they need. I think something that articulates that in the short-term could be helpful for long-term policy progress and also just education, who said that? I think maybe that could be one short-term idea. And I think other cities and towns in the state of Vermont would be interested. Yeah, question. Yes. Yeah, so the legislature declares a state of climate emergency and what special powers would the governor get? It would be an interesting question to explore, but if some city did that first, I actually think some other towns in Vermont have done this. But in this moment, I don't know how many others, but in this moment with this particular capital city like devastated by climate-induced disaster, like it feels like a powerful statement and it could reflect a lot of the really good ideas that you all put forward and help us put pressure in the right places at the state level and the federal level. I see a couple more hands. So we've got about five more minutes for ideas. Did just want to bucket. So if we do, when we get into prioritization, just noting the city does put together like a lobbying portfolio, like a package of priorities for the community we could do potentially like a climate emergency and name some things that we want to advocate for as a city. I think the stories that we all have to come into this building and share of what these fossil fuel disasters are doing to communities to build the urgency. So when we're coming back out to the big group, you know, maybe there's a set of policy priorities, state policies that we want to as a community advocate for that could be under an umbrella of a climate emergency, just trying to package some things up and go through. And also hearing a lot of ideas about kind of community engagement you do of our energy advisory committee that Kate and I and Chris serve on and have an average team of stuff. So we could think as we're thinking, we could think about how that group and maybe somebody wanted to like, could be doing, you know, I feel like there's kind of like, public relations opportunities around education and like packaging up some of the things that are out there around incentives and if we're seeing gaps in incentives, maybe the city's doing more or that goes on our state policy agenda. But just hearing a lot of really, exciting threads and I think it was Joseph and then you. Oh, okay. Well, clearly from what everybody is saying, this is a multi-layered issue and that's one of the reasons why we can't, we haven't come as a nation together on it because there's so many impacts and they are delayed impacts and we do not see a direct effect of the things we do, negative and positive. So clearly we know that. So it's going to take individual action but we have to recognize and you know, I hear Joanna and Paul referring to this is that this is going to take system change. It's not just individual behavior that has to change although that does and have to change and I fully agree with everybody who has brought that up but we have to look at the system itself and we have to look at the issue of consumption, who consumes too much, who consumes too little, how do we even that out a little bit so that everybody has a dignified life? This is not something that Montpelier alone could do clearly but some people have talked about Montpelier being a model or Vermont being a model for the nation, perhaps for the world. How do we address the issue of economic injustice? How do we address the issue of over consumption? We have a system, an economic system that requires people to consume in order for it to continue to work. Consumers are 70% of the national economy. We keep being told that. When consumers conserve and don't spend money on various things like dryers, clothes dryers and things like this, this is a downer for the economy. So we live in an ecology that the economy is a part of, ecological economics has been telling us that for years. When do we put the ecology first, put the economy second and the economy serves the ecology not the other way around? How do we do that on a local level? How do we begin to move in that direction? I'm Robert Gilbert from East Montpelier and if I was the king of Vermont, I would do a couple of things. One, I would close the end state every Sunday and a lot of bicyclists would end up in that end state. I would also try to figure out a way maybe it's simply an outright ban on the recreational fossil fuel consumption. There's snowmobiles, motorboats, those kinds of things. Jet speeds. Jet speeds, yeah, those would all be really positive steps. And then figuring out a way to price fossil fuels in a way that's realistic is like a three-ninety-nine per gallon gas rate. And that does not reflect all the costs to go into it and whether that's something that can be addressed on a state level and obviously if you made gasoline, $10 a gallon and everybody could go to New Hampshire to buy it. But I do think that the way we price fossil fuels is not the same. One last point is that all of the experts tell us that we're gonna have additional storms like we had last month. In fact, more of them and worse of them. And so I am not convinced that rebuilding our downtown is really a great idea, especially with that. I'll do two more and then transition us. We always do something. We'll do three more. Or we just do three more. Yeah, we just do three more. Yes, yeah, we go. Hi, I'm June Leanne Denning, that's a long main street and I'm also the business owner. I own J-Lean and on main street. I wanted to talk about the carbon footprint idea. When we first moved here 15 years ago on one of the first days of school, my mom thought it would be J-Lean and had five questionnaires for everyone in the family, including yourself, about their carbon footprint. So I understand from my good friend that they know that it's not an easy thing to do to equate because of the different types. But if we did come up with something, using perhaps our incredible young minds from high school, some sort of questionnaire, it could get more people involved in making a model. And I think Montclair would be an amazing model for this idea. I'm originally from Houston, Texas, and I'm continually surprised by how you can actually make a difference here. I remember my first time here, I saw Bernie Sanders and Anne Cummings in a parade. And I was like, what are they doing here? You know, I've never seen a government official. I've never been in a state house. To go to Austin, you have to get padded down. This is 25 years ago. So I think the carbon footprint idea is a great idea just to get every single person aware of what happens when you take an airplane, how much carbon, you know, those kind of numbers I think are important. And as for your idea about holding fossil fuel corporations accountable, I think that is an excellent idea. And I think that there's, I know, three lawyers right now that would love to do that. Sure. And yeah, it's a big thing, but do it anyway. Look at the kids in Montana, do it anyway. Let them play first to have a lawsuit against, we'll do the research and find who's the biggest abuser. I don't know, I think there's seven in the United States that are the biggest that have the most emissions. So I think that's a great idea. Just let someone with a lawsuit, why not? Look who's talking for a time, you know? And I don't think the building is the best idea. We are rebuilding, because I think the town means it, but we're rebuilding with wound down, final, it's flood resistant, but we've been very thoughtful about how we're putting that together. So that's what I think. And I was wondering from Miss Samantha, are these heating units you're getting, are they gonna be on the first floor? How does that work for the city? The city's biggie here. How much would you replace the controls? They have to be on the piping, which is all the best there. So the district heat unit will be back in the basement, unfortunately. And that means that there's no way they could be moved out? It's anything possible, and it's a very large re-piping for each and every building to put those up on the first floor. There are some portions of just the heating that are connected only by wires, and those are more easily included on there. It couldn't be a word. What's that? It couldn't be a word. They're very difficult to remember. All right, we've got two more comments, and then we're transitioning to prioritization. Okay, I know we're short on time, so I'll make this concise. I wanna, can you remind me of your name? Nancy. Nancy, I wanna repeat Nancy's idea, just anything to do with the transportation sector. For one, making our downtown as friendly to bikers, walkers, electric vehicles as possible, so charging stations, and also repainting the roads in a more pedestrian-friendly way and even, I've heard a lot of people flip the idea of making roads, maybe not openly hostile to gas cars, but not encouraging gas cars on roads. And also just expanding public transportation and making it as reliable and even just functional as possible in more failure and all around the state, because as someone who's parents have both pride to use public transportation to do their homework, it's not a viable option. Yeah, because you're just saying public transportation, at least a train, like if you go to the train station, there's the one train that carries people, and which doesn't go through town, and then there's the other train for the cargo train, which goes directly through town. And I think that if there was some way they can make a train that fit that track for it to carry people, then it could be a really good way to get right into the middle of town and then just have a stop there and you would be like right there. So I think that trains is something that people should consider. Okay, Carl, big ask of you. How easy would it be to just quickly hit not the details, but just run through the ideas we've heard as to refresh our minds, and then I'm gonna ask people to name what's jumping out to you, as again, our assignment is one to three priorities. I think we could do some one thing, and get some ideas packaged together, because there's a lot of really good ones, but. Is that? It'll take a few minutes, but I can do it. Is it gonna be long and short term, the priorities that would? Ideally, if we've got some immediate things that we think we could jump on or we could just assign to the city to look into, we could have some idea of that bucket and then some, I mean, if you've got some state policy ideas, I think we could do some of that, what we might wanna advocate for the community and then some things the city could be doing, so. Lauren, thank you. It's a big topic, so we can use it. I just wanted to ask if while Carl's sorting through that, if I can put something on the table, I think connects a couple of ideas that might be. Is that more when it gets a prioritization? I'm not gonna do anything, I'm ready to go. Oh, you're ready to go, okay. But bring that idea and we get to it. Okay, so I'm just gonna go through and pull up the concrete ideas and we'll leave out the questions. I think that's okay. So for example, carbon footprint calculators, can we get everyone on board to use a common one and use it for a pledge to reduce individual carbon use and calculate how much town as a whole is producing? Use the current downtown for river flow and move the business district out to the VCFA campus. Get rid of lawns and other surfaces that don't absorb water well and plant things and so forth. Soak up the rain. Use paint to make the streets safer for bicyclists. Stop talking about climate change. Make the fossil fuel industry pay through legislation. Get rid of your clothes dryer or buy a clothes dryer or dry a clothes online. Don't use your clothes dryer if you have one. Get the ice cold till you're net zero. If you get destroyed, make all the city buildings net zero or about 50% of the way there. Make incentive for electric cars, especially if shared by neighbors. More charging stations for electric cars in Montpelier. Let's talk about district heating and making that more available to people versus making electric heat available to people or incentivize for people and getting the electric heat equipment up on the first floor. Look for inspiration in other places. Other cities are doing a better job than we are including random places across the pond. Possible climate emergency declaration. Figure out how to include addressing consumption, especially over consumption and economic injustice. Closing down the interstate every Sunday and letting banks ride on the interstate. Shut down snowmobiles and other recreational vehicles and use fossil fuels for new ones here. Having a train that carries people comes downtown. I think that's voted. Did I miss any major concrete idea? I just want to make one correction. You had said, Joseph said, stop talking about climate change. He actually said, use different language. Yes. Thank you. Okay, so we've gotten refreshed. That's good. Exactly. A lot of good ideas here. Does anybody want to make a proposal, like anything jumping out to you as a couple priorities or do you have an idea of loving some things? Well, I just wanted to get something on the table. It may be part of this list, but I'm thinking about examples in other cities and what they've done. And it goes back to a little bit what you were talking about, Larry, in terms of, so one of the things that a city can do, of course, with a state that would need to allow it to happen, but is to set requirements around what type of equipment can be purchased and installed. So in some cities they are phasing out the installation of new fossil equipment or fossil dependent heating equipment or others. So that could be one approach. The other approach that is actually up in Burlington is they basically, for any new construction, and I believe it's also going to apply to kind of renovations or putting in a replacement heating system, they will allow you to put in a fossil heating system. But what you have to do is calculate the estimated lifetime social cost of carbon and they assign you that carbon.