 Coming up on this edition of Abledon Arnair. Senator Anne Watson, what is her position on the environment and people with special needs? This actually is part two because we've done part one before here on Abledon Arnair. All that and much more when Abledon Arnair starts right now. Major sponsors for Abledon Arnair include Washington County Metal Health, where hope and support come together. Media sponsors for Abledon Arnair include Park Chester Times, Muslim Community Report, WWW, this is the Bronx dot info, Associated Press Media Editors, New York Power Online Newspaper, U.S. Press Corps Domestic and International, Anchor FM, and Spotify. Partners for Abledon Arnair include Yachad of New York and New England, where everyone belongs, the Orthodox Union, the Division for the Blind and Visually Impaired of Vermont, the Vermont Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired, Center Vermont Habitat for Humanity, Montefiore Medical Center of the Bronx, Rose of Kennedy Center of Bronx, New York, Albert Einstein College of Medicine of the Bronx, Abledon Arnair has been seen in the following publications, Park Chester Times, WWW, this is the Bronx dot com, New York Power Online Newspaper, Muslim Community Report, WWW dot H dot com, and the Montpelier Bridge. Abledon Arnair is part of the following organizations, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Boston, New England Chapter, and the Society of Professional Journalists. Welcome to the tradition of Abledon Arnair, the one and only program that focuses on the needs, concerns, and achievements of the Divinity Abel. I've always been your host, Lawrence Seiler, Arlene is not here today, but let's talk about our guest. Anne Watson was born in Vermont, in Burlington, Vermont and grew up in Essex. She received her Bachelor's of Science degree in Physics with a minor in Mathematics from Penn State University. Her graduate degree is from the University of Vermont and is in Secondary Education and has been a science and math teacher since 2004. She's an ultimate Frisbee coach and has served on the Vermont Youth Ultimate League. She was appointed to the Montpelier City Council in 2012 and represented District 2 and has maintained that seat for three elections. She was elected Mayor of Montpelier in 2018 and again in 2020 and 2022 and enjoys ultimate Frisbee crocheting, spending time with her family in Montpelier. She lives in Montpelier with her husband and son and she's been a member of the Senate of 2023 to the President. Thank you Senator Anne Watson for joining me on this edition of Able Down On It. Well, thank you so much. Okay, so let's talk about the environment and how that plays into helping people with disabilities or special needs or, you know, what is your take on how the environment deals with people with disabilities? Oh, yeah, for sure. Well, thank you so much for asking that question. I think that's a topic that doesn't get a lot of airtime necessarily or enough airtime. So I'm delighted to be talking about it. So one of the things that I think is really important to note is that particularly around, you know, climate change or other environmental issues around like toxicity in our environment, for example, that can end up affecting more vulnerable people a lot more. The elderly and... Yes, yes, absolutely. You know, I think about, you know, particularly with climate change, one of the things that we anticipate, of course, is a warming climate. And so we expect to see more very hot days as the climate warms and that is going to be really important for people that are especially elderly or who, you know, may not have as great mobility to be able to have access to cool spaces. You mean like cool... Because New York... Excuse me, I know that New York and other big cities have cooling centers. Is that what you're talking about? Exactly. Now, in Vermont, we may be more familiar with the idea of warming shelters, you know, places for people to get out of the cold, especially at night. But cooling shelters are going to be increasingly important as the climate warms. And of course, we're going to do our best to reduce our carbon emissions and other greenhouse gases so that we can at least do our part in reducing the driving factors of climate change. But we know it's likely to get hotter in the trajectory that we're on. Yeah, I remember just to reiterate what you said, I remember when we first got to Vermont, when my wife and I first got to Vermont in 2015, it was 75-80 degrees on Christmas. Yeah, yeah. Right, like there's trends are changing. How does that play into... So the warmer the weather is, the worse the climate becomes? Well, I guess I would say it's the other way around. One of the effects of climate change is that patterns that were stable are becoming less stable and extremes become more extreme, right? So the the hots become hotter, the colds become colder. And I would actually, I would add that storms are likely to be more, they're likely to be stronger. So we might get more instances of extreme precipitation like we saw this past summer. And but we're also likely to see more droughts as well. So all of the extremes kind of become exaggerated. And again... Because that has to do with the, because in terms of what you mentioned climate and like rocks erode and like if someone lives, I'm just your example, someone lives in, say, Hawaii. And they live in a seaside community. The tide comes in, they can ruin their house. All of that, it can erode things, flooding, this big flood that we had. Absolutely. Well, and I mean, what was tough about that was the ground was already pretty saturated from prior rain and then adding an incredible volume of water on top of that and Barry experienced something like 200 relatively some small, some not so small landslides. What is a define? Okay, you're a teacher. So can you define what a landslide is? Sure. Well, so I think you could say that normally roots of plants or trees are generally holding a lot of the dirt together. But if the ground is steep enough and saturated enough with water, it may actually become more than what the roots that are there can hold in place. And so because of the gravity and all the weight, because of the water in the soil, it comes loose and then slides down the slope. And a lot of things can play. Well, okay, we mentioned landslides and stuff. But, you know, things like fire, the elements fire ice. When it gets overly cold. I remember one Christmas, we couldn't walk around Montpelier. There was a sheet of ice. Oh, yeah. Well, and that's more likely to happen as well. And I know also significantly affects people with disabilities. You know, again, in terms of like getting around. And one of the things that we saw last winter was... Was that last winter? I forget. Was that last winter or the winter before? You know, I don't recall the instance that we're referring to. But last... You weren't talking about this. I do, yeah. It might have been last winter actually now that I'm thinking about it. But, yeah, last winter we saw a lot of instances where there was a significant amount of very wet, heavy snow that caused a lot of outages, power outages around the state. But, I mean, one of the other effects of that is that you might get a lot of ice forming. And that is... It's just, it's really hard to move around when you've got a lot of ice. Especially for wheelchairs and other people that have kids. Now, the pandemic saw things in the environment that... When you're dealing with lack of hospital... I'm going to bring this up. Lack of hospital beds. Lack of medical care. I know we had to, we had... When Obama had Obamacare. But then when you... How does lack of medical care play into the environment when it comes to, you know, people got sick. People, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah, I do want to highlight that the Affordable Care Act still exists. Oh, it does. Okay, does it? Okay, go ahead. But it's a great question though about the interplay between climate change and the medical community. I hope we don't mind. We bring it up. Oh, no, not at all. I think it's totally relevant and important. One of the things that, again, I think goes under the radar that people may not think about is the effect that climate change has particularly on folks with asthma. So, you know, particularly with, you know, increased particulate matter or increased pollen levels, that can... Because it goes back to physics also. When you ruin... I know I'm not a physics teacher like you, but when you ruin the environment, yeah, it plays, you know... Yeah, and so, I mean, we anticipate, you know, that there is going to be more demand for medical services as a result of climate change. And that's something that we need to... Do we need to plan for? And it actually might be worth mentioning. So we have this legislative session coming up here starting in January. And one of the bills that I'm really excited to work on is I would call it a climate superfund. So there's this... Are you familiar with the idea of a superfund site? Not exactly, but... Okay, so the general premise of a superfund is that a company may have polluted an area and through that pollution caused damage to a community. And they have to give... They have to give restitution. Yeah, like they have to pay to clean it up or pay to... They have to pay for the... Fixing the damage that they caused, if that makes sense. Example... Well, oil... If oil spills into the ocean, a company has to... Well, usually the ocean wouldn't be a superfund site, but a piece of land might be. So if there was a lot of oil or some other toxin that was dumped into a piece of land, it might become a superfund site. Speaking of which, I'm going to mention this. When we have the big flood... Yes. Correct me if I'm wrong. Okay. I understand that... Because sludge of sewage... Yes. That's a correct me if I'm wrong. Okay. Just excrement from people's toilets and sewage and sludge. Left an awful smell. And then I heard also... Correct me if I'm wrong. One of the gas stations petroleum... Was it a truck that was in... One of the bodies of water? I have not heard that, but that would not surprise me. Okay. I'm sorry if I... No, you're fine. But how does that when sewage back up? Yeah, that's a good question. I think the difference between what that is and what I'm talking about with a superfund site is that it has to be really clearly attributable to either one or a certain number of specific entities. It's got to be clearly linked to some business that happened, if that makes sense. Like the Exxon problem that was used... Sure. Yeah. So they would give money if Exxon or gas station or gas company was in play and oil spill, they would give money to fix that. Right. Yeah. As an example, right? And so the idea that... The bill that I'm going to be working on is creating what we would call like a climate superfund, which is to say that our community is experiencing damage because of carbon pollution in the atmosphere. And people may not think about what's in our air as being polluted, but really like we are out of balance because of the amount of carbon in our atmosphere right now, that is a pollution and it is genuinely causing damage through climate change. So the goal would be to say, we can measure how much worse storms are now as a result of climate change and that differential, and particularly the damage that caused, that differential caused is directly attributable to companies that sold us the petroleum or the fossil fuels in the first place. And so the goal is to say, you are responsible for this damage and therefore oil companies or fossil fuel companies you need to pay a certain percentage of the damage that we are experiencing. Is this millions of dollars? We're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars. Sure it is probably. So the goal of what we're talking about right now is 100 million dollars a year for the next 25 years. But how does that... So it's like 2.5 billion. 2.5 billion. But that's just from some preliminary estimates and we'll need to dig deeper into the amount of damage that Vermont has experienced. And... Is there any particular... I hate putting blame, it's not good to put blame on people. But are we all... If this was a trial, let's say, are we all at fault for messing up the climate? Well, I think we would say, particularly with the model from Superfund sites, it is whoever has sold the product into the state. Like as it turns out, Vermont doesn't have any naturally occurring fossil fuels here. So it is whoever has imported it. Now to be fair, we need to all be doing our part to curb the carbon emissions that we are personally responsible for, burning in our cars or houses or whatnot. And that's also really important. So we're getting into winter. And I know that... I'm going to mention Economic Services. They're a wonderful organization for people who need it. They have something called... This is a national thing, probably international at some point. It's called HEAP. Heating something... Is it LIHEAP, Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program? Yes. Yeah. That's a great program. Great program. Okay, so you mentioned... Okay, so when a person, let's say, needs pellets for their... Is that a natural fuel? That's a great question. Or anything of that nature? Yeah, so I would certainly say that generally speaking, from a climate perspective, pellets and wood products used for heating in your home is better than fossil fuels. I mean, it's not ideal because we're still burning something. But because it's a woody product, that means that it is a part of what we would call the short carbon cycle as opposed to the long carbon cycle. People may not think about this very much, but all the fossil fuels, like the gasoline we put in our cars or... By the way, for those that want to know, HEAP stands for Home Energy Assistance Program. Yes, yes. All of that material was once probably a plant. It was probably an algae that was growing in some lake or ocean somewhere, and all of that decayed and condensed into what we now know as fossil fuels. But it was a plant millions of years ago. So the long carbon cycle was millions of years, and the... So the carbon that is locked up in that material was in the atmosphere millions of years ago. The carbon that is in the woody biomass that we would burn as pellets or as cordwood, that was in the atmosphere on the scale of 40 to 100 years ago. So speaking of... Something that's natural for the environment is better to burn for fuel than something that's not natural. Coming to this, we're coming into the electric car age, or we're already there. There's not enough electric charging stations. We're working on that. We're working on that. They even have contacted some organizations. They even have a car that drives itself for the blind and visually impaired. Oh, yes, yeah. They're working on that cycle pilot program. But what is your take on... Well, bicycling is important. Yes. Exercising is important. But what is your take on the electric car industry versus gas? Are we going to stop gas? Example... New York. And I bring them up. They are stopping gas stoves in some places and going electric. Yeah. So induction heat, some people like cooking on gas because it's faster. But what is your take on first the electric car industry versus gas, and then changing from gas to electric when it comes to cooking and other... That is a great question. Oh my gosh, there's so much to say about both of those things. We can keep going. Well, so... I want to do... We'll do more segments on climate change. Okay. Fair enough. So one of the things I think is important for folks to know is that Vermont recently passed or I should say adopted the clean cars and trucks rule that start in California. It's California's rule. California kind of dominates the auto industry in the United States. So we had the option to adopt what California has done. We've done that. And what that means is that by 2035 all of the cars and light duty trucks in the United States... What does it mean by light duty trucks? I'm not sure that I have a technical definition for that. That's a great question. Oh, you mean smaller trucks? Yes. As opposed to dump trucks. No, I'm talking about moving trucks. Right, I don't think that is included. But I don't know that. But that's a great question. In any case, all of those vehicles will need to be electric by 2035 and an increasing percentage of them has to have to be electric as we get closer to 2035. The demand for electric vehicle charging stations is only going to go up. Is it going to be cheaper for people for electric charging stations versus gas? I think that is going to be the trend over time, yes. And to be fair, it is already cheaper to operate electric vehicles than to operate fossil fuel based vehicles because electricity... Gas has gone up too. Yeah, well, and it's likely to continue there. There you go. Well, electric vehicles are much cheaper to drive per mile than the fossil fuel equivalent. Some people call them ICE cars, internal combustion engine cars. And I think this change to electric vehicles is the right move for a lot of reasons. One of the reasons... That we're actually going into more electric before you continue. The more electric vehicles you might have, the less likely because there's been car fires on the road. Sure. People's cars blow up in the wrong places. So the less likely of that, I guess. Yes. I don't have statistics on that, but there is certainly a lot less maintenance that's needed for an electric car. And you don't have the tank of fuel that is at risk of catching on fire. That's not to say that there is a risk with batteries, for sure. Oh, since you said batteries and we're talking about people with disabilities too, sometimes if you charge... I know when I've gone into an airport and I bring my computer along, they check what kind of battery you have so it doesn't blow up or break or whatever. And sometimes you're not allowed to bring certain types of batteries. Has Vermont adopted a rule with batteries and recycling because I know that we recycle in Vermont. We do have rules about battery disposal. That's true. And I think there's an opportunity to recycle them, but I don't know as much about that as I would like to know. So I have some learning to do around that. But getting back to the electric vehicles, one of the significant advantages of electric vehicles is that in an ICE car, an internal combustion engine car for all of the energy that you put in the tank, 80% of that energy is lost through inefficiencies in the engine and in the... basically like heating it up. It's kind of like an internal combustion engine car is like a little heater that also generates a little bit of motion. So it's very inefficient as far as the use of that energy. And electric vehicles is almost the reverse. It's going to be more on the scale of 80% efficient. So 80% of the electricity that you put into the vehicle is going to be useful in terms of the motion of the car as opposed to heating it up. And so just as far as like the use of energy resources that we have, electric vehicles are already significantly better. And because of mass production the embodied energy of the batteries has gotten a lot better. And so on the whole it is a really good thing that we're switching. So would you say it's more lighter on the wallet having an electric car than having a car with gas? Yeah. And one of the barriers is that the upfront costs for electric vehicles can be a little bit more than the upfront costs for an internal combustion engine car. But that's getting better. It's coming down, it's getting cheaper. There are a few people that are on the same low income and just need a car to go from A to B. That's what I'm saying. Which brings me to more energy questions. Sure. We have this heat program and people that are low income that are in their homes there's been problems with it's called a space heater. Sure. You know what I mean? It's a small heater boat big. It does not have rules when it comes to that as far as what kind of heater a person can have in their homes. That's a good question. I don't know what rules people have around space heaters particularly, but it may be good to know that heating your home with a space heater is a very expensive way. And dangerous sometimes. I think it is probably dangerous to heat with space heaters. If you're going to use electricity in the efforts to heat your home an electric air source heat pump or ground source heat pump is again significantly more efficient. Not just more efficient than an electric space heater, but it's also more efficient than heating with fuel oil. And cheaper per it's also cheaper per unit of heat to heat with the heat pump. People have to pay the electric bill. I'm assuming, especially in Vermont power bills go up more in the wintertime because people are home more than Sure, well it depends on what we're talking about in terms of power. I mean a lot of times people will use air conditioners in the summertime and that can be a big draw on their electric bill. If people are heating with oil then their electric bill may not be so much in the winter, but it may be more in terms of paying their heating bill for fuel oil or propane for example. But if they're using space heaters or just like electric baseboard then yes, that would be huge. What's a baseboard? Yeah, so it's just like a distribution method for heat in your house where there might be a device at the floor level that gets hot when it's on and you might not see it, but there's infrastructure behind there's like a metal front to it that radiates heat into the room. So let's go back in the beginning we mentioned about the cooling centers. Sure, well to be fair we didn't actually talk about I'm sorry, I'm sorry. No it's okay, we didn't actually get to talk about cooking. Yes, go ahead. Yeah, no fair enough. So we don't have any laws that I know of anyway about cooking with fossil fuels but you know honestly I think if we have a method that is just as good for cooking then I think we should move away from fossil fuel based cooking. Regular electric ranges or induction stoves are great and people love their induction stoves I've heard. I mean to be fair I know that for commercial kitchens it's really useful to have propane or gas stoves and you know maybe there's maybe that needs to continue in some way but I would love to see us in general as a society move away from using fossil fuels for cooking. Just cook over an open fire. That's like the least efficient way. Why? Why is it the least efficient? Oh gosh because the heat just goes out in all directions and a very low percentage of that actually makes it into the food that you're hoping to heat up but anyways that's yeah. No but so let's go into you said cooling centers and then also in the winter for example the homeless population of Vermont you know they use churches as warming centers is that do you know if that's going to continue do you know because there's been I don't know if there's been problems in the past with getting churches on board but what's you know keeping people from temperatures can be environmental problems when you're done with frostbite and other cold issues. Oh for sure so I don't know whether I know there has been a church in Montpelier that has had a warming shelter in the basement in the past I don't know if that is continuing for this next season. The flood some churches have just continued so I don't know but I do know that there is a state program to help keep people housed during the cold months. Economic services yeah what they do is they give people vouchers for like 30 days for 28 days normal but well everybody's normal but 28 days on a normal circumstance but then if you're challenged or disabled in some way they'll give you an extra month to do what you don't give you an extra month in a voucher to get what you need as far as housing. No for sure environmental in terms of has the homeless population increased in Vermont and is there is there I know there's more housing going to happen but is there still a lack of housing in Vermont and I know that plays into environment. Oh for sure well so I don't have statistics about I'm sorry no no you're fine I don't have specific statistics about the amount of homelessness but my understanding is that it has increased and it is certainly not helped by the significant lack of housing that we have in Vermont right now we are lacking housing available at basically all income levels and that is it's been really hard to help move people from the hotel motel program out into during the pandemic that well they stopped they had a federal funds in during the pandemic go ahead. Yeah well so just to finish that thought right like so Vermont was paying motels for rooms for folks experiencing homelessness to stay there and they even actually bought some motels to convert permanently into temporary housing for folks and I think the hope is that we may do some more of that but that that is not going to be the probably the best long-term solution and one of the things that I anticipate we will work a lot on this coming session is issues of homelessness and of housing both. How so if we go over it's okay because we can split it up. Sure well my understanding is that advocates for homeless folks have a have had proposals and plans for what we could do to help reduce the rate of homelessness in Vermont and so I haven't seen those plans but my hope is that the session will be taking those plans seriously and seeing if we can put some money and energy towards doing those things and then I think the other the other piece about housing in general is that like so we have something called Act 250 in Vermont What exactly is that again? So it is a law that gets triggered by developments of a certain size or type and so it's if you have a certain size or type of development you have to basically prove that you are not I'm speaking generally here but it basically means that you're not adversely affecting the environment and so it's a lot of checks and that has put I mean on the one hand it has done I think some really good things in terms of protecting our environment but it has also simultaneously reduced the amount of housing that might have been built in Vermont and so this is it's a tough line to walk right like we want to do right by our environment but we also need to do right by people and have sufficient housing and so I think we are going to be looking at a bill this session that is going to tune some of those requirements for Act 250 that hopefully will allow us to both continue to protect the environment and prevent forest fragmentation but ideally and this is what I'm hoping for allows easier construction in areas that are already impacted like in our you know village centers or downtowns or in that general periphery quick well of course you know we might go over what in terms of now I know food insecurity or lack of food or ways to get food can be part of the environment can you talk a little bit about that yeah well we certainly saw especially during the pandemic when there was a lot of food drop off points there was a significant demand there is a significant demand food pantries were kind of low yeah right so we know food insecurity is a real factor in Vermont and we I think it's something that we need to be paying more attention to in general and you know I mean on the one hand so the we are certainly dependent on food from out of state and support from out of state you know we have this the federal farm bill that ultimately provides food through services like WIC what is WIC again I should know that better than I do but it's one of the services that ends up providing food for particularly like women and children WIC is a special supplemental nutrition program for women and WIC is the USDA special supplemental nutrition program for women and infants and children WIC provides food benefits nutrition education breastfeeding support yes so hugely important for Vermont and with the potential at the time that we're taping this there may be a federal shutdown but the temporary extension with the farm bill did pass and so basically the WIC program was extended so it's not changing to my understanding if it's a federal if it's a government shutdown let's say things like WIC things like social security people get SSDI SSI they stay and you get your government check they don't cut your government checks or you know that kind of yeah so I think it's also important that we are able increase talking about the support we get from out of state I do think it is important that we have WIC is a federal thing right? yes yes but so I think it's important that we are also supporting our in-state producers of food we had a lot of crop loss in the well in the flood but also in the freeze that happened in May of this year and so you know as much as we can be supporting our local farmers and producers of food as much as we can we need to be supporting them as well so both of those especially like our local food is more resilient food it's easier to it's less in terms of transportation access to it in that sense and so we need to be continuing to support our agriculture in Vermont okay so three or four more main questions before we end drugs okay recently there was a situation in Burlington I don't know if you saw on WCAX but a Burlington church had to stop homeless people from sleeping on their church grounds because they were finding they were finding needles and drug paraphernalia on the church steps I know Vermont has a clean needle program they have methadone clinics what is your take on what acts in the Senate have you been participating in when it comes to drug enforcement drug help I know that they have clean needle programs in the past if you want to speak a little bit on that sure well I think one of the most important things that we can do is it's part of the environment when you leave a needle sure yeah no absolutely with green up day you have to give special instructions to people in case they find needles because you're not supposed to be picking them up I know back in the 80s crack vials were on the streets yeah yeah well so I think the biggest thing that we can do to help with the drug epidemic is actually have better support services for people for themselves falling into these these traps where drugs are what they're turning to in terms of having better mental health support as well as yeah I think mental health in general is underappreciated and still has stigma around it since you said that mental health played into the environment mental health certainly with mental health we've got people that are that end up turning to drugs there can be a lot of pressures around that as well including relationship trouble as well including financial trouble can all be factors in those things so many other pieces as well I actually happen to know that particularly with the stress around the environment with climate change that can be a stressor for people as well and that can also play into people's mental well well-being I'll better go too much on the tangent no it's fine so really I think one we need to be treating people that have drug addictions as it's a drug use disorder we need to be treating them as people who need care and support even though we have Washington County I hope there's so many other services you find that there's still a lack of mental health services in Vermont for sure there definitely needs to be more funding and staffing as well that's a huge need so my hope especially in terms of addressing drug addiction is really to have better support in general it's so scary it's terrible and I think if anyone is struggling with drug addiction they ought to reach out to somebody that they trust and get the help because help is out there okay is there anything that we didn't touch on that's important well there's a lot of things we didn't talk about that I think are important but I'm glad that we got to talk about homelessness and housing and the environment those are all going to be issues that I think we're going to come up during this next legislative session okay well we would like to thank Senator Anne Watson for joining us on this edition of Ableton on Air and we will definitely have her back for other shows with climate change but really quick where can people reach you if they need to and what is the contact through your office yeah that's a great question the absolute best way to get in touch with me is by email and that my email address is available on the states website in case that's in case you forget anything else like you can find it through the states website but it is a Watson at allege.state.vt.us okay and with that so what particular issue would you like to we can go over a little bit oh gosh go ahead oh sure so we've been talking a lot about energy and the environment just to extend that a little bit one of the other pieces of legislation that I think we're going to be working on that I've been working on here in the off session is around where we get electricity from on the one hand it's great to have electric vehicles they are more efficient that alone is a positive that is a good thing but where our electricity comes from also matters in that conversation and so one of the things that I've been working on in the off session is to is really about making our electric grid cleaner what is an electric grid for those that don't know oh that's a great question so like the electric power lines that you see outside your house that is a part of it those I would call those distribution lines they're getting electricity to your house but you might also see like big power lines that are cutting over mountains along the highway like that kind of thing I would think of those more as like transmission lines that are trans that is how we get electricity from power plants to the more local distribution lines that are shorter and you might see in your neighborhood so I would refer to all of that as the electric grid it's the way we connect electric producing places to electric using places okay well so we might as well go over solar power is a big big issue what how does it well people with special needs might not know what solar power is I know when I was a kid I had a solar powered calculator oh nice but what is solar power and how is it cheaper in terms of your house and how does it work and how is it working in Vermont that is a great question so I mean I could go into like some really nerdy places on that go ahead because of my background in physics but yeah well okay we might as well we might as well talk about it we can go to the second part yeah right so we've got some materials including silicon that when a photon, a little chunk of light hits it the response of that material is to release an electron and so what a solar panel is is that it's got a lot of this material and as light hits it it's producing all these electrons and you put a little bit of a voltage across that and that little bit of voltage directs the electrons in general to all move in the same direction in that in a way and so they because of that small electric voltage they all travel together and so that creates a current and so that is what generates the electricity from like a solar panel and so that ends up like if people have solar panels on their homes it's got to go through an inverter to have it be able to connect to no it's fine it converts DC electricity I should say an inverter it connects DC electricity to or direct current to alternating current since you said that we're talking about AC DC current when Thomas when Edison we're talking about science when Edison and Tesla were having that battle AC and DC current and the light bulb was created energy efficiency I'm getting somewhere energy efficiency is there rules around Vermont when it comes to lighting your home with certain light bulbs well so Vermont is actually phasing out a certain kind of compact fluorescent bulb and the reason is because fluorescent bulb is what what exactly is that well so you can so a fluorescent bulb in general has a tube that has a gas inside of it and I'm not sure I could tell you exactly what that gas is but by putting a voltage across that gas it excites the atoms of that gas and then unexcites them when the voltage goes away and so in unexciting it releases a photon so we see that as light fluorescent bulbs they're actually turning on and off so quickly that our eyes can't perceive it and so a compact fluorescent bulb just takes that tube and winds it up so that it is the size of a regular like the light bulb shape that we sort of think of as being normal for light bulbs but it turns out that those tubes have a little bit of mercury in them and if you were to break one that would be really bad so as speaking about mercury we mentioned it years ago photographers the chemical that was used in dark rooms they kind of phased out bad chemicals with certain types of jobs environmental stuff mercury was one of them you know you can get extremely sick by exposure to mercury and other types of chemicals when it comes to heavy metals heavy metals and what so what is Vermont doing with that well so my understanding is that those not mercury itself but I'm talking about like those bulbs so I think I saw recently about a certain kind of bulb is just no longer going to be allowed to be sold in Vermont and I think that's probably a really good thing anything else that we didn't touch on of course there are so many things Larry we can save them for another time no problem I hope this wasn't oh no great okay well again we would like to thank you for joining us on this edition of able then on air and for more information what is your email again it's awatson at ledge.state.vt.us okay and we would like to thank Senator Anne Watson for joining us on this edition of able then on air I'm Lauren Seiler see you next time on the next climate change edition of able then on air major sponsors for able then on air include washington county metal health where hope and support come together media sponsors for able then on air include park chester times muslim community report www this is the bronx.info associated press media editors new york parrot newspaper us press corps domestic and international anchor fm and spotify partners for able then on air include new york and new england where everyone belongs the orthodox union the division for the blind and visually impaired of vermont the vermont association for the blind and visually impaired central vermont habitat for humanity montefere medical 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