 So let's get started. So my name is Lauren Ferrell, and I'm going to help facilitate us this evening. I am one of the facilitators of the counselors, but I'm not here with any agenda. I'm just helping run the meeting, collect and listen to ideas. Karl Adneier 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 actually need to share with a big group, that's OK. But we're looking to narrow it down to 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 maybe something longer term. 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 the range of Paul Burns from V-PURG, who does lots of climate policy, Jared Duvall, and any action network, Johanne Miller, the Monagno Resources Council, Kate Stevenson, who does all kinds of green building. I don't know your official title, but it's like a major guest for an all kinds of climate and has been part of the Molecular Energy Advisory Committee for countless years. Chris Lombra from the city is our sustainability. And I recognize lots of you who also have your own SPRGs. So we have amazing resources in this room, so I think it 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 lay 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. And 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 that 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 for 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 talk loudly because we don't have a microphone right now. 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, 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 branding ourselves in. Yes? I'll 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've 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 personally feel like I need to make some changes so this won't happen to Montpilier. 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 flight, hey, if I do this, hey, if I do this, then with that data, I mean, we can start like a whole thing of Montpilier. 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 Montpilier right now of whatever zillion 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 kind of like to work on that and look at it. Oh, great. My name's Rickford. Let me back up for a second to where we are. We're dealing in the, this is a little bit of an issue. If we don't find a way to resolve the question of how to stop climate change and to deal with the impact, you're driving climate change, nothing else anybody else is willing to do will make any kind of difference. Because we're going to be overwhelmed by the problems. So the question is where are we? The room we are right now is, why should we all live as 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. But we miss the fact that, for instance, one of the most important climate change driving gas is not carbon dioxide, it's water vapor. Half of the, half of the climate change is from water here. How does it get there? Because carbon dioxide in the air, when you're on the air, that warms up the water, warms up the atmosphere, there's more atmosphere and moisture, there's more atmosphere and moisture with green outcasts, so we don't want it to get lighted up and around, around and around and around and around. Same here, same problem, I just thought, same problem with methane. Methane has a whole bunch of positive feedbacks so it's great carbon dioxide. Nobody in the community is talking about how important this problem is, what's actually driving it. So where did we go? I believe Monteria is in a position in the national spotlight and I believe that we are well enough informed of what's going on that we could create a national model and you go, Monter, on how to react to this kind of fault, this fault specifically, how to drive down the climate change. There are a bunch of things we can talk about today but I'm going to set that in mind with us. We can do something here that's important. Any other framing contest? 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 if any of you have ideas about that. Big Graham, in the area since 1985, moved from a planned building in Lauderdere in 1992 after a reading building given the state of nature and decided I didn't want to drive back and forth anymore. I have this crazy idea that Lauderdere might want to make a plan where we try to move the central business because you've got children around the area of the college and set up some kind of either air of the ground or frequently shoveled surface back and forth between there and downtown. Whatever buildings downtown can actually be torn down and turned into a river in forests in Farland. Ideal, it would be much better in absorbing the flood waters that are going to 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 expecting a different result and sort of the definition to be 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 either college to encourage commercial development. Number two, when businesses downtown start talking about, you know, don't blend strategies at the coffee shop as I already said, you're not going to reopen. Well, hey Glenn or hey, you're a successors. What about opening up at the college next to this thing that's going in called Greenway Institute for Sustainable Engineering. I mean sustainable engineering, we got a lot of 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 really can be easy to do them and the business has a great new 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 plan that are integrated, connected. And the short-term plan could be zoning changes to encourage commercial development up there. The long-term plan and obviously the short-term plan would have to include talking to 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 I think personally I don't know whether the money would ever be available but I think so it's going to be an aerial trend and it'll be really cool. Or just, you know, the small shuttle buses back and forth so that people who are downtown can still get up to hell and put these other businesses, you know. Let's encourage, you know, so many, I drive through downtown most days and I go around and I go for a month out and it's still looking like it goes down and I, you know, I just have this horrible sense of discouragement and if we develop a plan and say, you know, 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 repeat myself a little bit. Thanks, Dave. Oh, well this is whatever it means, one of the groups, the River Rae corridor but I just see our town. I live whatever right on the north branch and all the hills going 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, you know, obviously these big rainvests are going to be whatever our future but we can, there's a lot we can do to reduce the water going to the river. So I'm Nancy Scholls and I'm currently serving on the city's Complete Streets Committee which works, advocates for bike-ped 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-ped 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 wanna go straight, you don't really wanna 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 wanna 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. Kinda 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. Great. All right, so we're transitioning already and this is the perfect time. So well done 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. So for you and for me, Paul. Joseph Gainser from Marshfield. 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 facts 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 and we changed what people think. I think that's what we should be starting to do. That's cheap and quick. Thank you. Let's continue. Do you have a proposal? What's the language change? Well, I'm not calling climate change. I would call it climate degradation, climate breakdown. Something that speaks to the urgency of the times. Change in our homes. I'm not exactly sure where this fits. I was a lot of bleeding over, I think, in the different issues. But again, Paul Burns could be heard. I kind of think that this problem that we face, which I'm going to ask you in 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 be held 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, you look at California, you look at the South, and on and on. We could 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 dubbing and 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 caught the $2.5 billion in the industry for Vermont would be a nice start to begin to hold them accountable. Those numbers could change, and all the rest, but I do want to mention Senator Watson is doing this. 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 can 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 than 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 reconvenes 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 gonna be easy. I recognize that. But if they're ever going to do it, it will be because you all urge or demand that they do so. Would you believe that that can be fascinating? 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 just wanted the victory there as they stepped in that process. But we need it all, we need it all. My name's Brian Powell. I live on Lower North Street. We've destabilized the climate. We will have more funds. I fear that it's retreatable. Oh, we have years that 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 my current. I'm forced to drive a car. There are certain things that I just am forced to drive a car. I'm not forced to force drive my clothes. I'm not forced to use a clothes dryer, a planet-killing piece of crap. But do we even, is there anybody in this room that does not own a clothes dryer? Bless you, bless you. Oh my God, you're a monster. I am so self-righteous that I'm wearing nothing that has been forced to drive. I'm not forced to use a clothes dryer. 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 your dryers. Your clothes will dry by themselves. It's happened since there have been test times. 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 clothes line on my front porch. I have a wood stove in which 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. Thank you. All right, well we've got this idea. I want to keep moving, but it's on the list. Anyway. Kill the dryers. Kill the dryers. The dryers are on the clothes rack. And it's under the carbon footprint. How are we doing it? The public campaigns isn't really what I'm saying. Yeah. All right, what else? I think that like a lot of people have mentioned that Montpelier and all of them want to definitely be like a role model for the rest of the world or America. And I think that's because especially in the Montpelier little 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 it 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 a long term or a short term. We're just trying to categorize them. All right, wonderful scratch. But something I've been working on for 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 step at a time. That's awesome. Kate, I don't know if you want to talk about what the city has done with Chris and Adam, 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. Is 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. 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 estate complex. And really just making a longer 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's Jared Duvall. I work for Energy Action Network where we do a lot of research analysis and tracking on energy and climate issues and 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 used 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 blowing 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 like 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? Could you get me somewhere like if I bought a helmet and on your river, if I walked down on your 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 one of 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. I don't 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 because they're buying and also supports our 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 incentive, 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 one with your neighbor. Let's say you go in on it. And then we need to say go from home. Like, I don't know, I'm just throwing that out. It's like, none of us should be driving gas cars, sounds like, for what he said. Then if none of us drove gas cars in Montpelier, it's not really an idea. It's just like, I think there's some incentives, you know, but could there be a local incentive? Yeah, you could do a city initiative. You know, a lot of daily help us get electric. 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. If your vehicle was damaged by flooding, they're adding to the incentive by an extra $1,000 or something. And could we make more charging stations in Montpelier or something else to make it easier for everyone? I don't know. Just a thought, yeah? Okay, as a follow-up on, kind of a combination of follow-up on Kate and Garrett's remarks, because I think Kate, did 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? Or district heat potentially. I'm sorry? Or district heat, if 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 kind and obviously a different strategy than all electric. I've also had a question about the district heat, which is, isn't most of the infrastructure underground and the piping's all underground and how flood resilient is that? It's flood resilient. So 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. And 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 Garrett'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 to 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 a really, really tough lift. And so the people are in a position of having to put in some kind of heating system to get through this winter when district heat's not instantaneous, right? So that's kind of a tough pill as well. Is there a possible combination as in a district heat that's going to be based on heat pumps? Does that be a different system? There are hot water geothermal systems that would be a complete change of the district heat system. So there's no easy transition to different technologies for the district heat plant that I'm aware of. Hi, I'm Jo Linda Burton. I live here and I'm a music education coordinator at Montsverde 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, but it's almost overwhelming. But what I do feel is a lot like what I don't think. I like me. Yeah, me or him. Sorry, I met you another, 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, go down to Vermont so they don't pop up, 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, movement of existential despair is like, there's not enough people who are freaking out. We need more people to be freaking out. But then they, why is it actually important? So that's one thing I want to say. I am very interested in being part of any kind of rebranding of climate crisis that's freaking here. The other thing I want to do because I just know other areas, they're musking models out of cities and towns and places all over the world that are doing a better job than best that 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 we just do that other cities are doing that's part of it? A lot of these ideas I think are great and doable, but there must be so many more that fake him. So I could close those. I just wanted to say, like, what's amazing is I was an exchange student in 1983. See, this is life. 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 and your cans in here, I mean it was like, they have been doing it in Europe for so long, for so many years. And they have been hanging their clothes dry and everyone in the building gets one wash day. I mean it's like, it's like, there are so many models out there. And they have been biking to school and home-heading to school forever. And we are just so far behind and we've just been so unwilling to make changes in our lives because we're just babes but I think that 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 this country. Question? Yes. For your sister cities? For your what? Sister cities. Is there a formal sister city relationship? I hope so. They sent us some suckers. If you want to reach across the pond and pick a random city, if there's one that's up, only if they're leading a climate. Only if they're leading a climate. I was just saying, they're European. All of you took a scan of that. How long have you been a tour of your remote? You have to 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 Montpelier. I love so many of these ideas. I guess I would say too that my theory of change is really about changing the policy 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 Drier 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 through our 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 Warming 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 you know have a resolution that says and recognizes and talks about the need for declaring it a climate emergency. We can talk about these are being fossil fuel disasters if you haven't read Jared's recent piece in Vermont Dagger 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 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 in 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 sort of policy progress and also just education 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. Yes. 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. Just I see a couple more hands 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 this these fossil fuel disasters are doing to communities to build the urgency so when we're coming back out to the big group 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 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 outreach team us up so we could think as we're thinking about that group and maybe some of you want to join 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 is doing more or that goes on our state policy agenda but just hearing a lot of really exciting threads 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 have to 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 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 Larry Gilbert from Montpelier and if I was the king of Vermont I would do a couple of things one I would close the interstate every Sunday and a lot of bicyclists would up and down on the interstate I would also try to figure out a way and maybe it's simply an outright ban on the recreational fossil fuel consumption so snowmobiles motorboats those kinds of things jet skis those would all be really positive steps and then figuring out a way to price fossil fuels in a way that's realistic 399 for gallon of gas right now 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 make gasoline ten dollars a gallon and everybody go to New Hampshire to buy it but I do think that the way we price fossil fuels is not one last point is that all of the experts tell us that we are going to have 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 I'll do two more and then transition us three more are we just going to yeah we go hi I'm Julie and I'm a tenant that's a long main street and I'm also an owner I own jaylin 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 little daughter Ruby came home and had five questionnaires for everyone in the family including yourself about their carbon footprint so I understand from my good friend that it's not an easy 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 I've never seen a government official I've never been in a state house to go in 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 what happens when you take an airplane how much carbon 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 I know three lawyers right now would love to do that and yeah it's a big thing but do it anyway look at the kids in Montana do it anyway let them play for the first to have a lawsuit against we'll do the research and find who's the biggest abuser 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 if someone with a lawsuit why not look what's happening to our town we don't think rebuilding is the best idea we are rebuilding because I think the town needs it but we're rebuilding with blue down vinyl that's flood resistant we've been very thoughtful about putting that together so that's what I think and I was wondering from are these are these heating units you're getting are they going to be on the first floor how did that work for the city the when you replace the controls they they have to be on the piping which is all the basement the district heat heat units will be back in the basement unfortunately it's anything's possible it's a very large re-piping for each and every building there are some portions of the district heating that are connected by wires and those are more easily it could be work it could be work they're very difficult to water alright 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 can you remind me of your name Nancy I want to 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 that 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 one failure and all around the state because as someone who's parents have both tried to use public transportation to do their own work it's not a viable option really at the moment yeah I think as you're just saying public transportation, I think the train if you go to the train station there's the one train that carries people which doesn't go through town and 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 but to carry people then it can be a really good way to have a stop there and you would be like right there so I think that trains is something that people should consider okay Carl, do I ask of you how easy would it be to just quickly hit not the details but just run through the ideas we've heard just to refresh our minds and then I'm going to ask people to name what's jumping out to you our assignment is one to three priorities I think we could do some one thing we could have some ideas packaged together because there's a lot of really good ones but 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 ideas in that bucket and then some, I mean we've got some state policy ideas I think we could do some of that what we might want to advocate for the community and then some things the city could be doing it's a big topic so we can use I just wanted to ask if while Carl's sorting through that if I can put something on the table that I think connects a couple of ideas that might be is that more going to get to prioritization I think it's going to be that thing I'm ready to go but bring that idea that we get to so I'm just going to go through and pull up the concrete ideas and leave out the questions 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 reducing use the current downtown for river flow and move the business district out to the VCFA campus get rid of lawns and other surfaces don't absorb water well and plant things and 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 don't buy a clothes dryer don't use your clothes dryer if you have one make all the city buildings net zero or about 50% of the way there carbon footprint calculators make incentive for electric cars especially if shared by neighbors more charging stations for electric cars in Montpelier we've talked about district heating and making that more available to people versus making electric heat available to people or incentivized 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 and 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 bikes ride on the interstate shut down snowmobiles and other recreational vehicles and use fossil fuels looking for new ones here having a train that carries people comes downtown did I miss any major concrete idea? I just want to make one correction you had said that Joseph said stop talking about climate change he actually said use different language yes thank you very good okay, so we've gotten refreshed exactly a lot of good ideas here does anybody want to make a proposal like is anything jumping out to you as a couple priorities or do you have an idea of loving something 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 what they've done and it goes back to a little bit what you were talking about Larry so one of the things that the city can do of course the state then 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 other 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 that carbon impact fee up front which makes it so that the economics of putting in a fossil system are not as attractive as moving to a renewable highly efficient or electric system so yeah Burlington is doing that so those are a couple examples of like locally if we were serious at getting at fossil fuel use there could be regulations around whether it's new construction, renovations phasing out the installation of fossil equipment and then there is this other alternative model which is not strictly phasing it out but at least making it pay for the carbon impact of its use we come up with numbers such as 10 perfect and good ideas we've got 10 great ideas here if you want I'll run it down we'll just run through them though we'll let the 10th move we just heard which is to ban carbon installations and utilities to work pay a fee it's a great one too I think the idea of declaring a monetary declare as a climate emergency caused by the climate disaster would be something promotion of non-carbon using things from alien from painting the millions of highways who are promoting bicycles who are promoting installing electric charging stations to promote the use of non-carbon using non-carbon I feel like there's an equity issue here where not everyone can ride a bicycle so that needs to be very closely connected to some other form of very simple doubt I understand bicycles are not universal I just thank you they are the idea of of having a fossil the idea of a fossil footprint mechanism created we have a fossil footprint mechanism we can determine where we are we make this not just simply an action from my picture but it's also a national and international set of actions we're setting up here it wasn't the first one we came up with we've got 10 good ideas we've got 10 good ideas I'm trying to get down your 10 ideas and I know about 4 of them you had one down you had one down yourself so you're just saying all of the above is that right? okay I'm trying to do some loving for us so it feels like there were a few state policy ideas so I just want to get a sense of the room so would we like to prioritize the make big oil pay campaign as something that would be on our city policy priorities and that we would try to get community engagement in telling that story if this would be in your top 3 things to bring up to the room raise your hand how many times do you get to vote? your top 3 so you get 3 votes here I think 6 feet yeah I'm going to say people are voting before they've heard your groupings here yeah they're very different kinds of ideas so I couldn't vote for that because if we were going to do something like that without having some kind of every individual mob dealer who's hyped up now about doing something some way for them to try to get an idea of how they can kill their dryer or save a car death if we were going to work on that and then maybe go for something big I could do that but if we're just going to go for that and there was nothing happening for individual citizens to kind of like feel like we're part of this for helping a mob dealer then I couldn't do that yeah I hear you we have so many good ideas so we're bringing we're going to break rules a little and break more then there's even more than 10 though there's 3 that I would care for there's a sort of low hanging fruit in the short term and one would be to create some kind of carbon quote and try to bring it into use create a resolution as Joanna suggested and change the language that we're using around this topic those are things that can be done pretty quickly and fairly easily these other things great ideas all of them but just to require I don't know when you say short term are we talking about something going next week or are we in 2024 that's a concern so why don't we we can go through I mean I captured pretty succinct but it's more like 20 ideas that I got from Carl's list it sounds like people just feel like we just need to go through and vote so do your top 3 we'll capture it but 14 are the will of the room that's what we can do but top 3 I think like all of these ideas are being captured and so I do see opportunity that we could bring more of these to a process some of these ideas could go into a climate emergency that could go to the Montpelier Energy Advisory Committee so even if we come from our top list these ideas are all being captured and I think there are a ton of great ones okay so some kind of so you get 3 votes only community, carbon, footprint because I think everything's going to make a list then you get you get 3 they've asked us in the report they've asked us in the report back to identify 1 so already really looking at the rules and but this is too hard so 1, carbon, footprint alright we're going to go 4 you get 4 okay 4 votes people community, carbon, footprint some kind of way that we can have a community assessment okay 7 okay a moving the business district I'm guessing this idea has come up in the other sessions as well okay more sustainable lawns and like water absorption making our streets more bike pad friendly accessible with paint and other you get things the transportation transportation public transit do you take Miriams as a friendly amendment to yours sure transportation as a more focus that would be looking at more bike pad public transit non fossil fuel okay we're going to put that into a bucket 13 13 and I'm going to add to that so we're not going to vote separately on chargers I think we should look at the infrastructure the non-carbon infrastructure public transit train the city should look into great can I ask one question about electrification what percentage of New England's grid relies on natural gas for generating electricity for homes for electricity so it's a complicated question because Vermont has its own electricity purchases which are about 5% of New England's grid so we can look at it at New England or we can look at it in terms of Vermont's purchases region-wide it's about 50% of our electric grid is fossil gas in Vermont less than 10% of our electricity portfolio is fossil fuel so we're about 90% carbon free in terms of Vermont's electricity okay communications as a focus for the city to dig into how we talk about this crisis and more compelling ways to engage people so I think that was changing the language that was changing the language but if you're talking about what I said it's about educating people informing people of what they've done that was my yeah if this includes declaring a climate emergency that's a separate one in my proposal declaring a climate emergency it was because you think it's a better language because it's talking about it fossil fuel disasters education this is an education campaign it's an organizing tool so let's go for a climate emergency as a communications and organizing tool with so many of your good ideas yes we are lumping great ideas looking into ways that we can address overconsumption which might include things like killing dryers I thought killing dryers was part of the footprint that's part of it it could be a sub-campaign under recycled t-shirts okay there's anything that hasn't been lumped okay we need to do the fossil heating system so fossil heating we're this close everyone's down upstairs okay so no four votes no fossil fuel heating do we want to do a band do we want to do a senate looking at models can we look at efficiency in that yes friendly moment okay alright if anything that hasn't gotten lumped already maybe we're looking for a sister city that's a climate emergency is this our team do we want like a separate thing or lump that into the fossil okay alright I think we've captured some kind of community carbon footprint so some kind of project to look at how do we instead of each other there was a whole transportation that included looking at like industrial, accessible, public transit there is looking at no new fossil fuel heating systems, a range of ideas there's declaring a climate emergency and as part of that I think we're going to look at some of the policy ideas like you think big oil should pay so I'm going to that's the perfect one I have a bunch of my stuff that's the fuel industry accountable that's right that could be part of our emergency is that we should hold a panel and help us pay for the next thing