Letter to Legislators: Vermont--Still not a leader in biodiversity

Check out an email that energize vermont sent to all legislators.

Here’s today’s headline: Over One-third of Biodiversity in the United States is at Risk of Disappearing.  

United Nations scientists tell us that the number-one driver of the global loss of biodiversity is the degradation of habitat.

Locally, Vermont’s energy policies and incomplete climate policies are contributing to this biodiversity catastrophe. We have given the reduction of carbon emissions priority over absolutely everything else. The promise of emissions reduction has led us to encourage the development of high-impact, land-intensive energy projects.

Take a look at this map. It shows where energy developers have built or proposed to build utility-scale wind projects. Every single one of them is in “highest priority” forestland. These highest priority forests are identified by the Fish and Wildlife Department in the Vermont Conservation Design. The Design describes the waters and lands that are the most effective “for maintaining an ecologically functional landscape.” That is, a landscape that enables “plants and animals to thrive, reproduce, migrate, and move as climate changes” and is “fundamental to conserving biological diversity.”

The Department of Forest, Parks, and Recreation has published another document, The Vermont Forest Fragmentation Report. It says that “the negative habitat effects of each residential building pocket within a forest radiate outward, affecting up to 30 additional acres.”

 If that’s true for a residence, just imagine the extent of the negative effects of clear-cutting, blasting, bulldozing, road-building, spraying herbicides, and installing noisy machines that are hundreds of feet tall and have blades whose tips are moving at a couple hundred miles per hour.

And if those negative habitat effects aren’t enough, these projects kill directly too. For example, Green Mountain Power’s Lowell turbines have been granted a license to kill 18 threatened and endangered species of birds and bats. All that in order to save us the amount of carbon emitted by Metro New York City traffic in less than half a day.

Vermonters may disagree about the impact of our local emissions reductions on global CO2 levels (Vermont is responsible for .1% of the country’s emissions and ranks 46th in per capita emissions).  But maybe we can agree that policies that accelerate the loss of biodiversity are not the right policies.

There are plenty of things we can do to make our climate and energy policies more effective and to ensure that they help us safeguard biodiversity instead of contributing to its collapse. My colleagues and I would welcome the opportunity to discuss them with you.

Sincerely,

Mark Whitworth

President, Energize Vermont