Flooding in downtown Montpelier, Vermont, in July, 2023.Photograph by John Tully / Washington Post / Getty
When you read to the end of this short commentary, you will wonder whether this is a victory at all, but when Elizabeth Kolbert says it is, it probably is. It just requires more pondering to understand how it is:
Vermont Moves to Hold Fossil-Fuel Companies Liable for Climate-Change Damage
A new constituency is willing to stand up to Big Oil (and Gas and Coal): state government.
On July 10, 2023, Vermont’s state capital, Montpelier, was hit with more than five inches of rain. The city sits at the confluence of the main stream of the Winooski and its north branch; the former is considered to be at flood stage when the water level reaches fifteen feet. That day, the Winooski rose above twenty-one feet. The city’s downtown business district was inundated. Cars were drowned, shops were ruined, and people canoed or paddleboarded past shuttered businesses.
As the world warms, more and more of New England’s rain is falling in extreme precipitation “events,” so the downpour, though record-breaking, was still in keeping with recent trends. “It’s definitely going to happen again,” Lauren Oates, the director of policy and governmental affairs for the Nature Conservancy in Vermont, predicted a few weeks after what became known as the Great Vermont Flood of 2023. And, indeed, five months later, it did; in mid-December, the local rivers reached flood stage again, this time owing to a combination of heavy rain and snowmelt. “Climate change is real,” Vermont’s governor, Phil Scott, a Republican, said after the second round of flooding. “I don’t think anyone should be surprised about this.”…
Read the whole commentary here.
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