(The below are excerpts from an article on Governor Shumlin, Hurricane Irene, climate change, and the Our Forests Our Future campaign. The article appeared in the latest Sierra Club Magazine-Circulation 600,000 nationwide. To read the full article go to this link: http://www.sierraclub.org/sier… )
When The Rivers Rise
From the governor to Native leaders to maple syrup producers, Vermonters aren’t sitting still for climate change
By Tristram Korten
WHEN THE HARD RAINS SLOWED and the winds calmed, Vermont governor Peter Shumlin climbed into a National Guard helicopter at Knapp State Airport. As the chopper lifted off, Shumlin looked down at a landscape reshaped by the violence of water. It was the aftermath of Irene, a tropical storm that unleashed a torrent over the state last August. The rains rushed down mountainsides and engorged rivers and streams that charged over their banks and rampaged through towns. Homes were torn from their foundations, cars were flung into walls, and farmers’ fields were turned into lakes. More than 500 miles of roads were ripped up or made impassable, and at least 20 bridges were washed out, among them several historic covered bridges.
A lot of things raced through the governor’s mind as he gazed down-among them, the logistics of getting food and water to stranded communities and the need to get Federal Emergency Management Administration officials in on this as soon as possible. But not too far off in his thinking was the belief that there was more to come. In the eight months since he’d taken office, Shumlin had dealt with a major blizzard in March, unprecedented flooding in April and May, and now Irene. He put the blame for the frequency of these events squarely on climate change…
Shumlin’s election came at a fortuitous time for the Vermont Chapter of the Sierra Club, which has launched its own ambitious response to climate change: the statewide Our Forests, Our Future campaign. Its goal is to create migratory corridors, with land that can be acquired by local towns and native tribes, that will allow cold-weather animals to move north as their habitat transforms. Crucial to the plan is the acquisition of lands along the state’s borders with New York, New Hampshire, Maine, and Canada, which will keep the corridor biologically viable…
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For the past year David Van Deusen, the Club’s Vermont conservation organizer, has been building consensus among a delicate coalition-native tribes, local populations, and labor unions-about what these “town forests” should offer the communities that will control them. Van Deusen, a former archaeologist who’s fond of broad-brimmed hats, has toured the state getting input and ideas-sustainable logging and firewood operations are two suggestions that would help bring in some local revenue and provide heating assistance for the poor…
“Now we’re working on getting policymakers on board,” Van Deusen said. Chief among them is Shumlin. It helps that many of the groups in the coalition, including the Vermont AFL-CIO, are Shumlin allies. [Mike] Morelli [of the VT Iron Workers Local 7], for example, recalled how Shumlin had arranged for his union to sit down with a contractor to work out the details of a large public-works project. And only in Shumlin’s term did the Nulhegan Abenaki (and the Elnu Abenaki, another Club partner) gain official state recognition. “Peter Shumlin is the first governor who looked at us as equals, and not as a thorn in his side,” Willard said. “It meant a lot to all of us…”
To read the full article go to this link: http://www.sierraclub.org/sier…