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Vermont State Youth Council urges electric buses, composting incentives and old-growth protections
Summary
Members of the Vermont State Youth Council presented climate recommendations to the Senate Government Operations Committee including tax incentives for compost drop-off sites, electric-bus targets, climate curriculum standards and conservation of old-growth forests.
The Vermont State Youth Council told the Senate Committee on Government Operations on May 13 that young Vermonters should be part of state climate planning and offered four specific recommendations to the General Assembly.
The council’s climate committee chair, Astrid Longstreth, said, “It's up to us to stop this before it's too late,” and outlined proposals that include tax incentives for co-ops and garden centers to accept compost, school-bus and public-transit electrification benchmarks, a requirement to include climate change in science curricula and a target to conserve current old-growth forests by 2040.
The council recommended the General Assembly “pass legislation to offer tax incentives for co-ops, garden centers, and other outdoor centers to take compost for free,” and suggested the state provide buckets and an online map of drop-off sites. The group said such incentives could enable local businesses to sell soil while increasing state-level composting participation.
On transportation, the council asked the legislature to build on what it described as the Vermont Agency of Transportation (VTrans) plan to electrify buses and set benchmarks for school and public transit fleets. The presentation listed targets for a high share of electric school buses and public vehicles; the numeric year targets given in the presentation appeared garbled in the transcript and could not be verified from the committee record.
The council also recommended that climate change be required content in science classes via an added standard and urged the legislature to conserve “all current old growth forests in the state by 2040.” The presenters cited a Vermont Land Trust figure that less than 1% of Vermont’s forests qualify as old growth.
During committee questions, Senator White alerted the group that Governor Phil Scott had issued an executive order rolling back the state’s clean cars and clean trucks rule earlier that day, a move the senator said could affect access to funding that would support vehicle electrification. Senator White encouraged the youth council to share its slides with the committee and to contact the governor’s office about the recommendations.
No formal legislative action on the council’s climate recommendations was taken at the hearing; committee members encouraged follow-up by email and by correspondence with administration offices.
The youth council said it intends to move from annual to biannual recommendations so it can spend more time advocating for enacted changes during the second year of the legislative biennium.
