[Reprinted with permission from Carl Etnier. - Ed.]

Dubie's declaration spurs action
by Carl Etnier

On June 11, Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie held a press conference to declare an emergency in advance of this winter's heating season. Dubie admits he has no explicit authority to declare such an emergency, but he thinks that just saying the word "emergency" can focus people's attention and spur collaborative activity.

And boy, did a lot of announcements follow. The next day, Gov. James Douglas gave a speech to announce what he called the Vermont Fuel and Food Partnership and established a Cabinet-level task force (which he named Dubie to co-chair, along with incoming Administration Secretary Neale Lunderville) "to focus every effort and every resource Vermont can bring to bear to help manage the effects of higher energy costs on Vermont families."

In addition, gubernatorial candidate and Speaker of the House Gaye Symington, D-Jericho, announced an emergency home heating meeting of the Joint Fiscal Committee on June 26, inviting the administration to the table. The following Tuesday, House Republicans announced an initiative to help install pellet stoves and chunk wood stoves in low-income and middle-income houses, as well as encouraging start-up wood pellet manufacturing businesses in Vermont.

In a conversation last week, Dubie pointed out that emergency plans are for, well, emergencies: they need to consider worst-case scenarios. "The challenge of $5.50 a gallon home heating fuel or an interruption of that heating fuel into the winter months could lead to some very, very challenging scenarios. And the day I did my press conference, on the front page, the president of the United States was talking about possible strikes on Iran, so this is not something I'm fabricating. We need to at least make sure that we have some contingency plans in place."

Dubie hefted a thick three-ring binder to make his point. "Part of my responsibility as chair of the Governor's Homeland Security Advisory Council is to ensure our emergency operations plans are robust and that they consider in a thoughtful way and a proactive way scenarios that we might face as a state. And this document, four inches thick, does address some momentary fuel emergencies, but not to the scope that we're anticipating."

Indeed, as I noted in an April 27 column, the state's emergency operations plan is explicitly based on the assumption that fuel and food shortages will be temporary, rather than the protracted shortages possible with a permanent decline in fuel production after peak oil.

Dubie often works stories from his part-time job as an airline pilot into policy discussions, and so I drew on my puny flying experience to suggest a metaphor. (Decades ago, I flew an ultralight that I spent more time fixing after crashes than flying, but I read a lot of pilot wannabe books.)

I asked Dubie if the state is in a situation analogous to a pilot's fuel emergency. When a pilot declares a fuel emergency, the plane receives priority in landing over all other aircraft. He said it's more like a minimum fuel advisory, which means, according to the "Airmen's Information Manual," that "an emergency situation is possible should any undue delay occur." Sounds about right to me.

Dubie's initial emergency declaration focused on three things: ensuring that Meals on Wheels and other services to seniors could continue with high gas and diesel costs, updating the emergency operations plan to address a wider range of fuel emergencies, and addressing public safety hazards from faulty installation of wood, electric and other heat sources that people are installing to reduce their oil use. Douglas' Fuel and Food Partnership added food to the mix, which makes sense given that high prices for food make it hard to pay for fuel and vice versa.

Both Symington's emergency Joint Fiscal Committee meeting and the new Dubie-Lunderville task force invite collaboration with Vermonters to set out the ideas that will steer the state's actions.

As Jason Gibbs, Douglas' spokesperson, put it, "The real objective of the task force is to go beyond implementing each of the governor's items and to reach out to all of our partners in the public and private sectors to catalogue and harness every available resource, so that we are prepared to take every action that is necessary to protect Vermonters and, more importantly, to empower them on an individual basis to make heating their homes and commuting to their jobs and providing food for their families more affordable."

The state needs both short-term measures to prepare for fuel supply interruptions and address immediate needs and long-term measures to address what James Howard Kunstler calls "The Long Emergency" as fossil fuel depletion, climate change, habitat destruction and other forces mount increasing challenges to our current economic, political and social structures.

Everyone I talked to urged Vermont's congressional delegation to secure more money for the LIHEAP heating assistance program for low-income people. As Senate President Pro-Tem Peter Shumlin said, "We will not be able to move to alternative heating fuels in a significant way by late August or early September." That's realistic. Most people I talked to recognize it is also a Rube Goldberg solution: begging money from Washington to buy oil from out of state and burn it. Increased LIHEAP funding also presumes no interruptions in the supply of fuel this winter from hurricanes, a revolution in a key oil-producing country or other contingency.

Progressive gubernatorial candidate Anthony Pollina also called for using more Vermont money for this year's crisis, urging the use of the state's rainy day funds for people most in need.

Shumlin and Pollina emphasized the medium- and long-term need for different methods. Pollina said, "We have to take a long view and start investing in real public transportation and different methods of housing and different ways of bringing people together to reduce fuel use. We have to use less fuel; that's a message people have to start hearing."

As I have discussed in previous columns, nothing the Legislature or governor has done begins to prepare Vermont for the rapidity of the drop in availability of oil that is possible. When planners with the Department of Public Service and the Agency of Transportation asked peak oil analyst Richard Heinberg in April what he foresaw as a worst-case scenario, he said that it's possible that no oil-producing countries will be exporting much oil to speak of by as early as 2020. For the United States, that could mean a 70 percent drop in the oil available to us in 12 years, which would make us nostalgic for present prices. Heinberg wasn't predicting that the decline in exports would be so rapid, but as Brian Dubie says, it's important to be aware of and prepare for worst-case scenarios.

Much of the discussion now is on technological changes. Behavior can change very quickly and have powerful results. For example, I saved 25 miles of driving last week when I had an afternoon radio show in Waterbury, thanks to the good will and cooperation from several people. I took the bus from Montpelier to Waterbury, arriving at 9:30 a.m. for a 1 p.m. radio show. WDEV let me use an empty desk for the morning, and Brian Dubie picked me up at the studio on his way from Burlington to Montpelier for our interview. (He also picks up hitchhikers, he says, so if you're stuck by the side of the road, hope for a vehicle with a "2" license plate.)

At a conference in Ohio last year, Larry Halpern described how his family cut two-thirds of their heating fuel use and 90 percent of their electricity use, mostly through behavioral changes. It's easy to focus policies on technologies and lose sight of what people can do for themselves, often with the government's help or encouragement, to save energy costs.

Last month, the Department of Public Service released a draft Comprehensive Energy Plan for the state, which they plan to hold public hearings on and finalize before Jan. 15. It will be interesting to see which does more to steer state energy policy, this plan or the flurry of emergency planning processes now underway.

Major policy changes, of course, require legislation. While no one is recommending it yet, neither Douglas, Dubie nor Shumlin rules out re-convening the Legislature before January.

Douglas spokesperson Gibbs noted that the so-called Emergency Board could take some action without the Legislature.

"It is a peculiar name for this committee," he said, "because they handle money."

The board consists of the governor as chair, the secretary of administration, and the chairs of the money committees in the Legislature.

Gibbs also pointed out, "In an emergency, the governor is empowered through a formal declaration of emergency to take a wide variety of actions that would not require legislative action."

Asked whether the governor was considering declaring a formal state of emergency, Gibbs said, "only under a worst-case scenario. We really feel that this partnership is going to be successful in positioning us to address these issues, and using the Emergency Board or declaring a formal emergency should not be exercised lightly and should be reserved for a scenario where they're truly justified and merited."

Let's hope he's right and it doesn't come to that.

Photo credit: DrStarbuck