On Monday, VPIRG’s Executive Director, Paul Burns, joined Senator Sanders to publicly oppose rolling back Vermont’s commitment to building clean energy projects in-state.
Flanked by other prominent voices in the environmental and clean energy community–including Don Hooper of the National Wildlife Federation, Gabrielle Stebbins of Renewable Energy Vermont, and Chris Kilian of the Conservation Law Foundation—Paul echoed Senator Sanders’ call to climate action.
“If we prohibit progress on clean energy development in Vermont—even temporarily—it doesn’t mean that climate change takes a ‘time out’,” said Burns. “It doesn’t put a pause on the mountaintops in West Virginia from being destroyed for coal, and it doesn’t offer any comfort to the mother of a child whose asthma attacks are caused simply by inhaling too close to a fossil fuel burning power plant.”
“We can’t retreat from our commitment to clean energy, just like we can’t continue to ask others to bear our burden and generate the power we use every. We have a responsibility to generate as much sustainable energy as we can right here in Vermont, and survey after survey indicates that a huge majority of Vermonters support the development of wind energy here.”
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