Hoodwinked in the Greenwash Mountains of Vermont:
A Vermont Speaker Series Inspired by the Hoodwinked in the Hothouse Booklet
On 6 July, Biofuelwatch co-Director Rachel Smolker and GJEP Executive Director Anne Petermann spoke in South Royalton, VT at an event organized by BALE: Building a Local Economy. Rachel addressed the problem of false solutions to climate change, with a focus on those false solutions especially impacting Vermont. She especially emphasized the problem of biomass-based electricity production, that burns trees for electricity, and about various bioenergy and carbon capture and storage technologies that have received huge subsidies only to prove to be ridiculous fantasies.
Anne pitched in at the end with some details about the problems with forest carbon offsets, including forced displacements of Indigenous communities, enabling polluting industries to continue to emit greenhouse gases, and destruction of forests for industrial tree plantations that receive carbon credits, even though they store less carbon than the forests, and even though the clearcutting of the forest releases huge amounts of carbon stored in forest soils, and even though the trees in the plantations are slated to be cut and used for paper, pulp or lumber.
The event was introduced by Earl Hatley, a member of the Abenaki Nation and a Grand Riverkeeper with LEAD (Leading the Way for Environmental Justice).
