hello and welcome to live at five twenty five on channel seventeen my name is debbie ingram and i'm the executive director of vermont interfaith action and we're the organization bringing you this show tonight the title of our show is what you can do about climate change because we're sponsoring an event that we're going to be talking about at a how these ethics synagogue and we'll tell you all about how you can join us it's on december twelfth and what what you'll learn that event but first let me just tell you a little bit about vermont interfaith action if you don't know us we are a coalition of congregations cross the state forty two member in affiliated congregations and we work together to effect systemic change around issues of social justice over the years we've worked on things like affordable housing and homelessness on health care reform on public education criminal justice reform and public transportation and  and now we're turning some of our attention to climate change so let me introduce my my guests tonight or have them introduce themselves this is read by amy small from much so let's let's just start with you karen and ask you what what prompted this this event this coming up on december twelfth basically after the excitement in twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen where the world finally came together and virtually every country in the world with the exception of two nicaragua because they wanted something stronger and syria because it was in the middle of the civil war everybody joined in signed to move in the right direction and the beauty of what they call the plan they had was that everybody made their own goals and did what they could that would fit their country and they then were going to track these and they will and the idea being that as technology improves these and goal these goals will then move forward at a faster rate as happened with various other things that were done and similar ways then we elected trump and president trump has announced that he's pulling us out of the accord which he can't do until november twenty twenty so this may or may not come about from or if it does come about it will last only a few months if a different president has a different view  the reaction in the states was immediate and washington state california and new york led the rest of the states and were allied with people like michael bloomberg who was an u special envoy for climate change and created were still in vermont immediately joined it and then i received the e mail that you sent that the a was invited to attend the announcement by governor scott and mira weinberger to you know come up with our response and our response was essentially to have a summit which was described as a mini paris where all the businesses all of the n g o s the municipalities and the state itself would bring to the table what they could bring to the table and meryl weinberger also had a different analogy which is he said this is a lot like a vermont potluck and what better thing could we have for the religious communities in vermont to get involved with than a potluck because it's what we do and so the idea here is that we could through the i a e a host an event that would basically take the message that was at the summit that the state had and spread it to both the congregations so that they when they're making their plans going forward can consider climate change as they're doing things with their facilities and then in addition the congregants could decide what they can do and we can use the tool that vermont has created called the dashboard where people can put their commitments  n right so both people people can do this both at the individual level make changes in their own in their own households and we're encouraging people to come from from congregations but also i guess other organizations to be happy you know i of what the state put together and it's a way that you can put the commitments in and the idea of it is if you see your neighbor putting something in you might say you know i can do that too and the same with where when they see each other doing things they can follow or they could call up and say you had this in the year ago did it work and so i mean there could be a lot of synergies in people seen what other people are thought this was something that was important to follow up on and what the purpose of this is from the from your point of view well we're very concerned about climate change and from a religious perspective there are a few things more urgent than this and that is preserving god's creation and there is a rich tradition within our with within jewish text but i know many of our faith traditions as well that speak to the glory in grander of creation as coming from god that it is given to us as a gift but it's a gift on loan we don't get to use it up consume it and leave nothing left but rather to enjoy it and to leave it for the next generation and so this is this feels like a very powerful religious issue and even while we know that as a religious community and as our various religious traditions will support and even as people in vermont know that this is a calling to us not everybody's running board yet so we thought that if the religious communities could motivate people and help them give them tools then we could actually be part of the solution right so so other other carnations them will be will be in attendance is that yes we're part of our goal in bringing vi a into this was so that we could spread it with everybody that this is not a jewish issue it's not a christian issue it's not a specific denominational issue this is a human issue each one of our religious traditions speaks to it so the clergy that are going to be part of this panel will be able to represent that from our own text and we hope that people from all across the religious spectrum will join us yes great sounds sounds good and that is something that tries to do is to show the similarities communities can work together on issues that we care about so too is vermont to model politically we have a republican governor the democratic mayor of the city of burlington they are working together on this there are no partisan lines here this is for us a human issue and we can demonstrate how you don't need to be in your own corner when it comes to this issue but rather to be united together absolutely yes we can be proud yes we can be definitely so here until you tell us a little bit more about maybe what some specific things are of the on the dashboard or things that people might might be able to do basically what we have is what we're going to do is we're going to give people as part of the on onesided will be a commitment card of what they can commit to on the other side we're going to provide information including two links to the dashboard one link will take you to where you can register as a residence and on the same page link it has something you can click on which gives you a three page checklist explaining different things that could be possibly done and so this provides you a bunch of things that you can say are you know the it doesn't quite work for me this one does but at any rate they would have that the other thing we would do is we would be on the back of it as part of the information part putting in the organizations that provide either tools or our advocacy groups so that people can have one piece of paper they can take home they could fill out the one side saying i'm committed to be involved and then to check how they're going to be committed on a really high level at the top but then turn turn it over and have some information that helps them go about doing it the other thing is after the main event we're going to have refreshments because we always have refreshments at the same time we will have tables where we are asking groups that are either provide providers of information to help on various issues or our advocacy groups if they would like to man tables we've put some feelers out we've gotten some yeses but anybody who wants if they can send can we have it sent to the i a e a if somebody is interested who is absolutely in wants to be involved in it waste because of composting which gets rid of a lot of methane gas and then for average fifty three fifty years that advocacy group and which is another advocacy group  and we have one person who's an expert on solar and so he will have some information on that thing so if i may first of all in naming a few of the religious communit be speaking that was not to say that everybody isn't part of this but that just happens to be the panel we were able to put together this is for everybody and speaks to everybody so forgive me if i've left somebody out only because we couldn't have every single religious community represented imette in that particular moment but i want to say that this is the first night of hanukkah december twelfth and for us that's a perfect match because kind of is called the festival of lights and here we are thinking about what does it mean to use electricity and to and to warm our homes and our businesses and our synagogues in our churches and our mosques and so for us that goes together this is where we think about what is the the  oil that's going to be used to make that happen so to conclude the program we will let the heart of collapse together and we have special treats in our in our in our food that we all have that are special for  that's really really something i'm looking forward to because it is really make it a more meaningful connection between the faith in what we're trying to do in a in a practical way and yes you know that that will be very nice very difficult it was you that europe in remarks about how hard it was but i know you've had a real passion for this for for a long time could you could you share with us a little bit more of the history of the movement your passion for well  i was probably more involved intellectually and politically than i was in any of the advocacy groups on it so what i actually know more about is the history of the  efforts made by you know of the two people that are political obviously the two are al gore and john kerry who did an amazing amount of the lift in getting it to happen  al gore after he lost the presidency even though he genuinely got more votes and he won but at any rate he never got and he never got inaugurated as president but he then went out and then a year later came back with the documentary that you spoke of and i think that was what really changed it into a political issue for most people although not to the extent that you could actually i mean it was it was really something that more people said they were interested in but every time you had a survey and you'd go and say what are the three things that you will determine your vote it was never one of them and it probably still isn't because there are other more pressing needs that people usually mention but at any rate it changed it so that people took it as an  issue then with when secretary kerry became secretary he had gone to talking to president obama before he you know became secretary indicated he wanted climate change to be his issue as women's and children's issues were hillary's issues in that context and he had been involved in that he and gore had been  he had gone he was on the same committee where gore had the early senate hearings gore had done some hearings actually in the congo in the house of in the house before he became senator but  then when he became secretary he basically had all of these contacts because he had gone to all of the summits and so he worked with the chinese and  able to get the agreement with the u s china agreement which then led to getting similar agreements at lima which was before paris and so then it par basically this whole do definition that people instead of having one set of rules for states you know for countries to abide by each country put their own goals in and the thing that is good about that is every in reality it makes it a complete lie that the president had to pull us out because we were being treated wrong we set our cars and the and we also could change you know but so it was totally political red meat to the people he had believed in him that it was not a good deal but the thing is when doing it they pulled in the cities they pulled in the states the tech companies all of them had representation in paris and in particular among the city's mayor bloomberg as the u n special envoy had worked with our state department and they pulled all the cities to get the big cities together and internationally and they had a few conferences the idea being that every city spends a lot of money trying to do things and some paths are paths that go nowhere so the idea was it would be good if they all got together and said we did this and here's how it worked we did this and it didn't work because it was as important to know what didn't work as it was to know what did work which i'm stealing that quote from bloomberg also the state department also made sure that all of the u s tech companies all of whom have a vested interest in being in this big huge market of new technology that's going to replace the fossil fuels and the tech companies wanted to be there they were excited to be called in and have a place at the table and they did and they were at paris and as you saw in the gore movie there were times where some of the countries were actually influenced by people who were tech companies say we can help you on this and you know because for many companies the the problem was it will you know they don't have a lot of resources and if it was going to cost a lot more to do clean energy than dirty energy they weren't able to do it so that was why  the some of the state the the real fear countries where actually actually funded efforts so that some of the countries that were third world countries could be assisted but in addition to that you had independent things done by companies saying right ok well i'm bringing up the whole business aspect of it you know i've heard from different sources that that there are a lot of ways that our economy will be boosted by by know about this subject as well do you think that that just our cities and states being able to implement certain changes will that actually will that really make a difference or do we need the federal  you know the federal support well i'm not giving up on the federal support but the fact of the matter is that most of the work gets done by the folks that's us the people and by laying the groundwork in towns and cities in small communities and and growing it and making the network rich and connected we can effect what should done by the federal government by doing it from the ground up well that's really a metaphor for the way the does our work that right i mean we're we're a grassroots organization and that's exactly what we b in as well is that top down solutions are not what we're after it's talking to the people on the ground people who know who are affected directly by issues and having the confidence in them that they understand what solutions need to come about in order to fix these problems that's right yeah the other thing is you have one example where during the george w bush years where  was impossible to have a federal effort to do a cap and trade on carbon you have all of the northeast states that joined something called reggie which is essentially a cap and trade that actually gets money from other states because we've gone faster in cutting our carbon then we were required to under the models and so other states that traded off moving as fast as they were supposed to you know instead paid vermont to you know because we didn't use ours and interesting yeah yeah yeah well i'm so grateful to for sponsoring this events and we're really looking going to reschedule but we will definitely have folks from burlington electric has been has been really kind of a pioneer in this yeah and jennifer green is definitely going to be able to come she is somebody who i believe she's in the mayor's office and she's but she's located at burlington electric because the mayor has put burly men brilinta electric at the front of the effort and burlington electric has basically accomplished basically had burlington become i think the first city in the united states that was actually totally renewable  energy if not the first it was one of the very first and major accomplishment in the city itself intends to try to move to net zero overall which is really much much broader and much more difficult and it will be a very daunting challenge yes yes well i want to offer some kudos to other parts of the county as well because for instance don't live in in burlington my my electric carrier is from electric co op and they've they've also created a very user friendly website that helps me to track you know where my usage is is greater than is and you know other times and so i can do things like you know program my my heating and  know for like the times when i'm not in the house and you know reduce my consumption that way and and look at all kinds of other other things you know my like tricity and set up timers and that kind of thing so and i know i'm sure the is doing a really good job so so just to recap again then the the event will be on tuesday december twelfth which is the first night of hanukkah and that will start at seven thirty people to be able to figure out how they can be more personally involved you know at different levels whether it's advocating for changes in the legislature or doing other other kinds of things around their or their homes or their organizations or their congregations so great well thank you so much for being here and we hope that everybody everybody comes out look forward to it thanks very much for tuning in and we'll see you again in a month or so