Vermont is serious about destroying its economy and residents via meaningless reductions in carbon emissions. They’ve got commissions, committees, targets, and standards, so they’ve also got reports about how all that’s not working out for them.
All that chin-stroking, finger-wagging, hand-winging, mandating, and regulating, and as of 2020, according to this report, VT is the second highest emitter per capita in New England. The report is all about Vermont, but one of the key findings, the number one key finding, is “Vermont has the second highest per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in all of New England, behind only New Hampshire” (emphasis in the original).
New Hampshire is number one again!
I’m excited to hear that, but it got me thinking. New Hampshire’s economy (GDP) is much more robust than Vermont’s. In 2022, Vermont’s total GDP was a paltry 38% of New Hampshire’s. 40,830.8 Million (VT) Compared to 105,024.6 Million (NH).
Note: All the data used in this article is readily available on the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Website, which I chose to provide consistency in reporting across both states.
New Hampshire’s GDP per capita is $75,666.13, while Vermont’s is $63,092.67, and NH has double Vermont’s state population. We have more people creating value from the emissions we … emit. The result is that our GDP per metric ton of emissions is higher than Vermont’s. New Hampshire generates 7.9 million dollars of GDP per metric ton of “emissions” compared to Vermont’s 7.3 million in GDP per Metric ton.
I bring it up because for years (before China went ballistic and surpassed everyone in emissions), the Left used to bitch endlessly about (a lot of things, and still does) how the US was responsible for 25% of the world’s emissions. We were also generating at least that much global GDP while others failed to match emissions to productivity. But they left that part out and still do. And US emissions per GDP have shrunk while China’s has exploded.
If you want to get the most from your all-in, America is a better bet—the same applies to New England. We’ve got a lower tax burden, less welfare and poverty, a higher standard of living, low crime, and have had fewer of our natural rights infringed. And while I didn’t do the math for any other New England State state, I’m betting we fare well when it comes to the output we generate per capita compared to the emissions we allegedly emit, if emissions matter, which they don’t.
But if they did, does it make more sense to look for ways to handicap your people and their productivity or to optimize production from the energy used? I suppose both if you’re that keen on reducing a trace percentage of a trace substance that isn’t doing anything you claim, but that is not what the Left is doing. It is putting its crippling agenda before people, price, productivity, and prosperity, and it will continue to cost states like Vermont in ways that are a lot less invisible than CO2 and a lot more tangible, economically, than the voodoo political science of climate change.
And it is still New Hampshire’s problem. We share a grid with the rest of New England. When Vermont and Massachusetts signed on to California’s transportation emission goals, they tied us up, too, at least indirectly. Even if we never cut our wrists to bleed out on the alter of their environmentalism, the increased demand created by thousands of EVs, heat pumps, and whatever else they are planning will impact supply and drive up the price of electricity.
Unless the Governor and Legislature plan to make New Hampshire an energy-independent state willing to sell its excess into that grid, our advantage is at the mercy of their legislatures, and some of those bastards are crazy.
Someone should work out how we will sustain ourselves in the region faced with those complications before it’s too late. The Legislatures of Vermont and Massachusetts should not be enacting policies with that level of economic impact on New Hampshire’s citizens when we didn’t vote for them.
