After rising up on the Gulf Coast, I’ve packed up my husband, canine, and three cats to embark on our new journey. I’m buying and selling in homestyle Cajun cooking for the world-renowned maple creemee. We’re transferring from Louisiana to the good state of Vermont.
Whereas visiting Vermont all through the years, I fell in love with the panorama and close-knit communities. Throughout our time within the state, I found that Vermont’s attitudes towards social justice and environmental stewardship match my private values. I’m excited to name Vermont house.
In Louisiana, I labored on social and environmental justice points. They promote Louisiana because the “Sportsman’s Paradise,” however “Oilman’s Paradise” could be a extra apt description. Extraordinary Louisianians pay the worth as highly effective gamers destroy the habitat that made Louisiana an actual paradise. Making the most of lax environmental requirements, vitality firms have cited polluting refineries and fuel manufacturing amenities in low-income, predominantly minority communities. Since individuals rely on vitality firm paychecks, they’re afraid to lift well being and environmental issues.
Whereas we, within the environmental group, spoke out on the problems of habitat degradation, greenhouse fuel emissions, and environmental racism, our issues fell on deaf ears. Lots of Louisiana’s most influential elected officers have turn into too accustomed to the vitality business’s largesse.
Vermont has a repute for being one of many cleanest and greenest states within the Union. Certainly, public corruption, thought to be a sport by some within the Bayou State, appears scarce in Vermont. And my issues about biodiversity, local weather change, and environmental justice are outstanding in work being executed on the state, regional, and municipal ranges.
Latest laws in Vermont has positioned local weather targets into statute, offered alternatives for regional and municipal planners to affect vitality siting, and established environmental justice as a statewide precedence. Public participation and entry to pure sources are important facets of the brand new environmental justice invoice.
I’m excited in my new function as director of Energize Vermont to proceed this work by serving to to lift the voices of Vermont communities and advocating to guard our pure sources from the impacts of inappropriate vitality improvement. On this effort, I stay up for working with like-minded individuals to advertise: Responsibly sited, community-supported, Vermont-scale vitality options that may present ample, reasonably priced, and dependable energy; conservation measures that scale back vitality consumption; efficient local weather motion that emphasizes nature-based options, safety of biodiversity, and social and environmental justice for all of Vermont’s communities and the safety of our ridgelines and headwater streams from utility-scale industrial wind tasks
I can’t wait to learn to drive within the snow, faucet a maple tree, and go backcountry snowboarding with my canine, Zelda. I can’t wait to get to know you and what you’re keen on about Vermont.