Mollie Burke and the Future of Green Transportation in Vermont
The House Transportation Committee meets in the Vermont Statehouse pre-pandemic.
Concerned about climate change, Mollie Burke was first elected to serve the state of Vermont 13 years ago. She is a state representative for the town of Brattleboro and is a member of the House Transportation Committee.
“We need a major, major transformation of our transportation system. And then we need huge investments to support that transformation,” Burke said.
Currently the Transportation Committee is working on the transportation bill, or T bill, which determines the amount of money that is spent on every single state transportation project, Burke said. In 2020, the amount allocated to transportation in Vermont was around $620 million.
Burke’s committee is proposing the Transportation Modernization Act to propose reallocation of money to transportation systems that would cut carbon emissions. This bill proposes funding and incentives to cut carbon emissions. Some of these include incentives for people buying electric cars, as well as low-income people buying used cars that are more fuel efficient than the cars they are driving.
“We have been meeting with some of the advocates strategize about what's going into the bill,” Burke said. “Transportation equity needs to be a key part of what we do.”
Mollie Burke, left, in Vermont.
Another idea that Burke discussed was the Transportation Climate Initiative, a multi-state pact which is a cap-and-trade system of carbon emissions. The states in the pact would agree on a maximum of carbon emissions for the year. If Vermont fell under the emissions for the year, another state who might be over their allocated emissions would be able to buy a larger share of carbon emissions from Vermont.
Burke admitted there has been only a small increase in sustainable transportation funding in recent years. In order to meet the Paris Climate Accord goals, Vermont “should have 90,000 electric vehicles on the road by 2025. And right now, we've got about 4000 and electric vehicles represent about 1% of the whole fleet of vehicles out there in Vermont, but 7% of all new purchases, so that's good.”
The shift to electric vehicles is a step in the right direction, but more action still needs to be taken. “Our efforts at reducing emissions a race against climate change, but I think we're losing big right now,” Burke said.
Clearly, climate change is one of the biggest problems in the world, Burke said. Legislation to make our transportation system less dependent on fossil fuels has to be a top priority. Positive changes in the future can happen, Burke said, but “meanwhile, our planet is warming fast. Winters are changing.”
