The side-by-side states look similar on a map, and both have Republican governors. Their weather doesn’t often differ much. But when it comes to the climate crisis, Vermont and New Hampshire could be on different planets.
With the Trump administration and most of the Republican Party denying evidence of an impending climate disaster, the U.S. Climate Alliance set out to provide an alternative for states that take the science seriously.
Governors of New York, California and Oregon announced the formation of the Alliance on June 1, 2017, and Gov. Phil Scott said right away Vermont would join. New Hampshire did nothing.
Not coincidentally, this was the day President Donald Trump announced he would withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement that sought to bring “all nations into a common cause” against what scientists warn is an existential threat.
The implications of that commitment are complicated, but their responses to one specific effort — launched by California — show the gulf between Vermont and New Hampshire.
When the Trump administration sought to loosen vehicle emission standards and then moved to bar California from setting its own higher requirements, Vermont joined several states in challenging the move. New Hampshire did not.
Most recently, Gov. Chris Sununu made matters worse by withdrawing from the Transportation and Climate Initiative, known as TCI, because of its proposed gas tax. If Sununu was intending to put his state squarely in the column of climate denial, quitting TCI just about sealed the deal.
And, by the way, TCI — a sort of regional version of the international Paris climate accord focused on greenhouse gas emissions — is no small thing. Members include Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia and the District of Columbia, as well as Vermont. Participating states agree to “work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, minimize the transportation system’s reliance on high-carbon fuels, promote sustainable growth and address the challenges of vehicle-miles traveled.”
The question remains: Why does Gov. Sununu choose to make New Hampshire an island of climate change denial in a region seriously trying to address the growing crisis?
I see two possible explanations.
In New Hampshire, where “Live Free or Die” now sometimes seems to mean “live as close to tax-free as possible,” avoiding the TCI gas tax could be a winning tactic for a governor seeking reelection. This might be especially true because many low- and middle-income citizens need to drive long distances to work. The truth is nearly any tax other than an income tax, which New Hampshire avoids like disease, weighs most heavily on those with limited incomes.
Also — and more important, perhaps — Sununu’s father, John H. Sununu, President George H.W. Bush’s chief of staff from 1989 to 1991, has been credited with almost single-handedly ending the possibility of a bipartisan approach to climate change, which seemed more plausible in the 1980s than it does now.
In Nathaniel Rich’s Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change, which filled The New York Times Magazine in August 2018, Sununu’s father emerges as a villain who uses the authority of his MIT engineering degrees to persuade President Bush — and most of the GOP — that climate change predictions were based on bad science.
Despite many warnings, such as the Union of Concerned Scientists’ prediction that by 2045 the New Hampshire Seacoast could experience $645 million of residential property damage, Sununu has released an energy plan opposing subsidies for renewable energy. The poisoned apple of climate science denial doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Bill Nichols lives in West Lebanon. He can be reached at Nichols@Denison.edu.