(HOST) The legislature is back in session, and commentator Tom Slayton is reminded that Vermonters have long taken the responsibilities of leadership seriously.
(SLAYTON) The grand old chambers of the Vermont State House have been witness to a lot of history – and not just Vermont history. Time and again, Vermont’s citizen legislature has stood up and addressed the great national issues of the day.
From Vermont’s heroic participation in the Civil War in the 1860s to the environmental movement of the 1970s to the recent fight for civil unions, Vermont lawmakers have not shirked their responsibility when the great issues of the day came calling.
As I watched the new Legislature begin its work last week, I had the distinct feeling that, once again, historic issues were rapping at the State House door and that, once again, Vermont was ready to answer.
The issue that dominated the Legislature’s opening days had just about everyone in that historic State House ever-so-slightly nervous. And that was the weather. December’s thin snow cover was melting, and the temperature pushed into the upper 40s as the 69th Biennium of the State Legislature got underway. No one could remember a January like it.
Senator Peter Shumlin, in his inaugural speech as president pro tem of the Senate, said Vermonters, of all people, must be concerned about global climate change and should help lead the search for solutions to what he termed “a looming catastrophe.”
Shumlin cited dying maple trees, a compromised ski season, and the fact that he went deer-hunting this past November in a tee-shirt and running shoes.
He wasn’t alone in his concern. The House and Senate quickly agreed to hold joint hearings on the issue of global warming. And this week author Bill McKibben, whose book, “The End of Nature,” brought the issue to public consciousness in 1989, said: “I think we’re finally reaching a point where Vermont can take real meaningful steps in a leadership role.”
The hearings on global warming will continue at the Vermont State House. It is an appropriate venue for them.
We know that our lives, perhaps especially, in this small corner of the universe, do count. And that the world’s business is our business.
There are those who suggest that Vermont can do nothing to stop global warming. They may be right. But it’s no small part of the Vermont tradition to know that our hope of changing the future of the world begins right at our doorstep – and in our own State House. And it made me happy to see Vermonters accept the responsibility to try.
As I left the State House I happened to see a quotation on the wall from President Calvin Coolidge: “If the spirit of liberty should vanish in other parts of the union, and support of our institutions should languish,” Coolidge declared, “it could all be replenished from the generous store held by the people of this brave little state of Vermont.”
Good words, I thought. And never more true than today, right now, in this place.
Tom Slayton is the editor of Vermont Life magazine. He spoke from our studio in Montpelier.