Vermont Is No Climate Refuge. No Place Is. It's Up To Us To Adapt, Or Try To

A sign outside a Johnson, Vermont church after destructive
floods swept the town and much of the rest of the state
earlier this month. Adapting to climate change is
going to take the ethos seen in this sign. 

 I have to delve into something I touched on just after the worst of Vermont's flooding in July. 

In a July 14 post when I was explaining what caused the July 10-11 cataclysmic flood in the Green Mountain State in, I mentioned a 2021 study that said Vermont is one of the best places in the United States to shield oneself from the effects of climate change. 

That study by Pro Publica and the New York Times said the top four safest counties in the United States from climate change are the Vermont counties of Lamoille, Orange, Franklin and Essex. All of Vermont was regarded in the study as a pretty  protected from climate change. 

The United States' "safest" county, Lamoille, has been declared a federal disaster area no fewer than 12 times in the past decade. That includes two this year: The big July flood, of course, and a weird May freeze that ruined crops that grew too early because of an unseasonably warm early spring. 

As VTDigger points out, we end up on lots of lists as a great climate refuge.  We're far enough north so that extreme heat waves aren't as big a threat. There's no coastline to drown in a hurricane or  nor'easter storm surge. We aren't nearly as prone to forest fires at places out west or in Canada.  

This "safety" has prompted some people to move to Vermont to escape the ravages of climate change. However, as we've seen this summer, there's really no escape. 

A summer-like early spring led to the freeze that damaged so many crops in Vermont.  Like seemingly everywhere else, the weather seems to whiplash back and forth, from a developing drought in June to catastrophic floods in July. 

Algae blooms closed some lakefront beaches in Vermont. We didn't really have any wildfires to speak of, but boy, we've had a lot of smoke from those fires in Canada and the western United States.

"This summer has maybe burst the bubble a little bit in what probably was more of just a myth, of Vermont being in an idea climate refuge," Jared Ulmer, the climate and health program manager at the Vermont Department of Health told VTDigger.

I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so.

I think most of us knew, when those 2021 studies came out about Vermont being a climate refuge that there were some huge asterisks attached to those study conclusions. 

It's not that ProPublica and the New York Times were wrong. It's just that Vermont is not in a hermetically sealed utopia of steady climate, steady people and and steady safety. 

That's not to say we have to sit here and be victims every time a climate disaster rolls around. Like everybody else on the planet, Vermont has to adapt to a changing climate. It's wetter here now, at least most of the time. But droughts are also more likely to intervene. 

Winters are warmer, which mucks up our winter sports season. The weather around our iconic maple sugaring season is now all over the place. Weird late winter and early spring heat waves have hurt that industry. 

Summer is tourist season in Vermont. Among all the other problems our July floods caused this year, I'm sure the destruction discouraged some visitors from coming to the Green Mountain State. 

With each new climate-related calamity or mishap, we learn what to do next time.  Or try to. After Tropical Storm Irene's epic floods in 2011 Vermont rebuilt with, at least in some places, stronger bridges, bigger culverts and better drainage.

We also moved some people away from flood prone areas after Irene. But not enough people, apparently 

I think many of us think of climate change in making our life and property decisions.  A few years ago, we replaced a culvert under our driveway, making it much larger than the previous ones and reinforcing it with large rocks. 

That surely saved our driveway from this summer's floods, but still, we weren't unscathed. The water was so powerful that it moved some the rocks away.  That could make the culvert prone to damage in the next torrent.  It doesn't end, does it?

As with Gov. Peter Shumlin after Irene, our current Gov. Phil Scott is solidly leading Vermont out of the latest flood crisis, and his team is surely figuring out how to, as they say, build back better. 

There's only so much we can do, of course. Like it or not, Vermont, just like every other place on the planet, will keep facing newer and weirder climate challenges. 

Vermont is just one tiny dot on the map. All over the world, governments, individuals, organizations, corporations and businesses are now constantly calculating climate change into their plans. Even if some of these entities won't admit they're doing it. 

This state of affairs all snuck up without us fully realizing it, despite decades of hair on fire warnings from thousands of climate scientists. 

Don't get me wrong.  I'm not saying we're doomed, like the story I hear from some climate activists. It would be easier to reduce carbon emissions so we don't make bad situation worse. But so far, the fossil fuel industry and some greedy politicians are making sure that doesn't happen just yet. 

I just hope that with everything else going on in the world, sane heads prevail as we all react and batten down in the face of climate change. 

Frankly, I'm not that optimistic about many of our national and world leaders, or some corporations for that matter. But, as I've seen here in Vermont after this summer's floods, we're acting as individuals and small communities to recover from, and brace for the effects to climate change. 

That's probably the best path worldwide.  As best we can, we act locally, and hope the bigwigs catch up with us, eventually.