When?-ter in Vermont
I’m currently sitting in a coffee shop in Colchester, Vermont. The shop has a giant glass front that looks out over Mallet Bay on Lake Champlain. Colchester is just a few minutes north of Burlington. I’m up here today because Dawn had to do a work thing at St. Michael’s College, and since B-town is about a two hour drive from our little village, and she didn’t want to do the drive alone, and she found me a coffee shop with free Wi-Fi, I came along with her.
So I’m sitting here, what?, a week or so before Christmas, and I’m looking around me in this beautiful place in northern Vermont, and what do I see? I’ll tell you what I don’t see. I don’t see any ice on the lake. I don’t see any snow on the ground. And I don’t see anyone wearing a damn heavy coat. Here it is, a week or so before Christmas — James Taylor is telling me to have a Merry Little Christmas and to make the yultetide gay, for fuck’s sake! — and there’s not a goddamn thing around me that makes me say, “Yes, this is winter. Watch out for Jack Frost.”
What the fuck? I mean, I know climates change naturally and all that, but I’m not an old person. I’ve only been on the planet for 29 frickin’ years, and yet, I can remember a time when winter actually arrived before February. I can remember the real possibility of a white Christmas. It usually didn’t come. We usually got rain or something instead. But still, it was a real possibility. Not this year. This year, the most we can hope for, even up here in “cold” Vermont, is a strong breeze on Christmas.
I walk around and I see people with shining happy faces staring up in reverence at the blue sky and shining happy sun. I see people — people who call themselves environmental activists, no less — walking around in shorts and T-shirts and saying, “Isn’t this great? What a glorious day!” Are you fucking kidding me? A glorious day? IT’S DECEMBER! It’s not supposed to be glorious. It’s supposed to be cold and the wind is supposed to biting our faces off. Our bodies are supposed to be hurting from walking everywhere with hunched backs and clenched jaws. People are supposed to walk inside doors and say, “Whoo! It sure is cold out there,” and then they’re supposed to blow into their hands and stomp their boots, and swing their scarves off their shoulders, and say, “You got hot cocoa?” Glorious days in December? Fuck that.
I know the science isn’t perfect — in some sense, that’s what makes it science — but c’mon people, doesn’t the reality of 49º on December 15, and not just 49º, but 49º in northern Vermont!, doesn’t the reality of that unsettle you a little bit? I mean, between 1961 and 1990, the normal daily mean temperature for Burlington in the month of December was 23º, and the 1990’s were the warmest decade on record. Over at Save Your Vermont, there’s a report on Global Warming in Vermont (PDF) that says:
- According to the Environmental Protection Agency the climate of Vermont could be like that of Richmond, Virginia, or even Atlanta, Georgia by 2100.
- Snowfall has decreased 15% since the 1950’s. Precipitation is projected to increase as much as 30% in winter (mostly in the form of rain).
- Winter in Vermont has already shortened by more than two weeks over the last 50 years. Warmer temperatures could erase most winter recreation in Vermont.
That sucks and stinks and stinks and sucks. Seriously. These sunny days are not glorious. They suck and stink and stink and suck.
But don’t let my tirades fool you, folks. As the man said, “If you think I’m going to succumb to negativity, you’re wrong.”
Earlier this Fall, on Labor Day weekend, hundreds of people, led by the author, Bill McKibben, went on a five-day walk through the state of Vermont. They stopped at every towns they passed through, holding Community Conversations on the Green. They ended in Burlington at a political rally in Battery Park, where they got every major politician in the state to pledge their support for outgoing Senator Jim Jeffords’ last major bill in Congress, the Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act. Plus, Senator Jeffords’ successor, Bernie Sanders (the Congress’ only socialist senator, by the way), has a 100% pro-environment rating.There’s also the fact that in Green Mountain College, Vermont has one of the few colleges in the country that has committed itself to developing an environmental ethic in every single student who passes through its gate.
Sure, these may seem like minor things, but they’re not nothing. This state has acknowledged that not having a White Christmas sucks and stinks, and it is doing everything in its (admittedly small) power to reverse the trend. Sure, the shining happy sun is out today, but maybe tomorrow it will be bitter cold. Maybe tomorrow winter will return to Vermont.