Green-energy CEO: Vermonters must abandon the car, embrace renewable energy future

Watchdog reports:

Now that Vermont has a mandate to get 75 percent of its electricity from renewable energy sources by 2032, residents will have to ditch automobiles and embrace a whole new way of life, the state’s top renewable energy CEO says.

“We’re probably going to have to abandon the car,” David Blittersdorf, president of All Earth Renewables, told Addison County Democrats in a recent presentation titled “Vermont’s Renewable Energy Future.”

Blittersdorf, the entrepreneur arguably responsible for the Green Mountain State’s transition to an energy policy opposed to oil, coal, nuclear and natural gas, says Vermonters face big changes as Act 56 kicks in.

“The car has been our No. 1 reason we consume so much energy. Suburbia is built around the car; our highway system is heavily subsidized around the car. It takes a lot of energy to run a car-centric system,” he said in the hour-long presentation captured on YouTube.

In the new green Vermont, where renewables-based electricity will power nearly all human activities, people will have new lifestyles. Vermonters accustomed to driving will have to seek out mass transit; homes heated by oil and propane will require conversion to solar, wood and biomass sources aided by heat pumps; even air transit will diminish.

Without the benefit of cars, Vermonters living in rural areas will need to relocate to cities and towns to survive.

“We got to get people to live where they work and get into the community. They can’t be living everywhere,” Blittersdorf told his audience of Democratic voters.

“In Vermont, people like to live 10, 20, 30 miles from work. That’s going to disappear. The 10-acre lot way out in the middle of nowhere on a dirt road is not going to be working anymore. It’s going to get expensive to live like that. So we have to get closer to where we work,” the All Earth Renewables chief said.

The comrades wants to tell you where to live... or else!