Vermont

Unless they’re being offered by gap-toothed late-night comedians, I’m generally not a big fan of top ten lists. Or bottom ten lists for that matter. Or really rankings of any kind. What rates, why doesn’t, and why is so subjective that most attempts to order a given subject from best to worst quickly devolve into exercises in abject absurdity for one reason or another, not the least of which is who can really know?

Still, sometimes we can learn a few general things from such lists, especially if they’re based on some kind of objective methodology (though the sceptic can always argue these, too!) So it is that we find Forbes magazine with a new ranking of the greenest states in which our fair state of Vermont ties with Oregon for the number one position. Here in the Green Mountains we’ve got a really low per-capita carbon footprint, which helped vault us to the top of this particular heap.

I’m guessing Vermonters are winning the greenstakes because so many of us heat with wood, and we’ve got to have one of the highest rates of Prius ownership in the world. (Those things are so everywhere here that my daughter and I are able to amuse ourselves on the road with a spot-the-Prius game.) We also have an official state office dedicated to promoting energy conservation that spends more per citizen on the task than any other state. And we are second only to Hawaii in terms of the least amount of toxic waste produced.

See where your state ranks and then see if you can beat us next year…

Living in Vermont surrounded by Vermonters, it’s hard to know what the rest of the world thinks of our little state. My sense is that everyone else considers ours to be a kind of quaint little place, a somewhat odd anachronism in the modern world populated by slightly old-fashioned, slightly wacky, fairly far left-leaning folk just crazy enough to send socialists to Congress, endure unspeakable winters, and live miles from the nearest anything unless you count the farm down the road, the weekend chicken pie suppers, the general store, and, of course, the forests and mountains, which we here all definitely do.

Fair enough, I suppose. In Vermont we do often find ourselves a bit out of step with the rest of the world and quite contentedly so. You can drive for hours through nothing but bucolic scenes of pastoral paradise that seem like relics from a lost age. And it’s true that we Vermonters are, for the most part, quite happy living in relatively simple and traditional ways in a rare landscape where humanity and nature have learned to peacefully coexist. But if you pull off the highway and start poking around, you’ll find something else: people young and old forging the future for the rest of the world.

‘It’s a challenge for our society to address environmental quality, as everyone has an impact. The public has been tremendously supportive of our farm, the dairy industry and the environment…’

WR - I can't even begin to tell you how excited I was at this farm! It's also so great that I have the kind of job that allows me to check this stuff out and keep us in the loop with what's going on around us! I took a ton of pictures (sorry, I know you wanted a video, but my camera is messed up at the moment) and got the tour, and met some interesting folks. This is an amazing technology, and I was consumed by the fact that it solves a couple of problems on many levels. You take tons of shit and turn it into electricity and bedding/compost! It takes methane out of the atmosphere to boot!