For more than a decade, climate politics in Vermont has operated under emergency conditions.

The Global Warming Solutions Act, Clean Heat Standard, electrification mandates, transportation rules, heating fuel policies, and courtroom-enforceable emissions targets have all been justified by the same basic warning: act now or face catastrophic climate consequences later.

But the international climate modeling world is now walking back one of the central assumptions that helped fuel that panic.

A new ScenarioMIP paper for CMIP7, the next generation of climate modeling used in IPCC-related research, states that the highest-end emissions pathway long used in climate analysis has become implausible. That pathway, known in earlier modeling as RCP8.5 and later as SSP5-8.5, projected a future of extreme fossil fuel growth, high coal consumption, limited climate policy, and severe warming outcomes.

For years, that scenario was repeatedly treated in public debate as a “business as usual” future.

That distinction matters.

A worst-case stress test is one thing. A likely future is another. When policymakers, activists, media outlets, and government agencies blur the difference, the public receives a distorted picture of risk.

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From Worst Case to Policy Baseline

RCP8.5 was never simply “what happens if people keep driving pickup trucks.”

It depended on assumptions that now look increasingly detached from actual global energy trends, including massive future coal expansion and limited technology transition. Renewable energy growth, emissions trends, policy changes, and global energy markets have all moved the world away from that highest-end pathway.

That does not mean climate change is not happening.

It does mean the most frightening temperature projections used to sell urgency are no longer considered the center of the road.

UNEP’s 2024 Emissions Gap Report still warns of serious warming, but it places current-policy warming over the century at roughly 2.6 to 3.1 degrees Celsius. That is not trivial. It is also not the 4- or 5-degree doomsday future often associated with RCP8.5-style assumptions.

The problem for Vermont is that state policy was built during the panic years, when worst-case climate futures were often presented as if they were the expected future.

Vermont’s Climate Law Was Built for Emergency

The Global Warming Solutions Act, passed in 2020, turned Vermont’s emissions goals into legal requirements.

The law requires Vermont to reduce emissions 26 percent below 2005 levels by 2025, 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030, and 80 percent by 2050. It also allows lawsuits if the state fails to meet those targets.

That matters because Vermont has already missed its first legally binding target.

According to FYIVT’s prior reporting, Vermont needed to reduce annual emissions from approximately 9.81 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2005 to 7.26 million metric tons by 2025. When lawmakers passed the GWSA, emissions were still around 8.5 million metric tons.

The gap was not small. It was enormous.

Meanwhile, Vermont’s most recent inventory showed statewide emissions at 8.01 million metric tons in 2022.

Imagine paying $125 for a gallon of heating oil when your neighbor paid $1. That’s roughly the difference between RGGI carbon prices and some of Vermont’s reported carbon-reduction costs.

The Global Math Still Does Not Work

Vermont’s emissions are tiny in global terms.

Worldwide greenhouse gas emissions are roughly 57 billion metric tons per year. Vermont’s 8.01 million metric tons equals about 0.014 percent of global emissions.

That means Vermont could eliminate every ton of emissions inside its borders and the effect on global temperature would be undetectable.

This is the central cost-benefit problem.

The issue is not whether greenhouse gases affect climate. The issue is whether Vermont’s legally enforceable climate regime can produce any measurable climate benefit in exchange for the costs it imposes.

Mathematically, it cannot.

Vermont’s Carbon Price Problem

The spending side makes the case harder to defend.

FYIVT previously reported that Vermont taxpayers and ratepayers have spent more than $500 million on climate programs over five years. The state still missed its first GWSA target.

If Vermont had spent that $500 million to achieve the full 2.55 million metric tons of reductions required from the 2005 baseline to the 2025 target, the cost would work out to roughly $196 per metric ton of carbon dioxide equivalent.

That equals about half a cent per ounce of carbon dioxide.

By comparison, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative’s March 2026 auction cleared at $24.99 per ton, or roughly seven-hundredths of a cent per ounce.

On that comparison, Vermont’s implied climate spending would be nearly eight times the regional carbon market price, even under the generous assumption that the spending achieved the full target. It did not.

Efficiency Vermont’s numbers look worse. FYIVT previously calculated that one set of efficiency spending came in at more than $3,100 per ton of carbon dioxide avoided. That equals nearly nine cents per ounce of carbon dioxide.

Compared with RGGI’s current carbon price, that is more than 120 times higher.

Or, imagine paying $125 for a gallon of heating oil when your neighbor paid $1. That’s roughly the difference between RGGI carbon prices and some of Vermont’s reported carbon-reduction costs.

Clean Heat Standard Faces the Same Problem

The Clean Heat Standard carries the same basic defect.

It may raise heating fuel costs, force new compliance obligations onto fuel dealers, create clean heat credit markets, and expand bureaucracy. But even if it works exactly as advertised, it cannot measurably change global climate outcomes.

That leaves Vermonters paying real money for symbolic emissions reductions.

Supporters call that leadership.

Critics call it arithmetic.

Time for a Cost-Benefit Reckoning

The international climate modeling community has now acknowledged that the extreme emissions scenario that dominated climate debate has become implausible.

Vermont’s emissions remain globally insignificant.

The state has already spent hundreds of millions of dollars and missed its first legally binding target.

And the implied cost per ton of carbon reduction appears far above actual carbon market prices.

That does not prove Vermont should do nothing on energy, infrastructure, or environmental stewardship.

It does raise a harder question Montpelier has avoided for years:

If Vermont’s climate policies cannot measurably affect the climate, and if the worst-case scenarios used to justify urgency are no longer considered plausible, why should Vermonters keep paying for the Global Warming Solutions Act and Clean Heat Standard?

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Dave Soulia | FYIVT

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