Like all Americans, Vermonters are familiar with private wealth
(even if they don’t have much). By private wealth, of course, we
mean the stocks, bonds, and real estate people inherit or acquire
individually, including fractional claims on cor¬por¬ations and mutual
funds.

But there’s another trove of wealth Vermonters are less familiar
with: our common wealth. All of us are joint recipients of a vast
inheritance that includes air and water, habitats and ecosystems,
language and culture, social and political systems, science and
technology, and quite a bit more. This common wealth is worth
more than all private wealth combined. Yet we pay little
attention to it, and as a result, it is being steadily privatized and
diminished.

Vermonters could, however, protect and reclaim much of that common wealth if a bill (S. 44)
introduced by Senator Hinda Miller (Chittenden) goes for¬ward.
Miller’s bill would establish a Vermont Common Assets Trust that would,
where appropriate, manage the state’s common wealth on behalf of future
gen¬er¬a¬tions and all living citizens equally. (The text of the
bill is available here.)

When such assets are being excessively polluted or depleted, the Trust could
establish clear limits on pollution and depletion, charge fees for
private use, and distribute much of the revenue to all Vermonters
equally. In this latter func¬tion it would resemble the Alaska
Permanent Fund, which for 25 years has used oil-lease revenue to pay
equal dividends to all Alaskans. (Last year’s dividend was $1654)

Such a trust, were the citizens of Vermont to create it, would represent a historic shift in America’s
approach to managing nature’s invaluable gifts. Under our present
laissez faire tradition, most natural assets can be used without cost
or limit. For example, groundwater can be pumped and carbon
dioxide spewed into the atmo¬sphere without limit or monetary
cost. There is a real cost, of course, but it is paid by future
generations and other species, rather than by the corporations or
consumers that immediately benefit from the natural asset. The
Vermont Trust would make users pay something closer to the true cost of
the natural assets they use. It would thereby discourage overuse
and protect Vermont’s ecosystems for future
generations.

The most obvious asset such a Trust could manage is Vermont’s air – in particular, the air’s
capacity to store heat-trapping greenhouse gases. We are using
that capa¬city beyond sustainable limits, as Vermont recognized when it
joined the Regional Green¬house Gas Initiative (RGGI) in 2003.
The RGGI bill calls for the Vermont Public Service Board to appoint a
board of trustees to manage funds from carbon permits sold to electric
power producers. It calls for 100 percent of these funds to be used for
the benefit of Vermont electricity consumers, through investments in
energy efficiency and renewable energy. So the principles of a common
asset trust fund are already established in the RGGI bill. But
RGGI applies only to emissions from fossil-fuel burning power plants,
which leaves 98 percent of Vermont’s emissions uncap¬ped and unpriced.

That’s where the Trust could step
in. It could set a gradually declining cap on all of Vermont’s
carbon dioxide emissions, auction permits to emit, and use the revenue
for clean energy, public transit, and equal dividends to all
Vermonters. Prices for fossil fuel burning would rise, but everyone
would get dividends to offset that rise. Individuals and institutions
who burn lots of fossil fuel would pay more in higher prices than
they’d get back; while individuals and institutions who conserve fossil
fuel would get back more than they pay in. In other words,
conservers would gain and gluttons would lose, but all Vermonters would
get something back.

Such a carbon cap-and-dividend system would also stimulate local
economic development by boosting demand for energy conserva¬tion, wind
and solar power, and bio¬-fuels. Germany became the world leader in
photovoltaics and wind power by adopting a charge for fossil fuels and
using some of the revenue to finance efficiency and renewable
energy.

Water, a resource in common

Another urgent issue for the Common Assets Trust is Ver¬mont’s underground
water resources, which at present are subject to unlimited
exploitation. Think of the Nestle Corporation’s extraction of
Maine’s under¬ground water at Poland Springs. Maine recently
passed a bill establishing a freshwater resources board to evaluate,
within the next 18 months, non-traditional uses such as bottling for
resale. (LD 1743, text here.)

Maine citizens also are considering extending the “Public Trust Doctrine”
which applies to surface waters in large ponds and tidal rivers, to
other surface waters and to groundwater. And Maine is considering fees
for bottlers.

Vermont currently has no Public Trust Doctrine for groundwater
resources, although it has been applied to waterfront land such as the
Burlington waterfront. Bottlers in Vermont such as Vermont
Sweetwater and Vermont Pure Holdings are selling and exporting
Vermont’s groundwater without paying for the use of this common asset.
Other companies are eyeing large-scale bottling plants in Vermont, such
as Montpelier Spring Water Company. S.44 could establish common
property rights to water and charge fees to bottlers in the same way
RGGI charges for the right to pollute the atmosphere with
CO2.

Another natural asset that could be
addressed by S.44 is mineral extraction. Vermont has commercial
quantities of granite, marble (calcium carbonate), slate, talc, sand,
and gravel, not to mention some copper, gold, and even uranium.
Omya and other companies mine at least $73 million worth of minerals in
Vermont. Did Omya put those minerals in the ground any more than
Exxon put the oil in the ground in Alaska? The state constitution
in Alaska says that all sub-surface minerals belong to the state.
Why not in Vermont? It’s not as valuable as oil, but so
what? Where is our share of the cash Omya is pulling out of the
ground in Vermont? If they paid us dividends, perhaps there would
be fewer Act 250 complaints.

How will issues of “the commons” play out in Vermont? Currently
groundwater and carbon dioxide, the two hottest issues, are being dealt
with on a piecemeal basis. RGGI has already established the trust
framework for CO2 emissions. When Europe initially gave away all the
allowances to polluters without lowering the cap, power companies made
windfall profits without reducing emissions, and rates went up for
consumers. As a result, Europe decided to auction 100 percent of
electricity sector permits starting in 2013. RGGI has learned something
from Europe. All the permits will be auctioned. The next
thing needed is to expand the program to include all carbon, not just
the 2 percent from power plants in Vermont. In the
case of groundwater, even mapping is being contested by some
farmers. Public Trust Doctrine applied to groundwater is a
contentious issue, but it is getting quite a bit of attention.

S.44 is not a Robin Hood redistribution system; it takes nothing
from productively earned income. The Trust’s income would come
from payments for use of common assets that no one produced.
Everyone would get the same dividend check, but this would have a
greater benefit to lower-income residents.

This
ground-breaking bill is co-sponsored by Senators Condos and Snelling
(Chittenden), Doyle (Washington), Illuzzi (Essex-Orleans), MacDonald
(Orange) and McCormack (Windsor). It has been heard in the Senate
Economic Development Committee but not voted on.

Interested citizens should urge their legislators to support it.