[Updated July 29, 2023]
I swim in a pond most summer mornings. A deep, kettle pond. It’s refreshing and a great way to start the day. This morning in mid-July, I met a neighbor whose two dogs were in for a swim. Three geese were paddling around silently, wary of the dogs and us as we talked about the weather.
The torrential rains in Vermont had done their damage to far too many towns and people. We lamented. The heat and humidity were oppressive, and we were feeling…well…oppressed. It was this climate issue that drew us together. She’d never been a climate naysayer, so she told me, but I’d felt this looming fear for our planet ever since my days as a student at Vermont Law and Graduate School (VLGS — then called Vermont Law School). I told her I wasn’t a naysayer, but the desire to protect our environment had been hard-baked into my DNA, in my bones, since my student days.
Interestingly, I’d never taken an environmental law class, but notions of environmental awareness, protection, and justice swirled all around me. I studied the law, and I eventually became a lawyer in Vermont, but study groups with friends were all about Act 250 and land use regulations. A hallway conversation took on the urgency of being recruited to be an advocate for the Clean Water Act and the EPA. Or to go march and protest at the statehouse in Montpelier. Or in Washington, DC. Air quality, recycling versus reusing, driving cars versus riding bicycles, conservation easements and land trusts, federal Superfund sites, were all within the orbit of any casual interaction. This was back in the late 1980’s! Notions of environmental protection seeped into my pores until I couldn’t help but understand and feel the fragility of our world. I changed my ways.
I began to compost, to recycle, to minimize my usage of all kinds of things, to ride my bike or walk instead of hopping in the car, to carpool when I needed a ride, to grow my own vegetables, to shop locally, to insulate the attic and basement, to get a wood stove, to shift to cross-country skiing (my aching back thanked me!), to own a small mpg-friendly car, to change my diet to plant-based, and to take dozens of other small steps to minimize my foot print in this world. Flip off a light switch? Yes. Ride my bike to work? Yes, even in the snow at times. Use cold water to wash clothing. Yes. Visit the local transfer station and recycling center to find holiday gifts? Yes. Fix a broken drawer handle rather than buy a new one? Yes. Buy locally-sourced and sustainably-grown food? Yes. Recycle and reuse? Absolutely. Did I forego amenities? Sure. But it felt good to talk with my friends about my actions that were helping the world. It felt good, personally, to know I was making a small dent in this thing then called environmental awareness. I even got to raise two children who learned to treat the earth with respect. I became proud of who I was on this planet as its future hung in the balance.
I’m still driving a little car, still composting, still foregoing many things others take for granted. I use public transportation when I’m in a city. Why? Because I choose to be an environmental crusader — just like other VLGS alumni who look at life differently — with love and respect for nature and our world.
It’s been more than fifty years since Vermont Law School was founded in 1972. It’s now morphed just a bit to include a graduate school, thus its new name of Vermont Law and Graduate School. With more than 8,600 alumni, about 20% who purely have master’s degrees in fields related to the law, the environment, energy, animal advocacy, food systems, and/or restorative justice, you can imagine the sheer magnitude of the impact this school has had.
When I started law school in 1989, Vermont was known as the Green Mountain State, noted for its skiing, hiking, maple syrup, and dairy farming. Oh, yes, Ben & Jerry’s was also part of the national fascination with Vermont back then, too. Today, Vermont is known as a green state, the greenest, most environmentally aware and active, in the nation. And that’s not just because it’s 80% forested. Notions of environmental awareness, justice, and activism are embedded in its DNA. VLGS faculty teach it and live it every day.
Is it no wonder that when legions of alumni populate a small state, as VLGS grads have done in Vermont — more than 900 of us — the State can’t help but reflect their cultural and social mores? After all, these are graduates working in the law. They’re driving policy decisions. They are change makers. Twelve percent of lawyers in the Vermont Bar Association are VLGS grads. Alumni from the school are state Supreme Court justices and lower court judges. VLGS alumni create policy in state and local government, lobby for change, lead environmental and socially capable non-profits and NGO’S of all stripes, draft legislation, seek renewable energy sources, press for restorative justice, and advocate for our state and world as if they were on a mission to save it. And they have been. And they are. And they will continue. It’s in their DNA. It’s in their bones. They’re environmental crusaders on a mission to save us and our planet — from ourselves!
A recent (June 2023) article in the Eagle Times of Claremont, NH reports Vermont ranked first in the nation in a Consumer Affairs “Greenest States” report that used data from the EPA and the Earth Engineering Center at Columbia University.
VLGS’s Maverick Lloyd School for the Environment Dean Jennifer Rushlow is quoted:
Our economy is very tied to natural resources, from our seasonal recreation businesses to farming, and there seems to be a prevailing sense that those resources require some protection.
Jenny gets it. She knows nature is the big economic player. We must protect the natural world or we lose in the end. And what’s really important are the metrics upon which states are measured.
The report ranks states based on their renewable energy generation as a percentage of total energy generation, emissions per capita, CO2 emission rate, waste generated per capita, and percentage of waste recycled or composted, based on information from the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the Earth Engineering Center at Columbia University. Eagle Times, June 24, 2023
These measurables track almost exactly what I learned from my law school peers more than thirty years ago. Reduce waste. Reduce my CO2 emissions. Now, Vermont reflects those beliefs. Vermont Law and Graduate School alumni have effectively changed the DNA of Vermont, making it the number one most eco-friendly state in the nation, serving as a beacon and leader for what can be done nationwide and worldwide. But, let’s not stop there. While VLGS grads in Vermont number just over 900, around the country there are close to 1,000 working in government, more than a quarter of whom work at the federal level. Creating policy. Crafting change. Nearly 60 work at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). More than 30 are at the Department of Justice (DOJ). Over 20 serve in the military across all branches as counsel. And state and local governments have more than 600 VLGS alumni, affectionately called “Swans” to honor the schools mascot, the Fighting Swan. (Want to learn more about swans? Here’s an article I wrote on that topic titled Swan Song & Black Swan Exposed.)
Let’s get back to those three geese paddling around my pond. I found it strange and unsettling that they’ve not yet headed to more northern climes. They’re always gone by early July, yet here I was, on July 19th, watching them as I entered the water. The temperature was cool and refreshing. Perhaps that’s because this pond is 60 feet deep and stays cooler than most. Smart geese stay here. Others may be cooking in much warmer waters.
As I swam, I noticed a sky thick with white smoke from Canadian wildfires. Today was the second day of a smoke warning in Vermont. Poor air quality had been forecast throughout the day. I watched an eerily red sun rise into the haze, turning into a white, gauzy moon before my eyes. The haze thickened. Night seemed to have come to Vermont at six in the morning. It made my heart sink.
My neighbor with the two dogs had told me before I took my morning plunge that this “climate thing” was just too big an issue for any one person to wrap their head around. That’s when it struck me that we desperately need the kind of passionate people VLGS has been educating and sending out into the world for more than fifty years. 8,600 Swans strong have made, and keep making, an impact. They’re driving policy that creates change on a massive scale. VLGS faculty are the driving force behind this environmental crusade, teaching legions of students how to practice law and life. They’ve been at it every year since 1972. We need policymakers who care. Who have been steeped in the mission and culture their school has created locally, nationally, and globally. We need VLGS grads to survive.
Over time, these mission-driven alumni have changed the face of Vermont, making it the greenest state in the nation, and they’ve altered the course of public awareness of the fragility of our environment and our world. They’ve changed behaviors as smart, highly-educated environmental crusaders and change makers. They’e learned from world-class faculty and practitioners at the VLGS Environmental Law Center’s Summer Session in Environmental Law for four decades running. This is the nation’s foremost summer program in environmental law where environmental crusaders come to teach and learn and grow.
VLGS alumni have enhanced perceptions about the importance of treading lightly and treating the earth with care. They’ve drafted and introduced legislation. They’ve lobbied for environmental and social justice. They’ve advocated for the poor and underserved who are all too often at the mercy of the environmental misdeeds of others. They’ve led the nation in restorative justice, with the National Center on Restorative Justice on the VLGS campus in South Royalton, VT. They’ve cut carbon emissions, and introduced solar and wind and other alternatives as energy options, championing them as economically beneficial and as job-creating opportunities. They’ve marched and protested and fought for our world and our communities, all so we could learn how to care best for this tender planet. They’ve even developed a U.S. -Asia Partnerships for Environmental Law to, among other things, help guide policy now being drafted in China to cut carbon emissions worldwide.
We need lawyers and policymakers who are hard-wired to carpool, to compost, and to cut their carbon footprints because it’s embedded deep in their minds and hearts. Who feel the need to act individually and collectively. We need Vermont Law and Graduate School like we’ve never needed it before — for the state, the nation, the world. We need it desperately — now.
As for the three geese, well, they kept on paddling silently on the far side of the pond. I heard an occasional honk that reassured me they were happy and safe. They’d found a pleasant spot to live during these tumultuous times, in cool water, perhaps much cooler than water farther north. Odd that.
There was only one Swan in sight. It was me, a VLGS alumnus. Swimming. Watching the sun rise as if it was a moon floating in a white gauzy haze. It frightened me to think the world had now foisted itself upon my lovely Vermont. But I know the natural world doesn’t discriminate. It doesn’t shed a tear for us as we bake or drown or burn or suffer from poor air quality. I was pumping out the flooded basement of a friend just a few days ago. Rain had ravaged Vermont. Now, the heat, the humidity, the smoke. The wind blew and the air cleared for just a moment. I could see the other side of the pond. There, flying high, I thought I spotted a swan.
Dave Celone writes from South Royalton, VT where he’s the vice president of alumni relations & development at Vermont Law and Graduate School. He’s a VLGS alumnus, Class of 1992. When not swimming (or xc skiing), he’s out scouting for other people who are passionate about supporting the environment, saving our world, and helping to perpetuate the mission of the extraordinary little law & graduate school, Vermont’s law school, on the banks of the White River that changed his life — and will change yours.