Burning wood for electricity is bad for the climate and public health. Photo source: Shutterstock.
I recently took my two young children to spend a weekend in coastal Maine, where we rented an Airbnb. The place looked great online. But as we drove closer to the neighborhood, a chemical smell struck us – something you couldn’t see in pictures. It turned out that the house sat right across the street from a paper mill. We spent one night in the place while I worried about what those chemicals in the air were doing to my kids’ growing lungs.
That was one night. It made me reflect on the Vermonters who live, work, and play next to the McNeil wood-burning electric generation facility each day. Day after day, when the plant is operating, it pumps pollutants like benzene and formaldehyde into the surrounding neighborhood, which happens to be one of Vermont’s most densely…