Carbon free? Does that mean getting rid of all people too? :- )
Glad to hear you stood up and protested. Good for you. And many silent voices at the meeting I’m surely heard your disgust and you earned new respect from them.
Sometimes all we can do is fight the good fight — and live to win another day. Thank God you still have Proposition 2 and a half in Massachusetts. That one over-ridding restraint has kept the State from flying the hammer and sickle.
"Our town has the 12th highest residential property taxes in the state. This Climate Change BS is not what I elect my town officials for. I want them to fix the roads, not make me wait 10-15 years to repair an embarrassingly badly damaged road in my neighborhood. I want them to maintain the water supply and not be on water hours like we have been for years now. I want them to pick up the trash. I want them to maintain the town web site. If they have a budget item to purchase a new police car, I want them to make their choices based on performance and reliability, not because it is an electric car. This kind of town official involvement is not within the scope of what my town elected officials should be doing. I do not think one nickel of our taxpayer dollars should be spent on this. I oppose this measure."
Then I had some guy near me get up, and said the attitudes of people who don't support this are short-sighted and selfish, and that he had spent years in the military in Germany, and they were so far ahead of us in these things, etc.
I was pretty hot, and I am sure he read my lips as I muttered to myself "F****** idiot."
I was wearing my Navy hat, and he came over to talk to me, and I interrupted him and said:
"Look. You and I are going to disagree on this. We have a fundamental difference in opinion that we will not reconcile. I know all these people getting up and making their speeches right now are saying "Oh, no money is being allocated, we simply want to incorporate Climate Change into all our decisions" and such, but my point is, if one second of this town committee's time is spent talking about Climate Change, that is one second less they have to discuss real issues. You say you worked in military aviation as I did. Every single military aviation accident we see lately is likely a training or maintenance shortcoming. If they have spent one second talking about Climate Change, LGBTQ crap, or anything else like that, that is one second less they had to talk about training, maintenance, or war fighting. Climate change is not, and SHOULD not be their focus, just like our town governing body shouldn't be focusing on it."
Before I left, I walked over to them guy (The Leftists rescheduled this annual town from a convenient weeknight time and made it an outdoor meeting due to "COVID") and said "I appreciate your service, but we are going to disagree. My view was voted down overwhelmingly, and that's how it is."