Sen. Lyons, a member of the Vermont State Senate, has spent her career in office working to improve Vermont's environmental conditions, including sponsoring legislation to reduce greenhouses gasses and setting up municipal programs to help pay for residential renewable-energy systems.  Still, she has often had to negotiate some rocky, highly partisan terrain in the Vermont Senate.  "I do see a lot of heels get dug in before the conversation even begins to happen," she said.

 In an interview, Senator Lyons talks about her legislative activities, her background as an educator and which bills she's most proud of in the Vermont Senate:

A:   A lot of good ideas come from a variety of places.  It was really a confluence of people and ideas that sort of built the bill as we went along.  It's a Vermont bill; it's structured very much for who we are, as a small state.  It helps to reassure folks who are concerned about the loss of some of our larger suppliers that we're not trying to totally co-opt the entire energy market. And secondly, there are members of the business community who believe that this will cause an increase in cost, (but) we found as we did our research, that it won't increase the cost any more than what we would see in a normal cycle.  I think it does all the right things: it takes us in the right direction toward a renewable energy portfolio that is absolutely necessary in a time of global climate change and in a time of peak oil.  So, the balance there is critically important for us.

A:  The most important issue is climate change.  I believe that sustainability of our social and economic systems are totally dependent on our ability to respond to this environmental challenge, and I think that's true for all of us.  In Vermont, we're somewhat more in touch with the natural environment.  We need to do the things that we can do to assure that in our little state, we can sustain the industries that we have and set as an example for other people in other states to do the same things.

A: Oh, thank you.  That's a good question. As a college professor, I've become deeply engaged in content information, but also, I value, very much, the ability to translate the technical information to usable, understandable, written and spoken information for everyone. And then at the same time, I think my involvement in education has taught me the importance of being able to work with other people.  And so when we develop a policy in our committee, I think the goal is to listen to as many different folks and ideas as we can, but then know that scientific data is very powerful and should be very powerful in helping to develop policy.  It is like being a good cook: where you take a diverse set of opinions and you try to use a pinch of this and pinch of that to come to a place where everyone's happy, but someone might want to add some more salt.  Being able to communicate that is so difficult when you're in the statehouse.

A: For me, that is absolutely true.  I do see a lot of heels get dug in before the conversation even beings to happen.  I have found that if you can demonstrate using data, clean data, the value of what you're trying to do, whether it's an economic value or an environmental value, that if it's logical and you speak passionately about it, people will listen.  We've had some bills that were vetoed by the governor, but then everything that we wanted to do in those bills ultimately came to pass, because they were not politically driven.

A: We have a Clean Energy Development Fund. And that fund has a manger, it has a board that oversees the fund, it has established criteria and it has legislative oversight.  So projects that come to the state, whether they're large projects, whether they're small projects, apply through the established criteria process for the Clean Energy Development Fund. And those criteria have been very well thought out.  A part of what we did recently was to expand how those monies can be used.

A:  You're going to think this is crazy, but it does relate to what we're talking about: the reduction of greenhouse gasses by specific dates.  And the reason I find that one so important is that, when I talked with our Pro Tem about how important climate change issues are to us, we put together a three-week education series of seminars; it was very eclectic set of presentations to really engage people in the challenges and opportunities of climate change.  And how did we get to that?  We only got to do that because I passed that one little bill establishing our cap.  So that's why that bill stands out, it's not because of the bill itself, it's because of everything that's fallen out of it since.

A:  I just think that that one of them most important things that we need today is leadership.  We need people who are not ashamed to respect the environment for the sack of the environment.  Too often we look for excuses to protect the environment, but there's economic benefit.  We're at a point nationally and globally where we could start to lose our natural world, and that to me is so very important.