Vermont is not on track to meet its 2030 climate emission-reduction commitment, but instead of accelerating to reach that mile marker, Gov. Phil Scott wants lawmakers to let him throttle back. Scott says the cuts in carbon pollution would come at too high a cost for many Vermonters, especially those facing sharply higher property taxes and other expenses. "We'll continue to do our part but at a pace we can afford," Scott said at a recent press conference. Lawmakers and climate activists are incensed. They argue that Scott has been a Sunday driver on climate initiatives for years, so Vermont is no nearer to its goals. And now with an impending deadline, they say Scott should be hitting the gas. "He is retreating at exactly the time when bold leadership is essential," said Paul Burns, executive director of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group. Whether Vermont lives up to its climate commitments is shaping up to be one of fiercest fights of the 2025 legislative session. Scott and his Republican allies, reinvigorated by electoral gains that eliminated the Democrats' veto-proof supermajority, say Vermont can't afford to meet existing goals. Climate activists and many of their Democratic allies say the state can't afford not to. Lawmakers must decide next year whether to continue on the path they have laid out to reduce the use of fossil fuels to heat Vermont homes and businesses. In 2023, they enacted the clean heat standard and tasked the Public Utility Commission with fleshing out a mechanism that would, over time, convert homes heated with natural gas, oil and propane to lower carbon sources of heat. More recently, studies have suggested this clean heat transition would be tricky to administer and would raise the price of fossil heating fuels. That's something Scott and many newly elected Republicans have vowed to prevent. Now Scott is signaling that he wants not only to block the clean heat standard but also to unwind the 2020 law upon which it is based, the Global Warming Solutions Act. In 2017, Scott pledged that Vermont would stay the course to meet the targets of the Paris Agreement, the landmark international climate treaty from which then-president Donald Trump withdrew. Legislators enshrined the state's climate goals in law. The Global Warming Solutions Act calls for Vermont to reduce its carbon emissions to 26 percent below 2005 levels by 2025; 40 percent below…