Our Towns: Toward Making a Smaller Footprint
By Peter Applebome, from today’s New York Times:
Local governments and boards tend to be good at some things - fixing potholes, putting police officers on the streets, naming parks or schools for beloved village elders.
They tend to be less good at others, like, say, saving the world.
So it’s hard to make too much of the 60 or so people who turned out on a snowy, non-global-warming Thursday night for an event held by the Westport Green Energy Task Force. But it also might be a mistake to make too little.
It seems those folks in Westport are trying to do small, relatively painless things like replacing three light bulbs with compact fluorescents, dropping the thermostat a smidge, and turning off stuff they don’t use. Their goal is to reduce their calculated average 18 ton a year carbon footprint one ton a year for the next 3 years.
Said Kimberly Lake, vice chairwoman of the Westport task force “…trickle up isn’t enough. You need trickle down if you want to make massive changes.”
Sounds a little Village Square-ish up there in Westport.
Add comment January 20th, 2008
