What if, there are real money-saving efficiencies to be found in concerted efforts to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions? While developing climate-friendly alternatives?
Miami-Dade County has found such savings. In a four-year effort to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in its own operations, the county also managed to reduce fuel purchases by 3.7 million gallons. Roughly calculated that’s a savings of $7 million to $10 million, based on the high-low range of prices the county paid for fuel.
Mayor Carlos Alvarez lists a wide range of strategies to keep Miami-Dade “ahead of the curve in the green movement.” He has also committed $12.5 million of the federal stimulus dollars to projects with cost-saving benefits and the potential for reducing emissions. Included were the purchase of hybrid buses, replacement of high-watt traffic-light bulbs with LED modules (a $2 million annual savings), the use of landfill biogases to power nearby water and sewer plant, installation of high-reflective “Cool Roof” systems on county buildings, and the addition of solar-power systems to recreation facilities.
A week ago, I was in a greenhouse of liberal thought and was enjoying myself. Besides, when has liberalism not been fun to watch?
I can’t remember how I signed up for the Leon County Sustainable Communities Summit, but a call from Meggie Theriot, director of the Office of Sustainability, reinforced the good idea to attend. So I did.
I’d be the last to say I’m totally convinced that global-warming will be eliminated if we just eat organic foods, discard fluorescent lights, and make Tallahassee a Smart Grid city, but I’m not some flat-earth schmo, either.
My position is more articulate, which is: If this is an ecological catastrophe that will befall, and have in its wake human and earth-bound carnage on a scale hitherto unknown, how in the hell is commuting by Star Metro or carpooling going to save us?
Alas, this will win me no Guggenheim for thought. Given my cowardice, I’d avoided expressing this at the summit, and settled for boredom and amusement. Got both in spades.
First up was Mike Pate, formerly with the Knight Foundation, who spoke about growing local talent by persuading college students to stay in Tallahassee. This seemed only to have a very slight relation to “sustainability” in its a common usage, but the etymology of sustainability is so elastic, I let’em slide on this one.
Being a guy of shameless habits, I napped in fits in front of 40 people in a discussion about “growing” green businesses led by Commissioner Bryan Desloge. A few more meetings like this, and I’m a goner, I thought.
Later that afternoon, I attended the best part of the summit. A panel with former Leadership Tallahassee graduates —-to be a Leadership Tallahassee candidate is always to be overweeningly ambitious — discussing the group’s 10 principles of leadership, while one-upping each other in a strange patter on who was in the best Leadership Tallahassee Class ever.
Vince Long, deputy county administrator, began the discussion with a Talmudic distinction between “leader” and “leadership effort.” Alan Williams, compared leadership to the perfect swing, and I had a retort ready but let it slip. Kelly Otte spoke about social justice as a demand of leadership, replacing old white men, and the other tropes of liberalism.
Yet I learned something: Can’t liberals be a little obnoxious, like they’ve been over-parented, given 5 stars in kindergarten when they’d deserved three; so earnest, so prideful, so ambitious and without self-awareness.
I’m all for making earth a better place but know the limits of that: human nature, the personality and stupidity of people, and the grubbiness of self-interest. The summit seemed so well-meaning and that’s what gnawed at me, even in boredom to make me a little mad, and distressed.
All of those panel people would be lovely neighbors, but often with people who are perfect they tend to aggravate the hell of the lesser souls like me, who tend to appreciate human disorder.
On the whole, I’d attend next year. It’s good for even a jaded man to see that some people believe and are brave enough to attempt the impossible.
— Chris Timmons shares his insights and conservative sensibilities in a featured blog for The Village Square. Although as a liberal-leaner I must object strenuously… I did too deserve 5 gold stars.
OK so I need help from my conservative friends to explain something to me.
Former Bush adviser Matthew Dowd on This Week Sunday morning re/oil spill (just getting to it, it’s been a busy week):
… “I think where the public is on this is if you put this in the context of what happened in West Virginia in the mine disaster and this in context of Katrina even though was different and this in context of many things, I think the public just sits there and says: Who’s in charge, who is accountable and what governmental entity can actually be effective in doing anything? And that ultimately is where the public is. It’s just another example of the fact that we cannot trust the government to do anything that we need them to do, from mines to relief on health care, to the oil spill. It’s a loss of faith in the government.”
To which I say, HUH? He sounds to me like he’s in backwards world where you draw exactly the opposite conclusion from the one supported by facts.
I should preface any comments you have with a disclosure that I’m personally not really against offshore drilling, but I think you have to regulate it intelligently to do our best to minimize the chances of catastrophes like this one. I think we have to take a broad approach to energy independence and a conservative approach to climate change (there seems to be a reasonable chance it is real and so it is the cautious route to take steps toward alleviating it). I think nuclear energy is a part of that broad action.
I should also disclose that I have a BP gas card.
But in the world that is advocated by the conservative talkers of our day, BP would have had to follow nearly ZERO governmental regulations that would interfere with their ability to operate their business as they see fit and then if a spill happened, BP suffers the consequences (i.e. it might drive them out of business). The problem is that the consequences are not confined to BP and right now only the government is capable of the scale of action that this crisis warrants. I thought conservatives wanted government out of our lives?
To me the lesson of this tragedy is that some government regulation and an adequate governmental infrastructure to act is simply required.
One of the best take-home messages of our study preparing for Global Warming, Cap & Trade, Dollars & Sense is that you can’t take any particular short-term weather pattern and extrapolate a larger trend one way or the other.
So all you folks saying “Snowmageddon is absolute proof that global warming is a hoax” or suggesting that “Snowmageddon is absolute proof of extreme weather caused by global warming,” cool your jets.
A clip in which Thomas Friedman nails why we’ve got to find some way to revive the constructive push and pull of democracy right here at home. Hat tip to Luke.
