Viewpoint: The county climate action plan
By Marie Reinsdorf
The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is trying to get our attention. The panel tells us we have increased the earth’s atmospheric temperature by 1.1 degrees Celsius since the pre-industrial age.
We must cap that increase at 1.5 C to avert climate disasters that will “become so extreme that people will not be able to adapt,” the Washington Post reported on March 20, in an article on the IPCC. Exceeding that limit will mean “basic components of the earth system will be fundamentally, irrevocably altered.”
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, presenting the IPCC’s March 2023 report, announced climate action is needed “on all fronts – everything, everywhere, all at once.”
Reading the announcement reminds me of a line from another movie, “The Fly”: “Be afraid. Be very afraid.”
Back home in Mason District, we’re electing a new supervisor. Whoever we elect ought to tackle the county’s weighty, wordy Community-wide Energy and Climate Action Plan (CECAP) released in September 2021 and the CECAP Implementation Plan issued in December 2022.
The plan needs teeth. The goal, as stated by Board of Supervisors Chair Jeff McKay in the report’s introductory letter, is to be “carbon-neutral” by 2050.
To get there, Fairfax County is to achieve a 50 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and 75 percent by 2040.
How? The CECAP lays out some 260 strategies and actions related to buildings and energy efficiency, energy supply, transportation, waste, and natural resources.
Picking three actions I could easily understand, we are to have more trees, a drastic reduction in the amount of waste buried or incinerated, and more bus trips/fewer car trips.
More than 60 appointed citizens worked on CECAP between January 2020 and June 2021. The Fairfax County Office of Environmental and Energy Coordination hired the consulting firm ICF to lead the effort.
The Board of Supervisors wanted to involve citizens in determining the areas of focus because they recognized that “this plan would impact residents, businesses, and other county stakeholders.”
Given that, I found it odd that only three businesses were involved: Inova Health System, the utility company WGL Holdings, and the waste management company Covanta. The group that developed CECAP was primarily made up of citizens representing magisterial districts, respected environmental organizations, and a few other key organizations including the NAACP.
Where were the real estate development, defense and civilian government contracting, financial, hotel, restaurant, and landscaping businesses? How about representatives from diverse immigrant communities, sports leagues, colleges and schools, youth groups, and federal government agencies?
On to the plan itself. McKay’s letter states: “As many of these strategies are ultimately voluntary, the CECAP is intended to educate and motivate community members on steps they can take to mitigate their carbon footprints.”
Ok. So, for this plan to succeed, we shall need to continuously know how we’re doing. That means, converting the target 2030 levels to target levels for 2023, 2024, and annually until 2030.
Also, for this plan to succeed, county leaders will need to execute campaigns to broadcast, motivate, educate, enforce (where existing laws apply), connect, mediate, convene, inform, recognize, and be generally creatively and fully engaged. How much money is in the county budget for such campaigns?
Most important, we need clear reports for public consumption on progress toward milestones, so we can all see progress or lack thereof. Is there money in the county budget for developing metrics? For producing clear, easy-to-understand reports?
And we’ll need a continuous improvement process to change strategies if we’re not meeting incremental targets.
We need some of that UN Secretary-General’s “everything, everywhere, all at once” attitude.
Let’s ask our supervisor candidates what they will do if elected to best activate CECAP – and what they will do to go beyond it.
You all will not take my gas powered leaf blower.
The UN predicted climate disaster for over 40 years. They’ve been consistently wrong. Also not sure why we would listen to the current UN secretary general, a devout socialist and proven shill for China.
Just because catastrophe hasn’t happened to you yet and you choose to ignore the facts doesn’t mean climate change isn’t happening. Everything that was predicted has already happened. We are in the middle of mass extinction, migration is happening in the most vulnerable countries because of their inability to grow food where they could before, ice is melting at a rate past what was predicted, insurance rates are impacting everyone because of the increased intensity of storms not to mention epic wildfires. But you go suck your thumb and pretend none of this is happening.
Thank you for writing this article, Marie. This county refuses to look at its own land use policies which is a huge abdication of their responsibility as if there is no connection. Instead of putting more money into getting people out of their cars and protecting our water supply they are wasting it on more asphalt and building more roads so more cars can drive through Fairfax County. We have children running this county and they pat each other on the back for promoting “urbanization”. It is great the county fleet of cars will be electric, but is that enough when Metro is struggling to survive and bus service is unreliable?
I bet you said the same thing about COVID. BTW, stupid kills!
Please explain what’s so precious about your gas-powered blower. You blower fanatics seem to think these pollution machines are something else that should be defended by a Constitutional amendment. Have you ever tried a modern battery-powered blower? They’re just as powerful as your gas guzzlers and cause NO air pollution. (Save your breath about the minuscule amount of pollution caused by whatever means charges the batteries.) But I guess you prefer inhaling a lot of fumes and annoying your neighbors so you can show how macho you are.
I have had and tried both electric and gas powered leaf blowers. No, the electric are not as powerful nor or they as effective or efficient as the gas powered ones. The electric ones take at least 4 times longer and 4 times more energy than a gas powered one to do the job.
Just like the commercialization of environmentalism with EVs, you have to spend way more on the electric version to get anything close to what the minimum gas powered vehicle can do. Moreover, all of the rare earth minerals and other items in building the battery for the EV cause just as much but different types of pollution (mining and power plants).
So far best approach on cars is a hybrid and if industry did that with a leaf blower it to might be the better option.
If we were to actually fix climate change which will cost significantly more in lives, mass migration, displacement, environmental costs and flooding of infastructure, houses and items than actually solving and investing in it. We would need to take as much cars off the road as possible, support transit, encourage other transportation options like biking/Ebikes, e-scooters, and being able to walk to all amenities. Yes there is some emissions from E-vehiciles which is why we should not just rely on electrifying cars, we should electrify everything. It is Absolutely False that “building the battery for the EV cause just as much but different pollution”. Gas has a much more immediate and worse global warming, environmental and health pollution costs that we cannot delay eliminating. Leaf blowers are a small part but even if your concerns about leaf blowers were true and not used as an ad campaign by Fossil fuel companies to encourage people like yourself to defensively side with their companies projects as if an attack on gas powered leaf blowers or stoves isn’t a manufactured outcry to be staying on fossil fuels which are causing the unforeseen climate events happening here.
Fairfax County will do well to prioritize basic governmental functions such as safety, roads, and schools. Our performance in these areas is getting progressively worse.
Key word here is “progressively” as that is a big part of the challenge. So many specific interests fit underneath the progressive umbrella term (to include so called “respectable” environmental groups) that the core needs are neglected. While multiple special interests dominate under one party rule. Explains part (not all) of why Fairfax county population has started to decline.
More trees? HA!! Developers and homeowners alike are nearly always allowed to indiscriminately raze healthy, mature trees. Several of my neighbors have zero trees in both their front and back yards. It looks terrible!
I love the idea of being carbon neutral by 2050, but this was simply another excuse to award a contract to a pricy consultant to draw up a fancy plan, as the County loves to do.
Marie, thank you for an excellent article. Very well said. I also agree with Dawna. Too many homeowners seem to hate trees and hate nature in general. Why isn’t there any regulation of tree cutters? And CECAP is meaningless without being backed up by some enforcement and meaningful, frequent metrics. Goals for 2050? Will we even have a recognizable planet by then? Try accomplishing things by 2030 while there’s still a chance.
ok folks – you can’t solve climate change – stop believing in fairy tails…we can reduce pollution and use resources better by continuing to evolve with technology…but stop with “if we stop driving gas cars and using gas blowers and stoves we will stop climate change” – that’s delusional…get a grip