Aspen – The sentiment among the true believers here is that Aspen needs to rein in greenhouse gases aggressively and set an example for cities around the world in how to fight global warming.
But in a community where Hummers, 15,000-square-foot second homes and private jets are the ubiquitous signs of conspicuous consumption, conservation is an ideal that works easier in theory than in practice.
“We’re about twice the U.S. average in greenhouse gases per capita, so it says to me we need to work on all sectors,” said Dan Richardson, manager of Aspen’s 18-month old Global Warming Project, a multimillion-dollar effort to think globally but act locally. “How aggressive should we be? This is a tough question because we don’t know.”
At a time when the state of California has just approved a groundbreaking agreement to roll back greenhouse-gas emissions to 1990 levels, officials in Aspen – concerned about how global warming will affect important aspects of local life such as the length of the ski season – now are wrestling with the particulars of their own demons.
Suggestions for stemming the tide of earth-warming gases such as carbon-dioxide range from strict requirements for “green” construction to gentler encouragement of conservation through means such as mass transit and solar power.
“A lot of the points kind of hover between the free market and socialism,” acknowledged resident Jason White, an advocate of stringent greenhouse-gas reductions. “We’ve had people saying we need to force people to do this and others saying we need to do more on education and get people to care about this from the bottom up.”
Although the Bush administration has been loath to agree to the emissions rollbacks dictated in 1997 by the 160-nation Kyoto Protocol, government bodies and even individual businesses increasingly are taking the initiative on their own.
Mayors of nearly 300 cities across the country – including Aspen, Basalt, Boulder, Denver, Frisco, Gunnison and Telluride – have signed a climate-protection agreement promising to cut greenhouse-gas emissions dramatically in the next six years.
Meanwhile, companies such as Vail Resorts and the Aspen Skiing Co. have contracted for wind power to commit to weaning from electricity produced by coal-fired power plants, partly for good publicity and partly to do their part to reverse troubling climate trends that could drastically reduce the ski season within the next 50 years.
Last year, the Aspen City Council approved forming the Canary Initiative, an alliance of government agencies, policy organizations, local businesses and residents with the intention of drawing publicity to the “canary in the coal mine” of global warming and to be a model for the rest of the world.
At a public meeting last week to discuss how strict the reduction efforts should be, Fonda Paterson suggested that the local government needs to “lead by example,” a point that Richardson conceded had not been a high-priority focus in the first year of the initiative.
He lamented that the 3-year- old Aspen Recreation Center, for example, was conceived as an energy-efficient building, but the staff doesn’t participate in simple conservation measures such as covering the pool at night and setting the thermostats at lower temperatures.
“Basically, that building is using 50 percent more energy than a comparable building of that size,” Richardson said.
Resident Jackie Mastrangelo pointed to gas and electric outdoor fire pits operated by the city in the winter as another obvious source of waste.
“I just feel it’s a little inappropriate to try to heat the out of doors,” she said.
But others pointed to bigger sources of pollution, notably the aircraft flying in and out of Aspen’s Sardy Field that were identified earlier this year for generating as much as 40 percent of the community’s greenhouse gases.
“It’s just hard for me to believe that changing to a fluorescent light bulb is going to make a big difference when I see those coming in here like slingshots every 45 seconds,” said one woman, who asked not to be identified because she works for a local government agency and was speaking only for herself.
While the 40 or so residents at the meeting uniformly agreed on steps such as requiring environmentally friendly construction and reducing traffic through improved mass transit, they acknowledged that the message may be lost on many people who would view those restrictions only in terms of immediate cost and inconvenience.
“That’s the trouble: You just take people who are interested. There’s 10 of us for every 1,000 that don’t give a damn,” said resident Perry Pollock.
Mastrangelo believes Aspen can be a leader in the charge to reduce greenhouse gases because of its prominence and the high profiles of many residents and visitors.
Still, she concedes that conservation requires a conscious effort and is not necessarily easy.
“There’s small things that everybody can do, but it takes an effort,” Mastrangelo said. “It’s just sort of changing how you live, and that’s hard to do.”
