What we can do about climate change

Last week’s Climate March in Gunnison showed there is widespread concern in our community about climate change and its impacts.

Large parts of our land mass will suffer unprecedented drought. There will be more powerful storms. Millions of people who find themselves unable to live where they are will seek to migrate to places where they may not be welcomed. Food grown in an atmosphere with higher carbon levels has lower nutritional value.

The greatest  obstacle to action is the perception that there is nothing we can really do locally to help stave off disaster. This perception is very wrong. There is an agenda of important local tasks that we can and must take on, now.

Gunnison County is one of Colorado’s major sources of greenhouse emissions. There is a history of large-scale coal mining in Crested Butte and the North Fork. These mines, of which only one is now operating, are intense methane emitters, even after they have closed down. For years, they have been the county’s major taxpayers. Now, they are one of Colorado’s greatest greenhouse gas sources.

At one of these sites, the methane is captured and used to generate electricity, used to power the grid that includes the Aspen ski area. But only a small portion of the methane is being captured. Gunnison County has an electric utility, Gunnison County Electric Association. We have a ski area at Crested Butte. Why can’t we do something similar here in Gunnison County? Where is the leadership?

There are millions of dead and dying trees on our national forest land. These are a visible consequence of climate change. They also represent an enormous stock of carbon that has been sequestered and kept out of the atmosphere. All too often this carbon winds up being emitted back into the atmosphere, as the U.S. Forest Service ignites its massive burn piles. The trees that died from the effects of climate change become a contributor to even more climate change. The solution is to use these dead trees to produce biochar, which can be used to reclaim some of our numerous abandoned mine sites, and enhance soil quality on ranch lands, providing carbon offsets against some of our other emissions. Does the Forest Service have a plan for biochar? If so, what is it?

Our housing stock includes some shamefully energy inefficient units, things like old uninsulated garages and dwellings with plastic sheets and duct tape instead of real windows. Fuel to heat these rentals is a considerable source of greenhouse emissions and a huge expense to some of our low income residents. Other towns have rental codes with some real teeth that put some obligations on landlords to increase the energy efficiency of their properties. This also reduces the energy bills of the part of our population that has the hardest time making ends meet. Where are we on a rental code that pushed for faster and better energy efficiency improvements and lower utility bills?

The new Fed Ex facility that is a part of the Gunnison Rising development should — instead of being run off portable electrical generators — become a 100% renewable facility, with onsite storage.

Gunnison has a lower penetration of individual commercial and home solar systems than most similar towns in our region. Our city’s policies have the effect of discouraging solar use when we should be trying to find incentives to encourage it. These policies must be changed.

Composting and recycling are an important part of what we can do locally to reduce emissions. As a former leader of a major recycling organization, I can say that one of the keys to success in these endeavors is volume. The greater the volume, the more leverage we have in the marketplace. This is even more important when we are small communities a long way from the end users of recycled materials. 

Instead of building volume, we have reduced it by fragmenting our programs. In a county of around 20,000 residents we have over half a dozen small programs: the Gunnison County program, the Crested Butte program, a Mt. Crested Butte program, and a Western Colorado University program. WalMart and City Market have their own programs. All of these need to be part of one coordinated effort, with higher volume, if they are to succeed.

Our outdoor recreation industry, from skiing to hunting to summer tourism, is a massive source of emissions from transportation, both from air transport and road transportation. One way to confront this would be a local effort to offset the emissions from air transport. United Airlines could help. Our ranching community can show the way to sequester increased amounts of carbon in ranchland. 

We can also shift part of road transportation to electric vehicles. On the Hwy. 285 and Hwy. 50 corridor from Denver all the way to Montrose, Gunnison is the only significant town without a DC fast charger, which we need to make electric vehicles work better. Gunnison is last, when it could have been first.

We need local leadership. If our current leaders cannot or will not do these things, new leaders will have to emerge. The stakes are just too high to tolerate excuses and inaction.

(Luke Danielson is president and co-founder of the Gunnison-based Sustainable Development Strategies Group.)