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Fauquier's new green opportunity
Fauquier's new green opportunityAs does the rest of the world, Fauquier County today faces a critical situation unprecedented since life itself began on our now steadily warming planet
Nationally recognized and respected for its leadership on major local issues, this large Virginia county should now become an active national role model in the practice of new “green” ways of day-to-day living to confront growing air and water pollution and to slow the use of costly fossil fuels for energy.
Fauquier County has the opportunity to again plan an exemplary “Going Green” national leadership role to fight the growing threat of global warming. It would follow on the county’s longtime protection, from commercial and residential development, of its green open-space countryside, a policy which has successfully resulted in our having today a healthy living environment.
Time is of the essence. If we continue to fiddle while the Arctic ice melts, it will be too late. According to the respected Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “this is the defining moment.”
We agree.
Science now convincingly shows that what we do on this issue in the next few years is going to largely determine the future livability of Fauquier County for our children and the threatened generations to come.
There are a number of practical things which Fauquier government and those living here can now easily do to get this fully underway, such as:
• Changing all of our light bulbs to energy-saving and cost-efficient fluorescent light bulbs. Easy.
• Convincing the board of supervisors to quit dragging its collective feet on Warrenton Mayor George Fitch's bold green-energy initiative for a new county landfill. Is his proposal unproven? Of course. But the upside is huge, while the downside risk is that we end up with a somewhat more expensive trash-disposal system. Old-fashioned landfills aren't cheap either.
• Stop procrastinating and start working seriously on implementing the objective of the Office of Telework Promotion and Broadband Assistance created by Gov. Kaine two years ago which has the practical goal of providing broadband access for all Virginia businesses. This means that people here would be more able to work largely based at home. It is difficult to work from home when confined to the dial-up phone.
• Revise our building codes so that all commercial and residential construction would have to meet strict green criteria in order to get construction permits.
• Begin proactively encouraging car pools and new public/private transportation plans which would enable our large army of solitary commuters to travel together, around Fauquier County and beyond; by encouraging Norfolk and Southern Railroad to begin passenger rail service from towns like Marshall and The Plains.
Fauquier County is long known and nationally respected for the courage and vision of its people in developing long-range land-conservation policies designed both for the permanent visual order of its powerfully beautiful countryside and for saving costly fuel by restricting development and encouraging business growth within its core town Service Districts. We can now do it again by new Going-Green policies and practices.
Toward bringing all of this together, the board of supervisors should consider branding Fauquier County as "America's Green County." Big shoes to fill, to be sure. But we can reduce our carbon footprint and blaze a path for others to follow.
We welcome your thoughts — ftdeditor@timespapers.com — on this huge challenge.
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