CRESTED BUTTE, Colo.(MTN) --Across America, the transition to a new prism for looking at energy continues town by town, meeting by meeting. In Crested Butte recently, 150 people gathered, meeting to examine how to modify business as usual.
The community—Crested Butte, plus two other towns and Gunnison County—has been working on how it can rein in energy use. All three towns and the county government have signed pledges to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases roughly in line with the targets established by the Kyoto Protocol.
That was several years ago. Since then, the governments and local community organizers have been trying to figure out how their communities can live up to their vows of lower-carb diets.
Last year, the communities began collecting data, to establish a baseline as of 2005 for those emissions. Last week they assembled to hear what others have done, and talked about what they can do.
Among those speaking was George Sibley, a long-time local, who called for more local production of energy, instead of depending upon energy imported from central sources. He also called for more care in local building.
"Really, is there any reason why we should be allowing anybody to build a new house that isn't sited on its lot and has some accommodation to the idea that the sun shines a lot here and that's a lot of energy," Sibley asked.
Meanwhile, building codes are being upgraded to require greater efficiency. In this case, instead of the initiative coming from the grassroots, the action is coming from higher levels.
In Crested Butte's case, the town thought it had more stringent standards. But new iterations of the International Energy Conservation Code are causing Crested Butte to do some catchup.
