For all intents and purposes, the Buncombe County Commissioners had only one item on their agenda tonight. At their last retreat, the commissioners called for an energy audit, for just county government property and activities. Today, Greg Israel, for whom many commissioners expressed their love, presented the results. It was essentially an outline of projects the county could undertake over the next ten years. Costs were provided, but the commissioners insisted they would not bind themselves by a project-management timeline of any kind.
Added to the presentation was a resolution proposed by Councilman Brownie Newman. It would commit the county to the usual rhetoric of “reducing its carbon emissions by 2% annually until it achieves a total reduction of 80%.” That’s fine for all you mathematicians out there, but for me it evokes flashbacks to a Czechoslovakian instructor jumping up and down and screaming about the idiocy of failing to parameterize variables or define boundary conditions. And that reminds me of the German professor who put F’s on otherwise A-level tests because females were supposed to major in English.
Oh, yes. As I was saying, the energy audit speaks of base levels in terms of a rough overall average of 2011-2013 data. Is this the baseline, or is the county to use the ICLEI 2006 baseline Asheville City Council adopted, or is there some other equation that the heuristically-unchallenged automatically know? Assuming we use the values from the audit, what is the 2% per year supposed to mean? Does it mean we subtract 2% of the initial baseline each year, or does it mean we subtract 2% of whatever we land on each successive year?
The difference is minor. Since many in the audience were of the opinion we would all die unless we reduce levels of manufactured smoke by 80%, one might think there is some kind of time factor involved. But, for the former, arithmetic progression, we have 40 years to heal the planet; for the latter, we have 80. Not to worry. Differences at the onset are small enough to be absorbed in error for anybody’s four-year term.
Need we discuss the public comment? I say not because first of all, I’m not a scientist. I only took enough college courses to think science progressed by observation organized by the scientific method. Wrong! Science progresses by means of quotes in the political arena. Science need not subject herself to test and trial in the lab, when it can be established by “scientific consensus.” I know, because Aristotle tells us so. Anyway, folks in the peanut gallery had all kinds of scientific consensus about, for example, how poison ivy would overrun the carbon-drenched planet as temperatures rose as high as one could expand the ordinate axis and sea levels rose in defiance of Archimedes’ silly “law.”
Commissioner Ellen Frost said she didn’t want people dragging politics into the discussion, because it wasn’t political. Commissioner Mike Fryar said oh yes it was. I am unqualified to comment as I am neither R nor D. My fellow-partisans don’t tell me what to think, but one did go out of his way to tell me one of my headlights was out tonight. (Thanks, Thomas.) Back to R&Dland, all the commissioners were in favor of good stewardship and running the county efficiently. Fryar, however, didn’t think buying a lot of green stuff with short life cycles, toxic waste, or low output was green at all. He and Belcher wanted to approve Newman’s resolution, but first he had to take the weird parts about scientific consensus over climate change out. They were outvoted.
On a positive note, Newman said after the vote that, in the interest of full disclosure, he does run FLS Energy. The company, however, had made it policy that they would not do business with Buncombe County as long as Newman was a commissioner. They would gladly lend expertise and consult for free, but they would no way accept pecuniary benefits that might give Newman the appearance of self-dealing. Now, I can almost hear cries about secret subsidiaries of FLS or business partners connected via termite diagram – but you have to admit, it is a good policy.
