FACS Questions Candidates for Fairfax County Chair

Candidates for chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors appeared at a forum on October 20 at Madison High School in Vienna.

We thought we’d attend to ask some specific, climate change-related questions. The answers received were revealing.

The candidates for chairman on Election Day, Tuesday, November 3, are:

• Republican: Arthur Purves
• Independent Green Party: Glenda Gail Parker
• Democrat: Sharon Bulova, the current Chair

Our two questions were:
1) For over a year, members of Faith Alliance for Climate Solutions (FACS) have met with the Board of Supervisors to talk about how counties and cities are using energy dashboard software to reduce energy waste in county-owned buildings. The President of the United States and the Governor of Virginia have made energy efficiency a priority. Yet despite the advantages of reducing energy waste – by reducing pollution and saving taxpayer money – the board has not taken this issue seriously. If elected, would you?


2) Do you believe that human activity is the primary cause of climate change?

GOP Candidate Arthur Purves

The moderator addressed the questions first to Arthur Purvis. Ignoring the query about energy waste and saving taxpayer money, he swung hard at the second.

GOP Candidate Arthur Purves

“There hasn’t been any change in the climate for 50 to 100 years,” Purvis thundered. He then launched into an attack on the “job-killing” federal cap-and-trade bill of 2009 that would have set an overall limit of carbon pollution, which would be ratcheted down annually, but allow for credits to be bought and sold by industries to meet their goal. Cap-and trade systems are used by the European Union, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (comprised of Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont), and last month China announced it will start the world's largest carbon trading system by 2017. But Purves is against all of this nonsense because climate change doesn’t exist.

Green Party Candidate Glenda Gail Parker

Parker next addressed the two questions. Host of Channel 10’s weekly “Green TV” show, Parker’s answers were that she wants to see more solar, wind, energy efficiency and rail transportation in Fairfax County.

Green Party Candidate Glenda Gail Parker

I was impressed that she seemed to understand the magnitude of the crisis we are facing. But it was when she addressed other questions that I understood why she is sometimes called Gail “for Rail” Parker. Funding for the schools? More rail. Health care? More rail. Sequestration budget cuts by Congress? More rail. Gun control? That threw her off the, um, rail for a moment while she declared herself a firm proponent of the Second Amendment. But it wasn’t long before she was back on track: affordable housing? More rail. I like rail but I began to wonder if her father had been a conductor. I stood in the back of the room. People were rolling their eyes and giggling. Oh well.

Democratic Candidate Sharon Bulova

Bulova seemed unable to say “climate change” when members of the FACS Community Council began meeting with her over a year ago. Now, running for her second term as chair of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, she is able to say those words.

Democratic Candidate Sharon Bulova

But when we have asked her to embrace the issue of energy efficiency in Fairfax County-owned buildings to save taxpayer money and reduce fossil fuel pollution, we have repeatedly gotten a pat on the head. When FACS showed her examples of how other jurisdictions and organizations use energy dashboard software to lower costs by reducing energy waste and greenhouse gases and serve as a role-model for the community, we heard nice words. When her environmental and energy manager produced a budget estimate for an energy dashboard to display the cost of utilities in 205 County-owned buildings for $14.8 million, and over $3.5 million in annual maintenance, we were shocked! Cost projections given to FACS by three different vendors were from $60,100 - $120,000 for one-time installation and $30,000 - $55,000 for annual maintenance. These numbers included not only the 205 County-owned buildings but all Fairfax County Public Schools buildings, as well.

This week, Bulova and her staff informed FACS that a public energy dashboard will be part of the new Public Safety Building, to be completed in 2017. Additionally, Bulova has committed to an energy display for all County-owned buildings on the Fairfax County government website. Due to personnel changes the project is 25% complete; a new hire will carry-on the project now projected to be completed Spring 2016.

Decision Time Approaches

So, if you care about reducing fossil fuel pollution and saving taxpayer money, who do you vote for on November 3? Is it Republican Arthur Purvis, who doesn’t believe climate change is real? Green Party Candidate Glenda Gail Parker who sees more rail as the solution to every problem (except guns)? Or Sharon Bulova, the current chair, who has listened and promised. The answer is obvious. Bulova is the one. But FACS will watch to see that promises are kept.

Scott Peterson is a member of the Community Council of Faith Alliance for Climate Solutions and the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Fairfax

Global Warming Bottom Lines

An increasing groundswell of voices is speaking one message: “Global warming climate disruption causes must be addressed, now.” Consider the following.

Pope Francis’ climate encyclical “Laudato Si” (Praise Be) is a galvanizing call for faith-based climate response and activism. With a moral call-to-action undergirded by the ethical imperative and guiding tenet of all major faiths, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, Francis entreats faith practitioners and communities to integral action for the common good within all spheres of influence – family, congregation, work, civic and governmental institutions. 

Faith groups are partnering together, rallying and marching, imploring leaders attending the International Paris Climate Convention, Nov. 30-Dec. 11, 2015, to agree on actions keeping global warming below 3-4 degrees C. FACS encourages congregations to join in solutions by signing the Paris Pledge, committing to: 1) reducing C02 footprint 50% by 2030 and 2) becoming carbon neutral by 2050. For more: www.parispledge.org. 

Political will for addressing climate disruption threat is coalescing. A 2015 New York Times/Stanford University poll found that nearly half of Republicans nationwide support government action to curb global warming. Overall, 83% of respondents said “yes” to the question of whether climate change presents a very or somewhat serious threat. 64% of Virginians believe global warming is happening; in DC and Maryland, it is 81% and 68% respectively. 

Growing numbers are advocating climate policies. A recent national survey by Yale Project/George Mason Center for Climate Change Communication found 77% support funding renewable energy sources research; 74% support regulating Carbon Dioxide as a pollutant; 63% support setting strict limits on existing coal-fired power plants; 61% support requiring utilities to produce 20% of electricity from renewable sources. FACS offers a voluntary carbon tax program; monies donated provide funds to low-income groups for energy efficiency. For info:  daveparsons@mindspring.com. 

The following bottom lines may answer “Why?” and “Why now?” 

• Bottom Line: Scientific data confirm  human caused global warming; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced in March 2015 that for the first time global atmospheric CO2 surpassed 400 parts per million (PPM), a rise of 120 PPM since the industrial age. 50% of that rise has occurred since 1980. 
• Bottom Line: Earth is at risk. Those 400 parts per million are like a CO2 blanket. Prior to the Industrial Revolution the blanket layer was about 15 ft.; now, it is 22. The higher the carbon-blanket the greater increase in global warming, climate disruption and extreme weather events. 
• Bottom Line: Climate science denialism as a political and fossil-fuel corporate strategy is faltering. The Senate, on January 21, 2015,  voted 98-1 on Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s one-line, non-binding amendment stating: "it is the sense of the Senate that climate change is real and not a hoax." 
• Bottom Line: Elon Musk is developing batteries to store energy, a game-changer; there are more employees in the solar industry (174,000) than in coal mining (123,000).
• Bottom Line: Virginia must become a player in the emergent green economy. In the US, the market for solar energy grew by 34% in 2014. Global forecast for 2015 solar energy growth is 30%. Goldman Sachs is pledging $40 billion in renewables investment by 2021; Citibank, $100 billion by 2025.
• Bottom Line: For about $80, a poor rural family in Africa can have electricity via a single laptop sized solar panel enabling recharging a cell phone and powering 4 LED lights. Worldwide, 1.5 billion people live without electricity; how long before this cheap technology leapfrogs to them? Investment and jobs will follow.
•  Bottom Line: 30% of energy use is wasted; increasing energy efficiencies reduces energy waste and CO2 pollution.  This is the fastest, cheapest, no-brainer solution; utility budgets shrink. Energy efficiency is a cornerstone of Virginia’s response to the EPA Clean Power Plant Rules.  
• Bottom Line: Public health is at risk. Richmond, VA, has the “distinction” of being an US Asthma Capital. Virginia needs elected officials and utilities acting to move Virginia from the top to the bottom in asthma cases and from the bottom tier to the top tier in both energy efficiency and renewable energies. A win-win for health and the economy.

With Virginia congregations and communities awakening to the global warming risks, with growing political will and policy solutions emerging, Virginians have an important opportunity to reduce the state’s carbon emissions.  

To do so, the majority of elected and appointed officials must support the EPA Clean Power Plant Rules. For improved public health, the economy, and Virginia natural resources, officials need to enact required, not voluntary, Renewable Portfolio and Energy Efficiency Resource Standards. 

Faith-based non-partisan political will for cutting carbon pollution is growing in Fairfax County. FACS calls upon the County and Schools to reduce energy waste through an energy dashboard, energy efficiencies and renewables.

• Bottom Line: Using energy dashboard and energy efficiencies can save millions of dollars in County government and school budgets. Take George Mason University; GMU, by using an energy dashboard and other energy efficiencies, has greatly reduced wasted energy, utilities costs and carbon footprint. www.energydashboard.gmu.edu
• Bottom Line: November 3 elections are fast approaching; ask your local candidates their stand on reducing energy waste, increasing energy efficiency and renewable energies. Will your State Delegate’s approve the VA EPA Clean Power Plant Rules? Ask; allow answers to inform your vote.
• Bottom Line: Increasing energy efficiencies and transitioning to renewable energies will facilitate becoming carbon neutral by 2050-2100 thus insuring a smaller CO2 blanket and assuring a livable, sustainable earth.
• Bottom Line: As people of faith we are called to be stewards of the earth in both “word and deed”- speech holistically enlivened by action.

FACS, partnering with others, seeks “bold action against climate change” by asking County and School government for a measurable reduction in CO2 pollution.

Rev. Dr. G. Jean Wright, ABC/USA

Member, Faith Alliance for Climate Solutions
http://www.faithforclimate.org