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