Burning Carbon to Save Carbon

The City of Boulder has been invited to make a presentation at the Copenhagen global warming summit. Pretty cool, huh?

It seems that some of the innovative things we've done have gotten noticed, things like open space, bike trails, and our climate action plan. Other municipalities want to learn from what we are doing.

Some naysayers here are saying that we should not be putting the CO2 into the air from flying two of our staffers to Denmark and back. They are also complaining about the $2,500 the city is spending on this.

(That's actually quite cheap, as the staffers are flying coach, bringing sleeping bags so they can sleep in private homes, and bringing bikes so they don't have rent cars.)

The money is coming out of the climate action plan budget, so if it furthers the goals of that plan the cost is not an issue. No other programs are affected.

If even one other city takes what we've done and implements it because of what we present, then the carbon savings from that one community will more than offset what's being burned for two airline tickets.

This was also unanimously approved by city council, from the most liberal to the most conservative. So obviously once you look at the tradeoffs it becomes worth it.

I hope this proves fruitful, and maybe even they'll bring back some good ideas from elsewhere.

Ideas that will, no doubt, inflame that same group of naysayers.