by Doug Boucher
When Montgomery County officially declared a “climate emergency” in 2017, it adopted a medium-term plan that was a serious attempt to do something about that emergency. The County Council adopted a 10-year goal – to reduce our climate pollution 80% by 2027 – as well as a longer-term goal of reducing net climate pollution to zero by 2035. The 80% by 2027 target was more ambitious than those of the state of Maryland or other counties in the state and was praised by scientists and activists as an example of real environmental leadership.
Now that we’re just one year out from 2027, we have the official data (from the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments) that allows us to see how we’re doing. And unfortunately, the news is very bad.
In short, we’re going to fail. And not just by a little bit. We’re going to miss it by a mile. Here are the numbers: the latest data show that we’ve reduced our climate pollution (our greenhouse gas emissions) by only 32%, well below half of the 80% we said we’d accomplish. We are very, very far from our goal for next year. Well, have we at least started to do better in the last few years? No, on the contrary: in the
latest 3-year period for which we have data, we just went from 30% to 32%. That’s less than 1% progress per year. At that rate, we won’t hit the 2027 goal until sometime after 2050.
Why are we failing, and not just by a small margin, but drastically? People can have different opinions on the reasons why, even if they all recognize and accept the basic fact that we are failing. Personally, I think that it’s because we haven’t yet accepted the scientific reality: that dealing with the climate emergency is going to require converting of our fossil-fuel-based economy to 100% clean energy. Others can disagree with that but at least let’s agree on the facts and have the conversation about the reasons.
The point is not to cast blame, either on the 2017 County Council for being too ambitious, nor on our more recent political leadership for falling short. Rather, it’s to recognize that during the last decade, we haven’t accomplished nearly enough. And we need to ask our leaders (and the candidates now running to become our leaders): why have we failed so badly?
Bio tag: Doug Boucher, a retired climate scientist, is the President of Poolesville Green.
Poolesville Green column for the Monocacy Monocle