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Letter: Poop problems in Aspen? No, really!

I love our political season in Aspen. Keep Aspen, Aspen, or so the story goes. Too much/too little development. Aspen has a dog poop problem. Yeah right. How about keeping Earth, Earth? How about just one single brave politician in our city or county government standing on a platform of keeping Earth habitable by cleaning up our CO2 poop? What would it look like to have our civic leaders demand that before any further development take place? We carbon-neutralize the mess we already have. Let’s start putting CO2 poop flags where they belong — with a humongous poop flag at the airport — and see if we can shame folks into cleaning up after themselves.

Can you imagine a community where we mandate the carbon footprint be mitigated before we double the size of the Aspen Airport? Imagine, if you can, the political will of requiring every gallon of fuel sold or used in automobiles, buses or airplanes be carbon offset just as a matter of policy. Carbon-neutral McMansions; carbon-neutral hotels. The entire country of Norway is going to be carbon-neutral by 2030, while we sit on the deck of the Titanic fully aware that we are sinking, complaining about the dog poop on the promenade and patting ourselves on the back for recycling.

Aspen/Pitkin County could set the example. I know we care, and there is nothing technically difficult about cleaning up our carbon emissions; just political will and vested money interests stand in the way. We have a good current group of community leaders, but they do not seem willing or able to strike the difficult and controversial leadership positions our community leaders routinely took a few short decades ago. It now appears that the citizens are resorting to leading our leaders — or at least attempting to. For the life of me, I do not understand why we are so hell bent on accelerating what is obviously an unstainable system. But then again, perhaps we simply plan on hiding in Koch’s little town near Paonia and letting it all blow by.



Clifford Runge

Aspen