BY MAT CLOUSER
BRANDON — Whether it be at Brandon selectboard meetings, the front page of The New York Times, the endless noise found doom scrolling on your favorite social media sites, or in conversation among those trapped in refugee camps from climate catastrophes such as the recent flooding in Pakistan—climate change is a defining characteristic of human life these days.
All over the world, people struggle to find ways to grasp the issue—let alone what they might do about it. And yet, there are people from all walks of life who would not shrink from existence in the Anthropocene (defined as a distinct geological age during which human activities have had an environmental impact on the Earth).
In other words, hope abounds—even in the face of disaster.
Of course, hope will not carry us so far as action. Brandon selectboard member Tim Guiles has been taking action since he became a dedicated environmentalist in the early 1990s—a dedication that he recently put on display again via the publication of a new carbon emissions tracking report which looks at the town of Brandon specifically and that Guiles hopes will encourage personal action as well.
“It’s easy to profess environmentalism; it’s easy to profess inclusion and diversity and inequity,” he said, “the hard thing is when you actually have to do it. This is true in all walks of our life. This [report] is supposed to fortify us internally—to give us some guts to make difficult decisions going forward.”
Guiles unveiled the inaugural Green Fleet Policy report during last week’s selectboard meeting. The report tracks the town’s carbon emissions through four primary sources (car fuel, truck fuel, heating oil, and propane) to arrive at Brandon’s estimated carbon footprint—in this case, 337.7 metric tons of CO2 for 2021-22.
In the report (found on page 14 of the board’s packet from Sept. 12, available online at https://www.townofbrandon.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Sep-12-Select-Board-Packet.pdf), Guiles tracks the town’s usage over the last five years—work he says he was able to do with the critical assistance of town employees Elaine Smith and Jackie Savela.
In that data, Guiles mentions several items of interest. “The largest producer of CO2 emissions comes from the diesel fuel we use to run our heavy equipment like dump trucks, the loader, the backhoe, and the grader. It shows that they are doing LOTS of good work for our town,” he wrote, adding that the Brandon Police Department and its six-vehicle fleet produced the second largest amount of CO2.
Guiles says that the numbers mentioned in the report aren’t meant to be viewed as good or bad, writing, “It is simply a measurement of how much CO2 our town activities generate when we burn fossil fuels to heat our buildings, operate our police cars, and do important things like maintaining our roads with heavy equipment.”
The report also mentions that in the last five years, Brandon has cut its carbon output in half (from 20.1 to 10.3) on things like gas mowers and other small equipment; lowered heating oil uses “significantly” at the town garage thanks to new thermostats and concerted efforts by the highway crew to use the heating system conservatively; and dropped propane usage at the town offices by way of electric heat pumps.
Despite a dip in usage due to the sudden economic halting of the COVID-19 pandemic, the report shows that the town’s energy usage is still on a slow upward climb. “Some of what this data shows,” says the report, “is that Brandon is busy doing good things—our roads are well maintained, and our town is growing in a good way.”
“It’s important to remember that the carbon footprint isn’t just the environment—there’s a lot of social justice [in it],” said Guiles. “When degradation occurs, it’s often the people who are least able to deal with it that get hit the hardest and the soonest.”
To that end, the Green Fleet report outlines a number of items that the town is or could be doing to help meet the guidelines of Vermont’s Global Warming Solutions Act, which calls for a 40% reduction from 1990 greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and net-zero by 2050.
“I know the energy committee is working hard on things like car sharing, where we might be able to get an electric vehicle into the community that would be available to people with modest incomes to allow them to participate in the electric revolution without having to own a car of their own.”
Additionally, Guiles’ report mentions the importance of the town’s readiness to replace large work vehicles with electric alternatives as they become available. “I’m quite excited about the likelihood of there being legitimate large-scale trucks very, very soon, which is why this conversation is so timely. It could be that in another selectboard meeting or two that we’re talking about replacing one of our trucks,” he said.
The report also names the continuing conversion of town buildings to electric heat pumps and the urging of the police and fire departments to do similar conversions on the vehicles in their fleet as other ways the town can improve.
However, Guiles says the report is about much more than the town itself. “As much as this is about the town and the town making decisions,” he said, “it makes complete sense for people to personalize this into their own carbon footprint. We all need to be thinking—how are we going to get to that 2050 goal? It’s a completely reasonable exercise for each person to go through.”
There are several free, relatively easy-to-use online calculators (https://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx and https://www3.epa.gov/carbon-footprint-calculator/ are good places to start), which help give a look at each household’s footprint based on items like travel, home, food, goods, and services—and can serve as a jumping off point for raising individual awareness about a collective problem.
“You can do it up in the legislature, which is important, but ultimately it’s when you buy the truck,” said Guiles, “It’s when you buy the heating system—that’s when you’re making a 20-year commitment to your carbon footprint.”
“This is totally non-partisan,” added Guiles, who also helps facilitate DIY solar installations for Brandon residents regardless of their varying forms of political inclination. “We can agree that it saves money right now.”
“My hope is through this Green Fleet policy, I can raise people’s awareness and sensitivity to being ready for those moments when we need to make those difficult choices,” he continued. “I think all of us need to choose the best choices today… I guarantee you ten years from now, there’s going to be better ways to heat—but this is the right one for today.”
