Last year, as gas prices broke $4 a gallon and the U.S. economy put a wheel in the ditch, the Washington region did something improbable.
It became slightly friendlier toward the climate.
Slightly.
A new Washington Post analysis shows that local homes and businesses used about 2 percent less electricity in the first nine months of 2008 than they did in 2007. That's a small drop, but for Washington, any drop is significant: Electric power is the region's largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions, and in recent years power use has grown rapidly.
The news cheered local officials, many of whom have promised to cut emissions sharply.
But it also illuminates the work they still have, cajoling or forcing residents to change old behaviors. Last year, a spike in fuel prices, a spell of mild weather and a historic recession barely dented the region's problem.
"Things may get worse before they get better," Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett (D) said earlier this week at a news conference announcing new proposals to shrink the county's carbon footprint. "But someone has to start."
Full story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/17/AR2009011702460.html
