Local News: Frederick City works at being more green

Adam Behsudi writes for the FNP that Frederick City has been working on identifying and carrying out plans to be more energy efficient and reduce waste, to use "methane produced at the city's wastewater treatment plant as an energy supply for the facility" and even to use more environmentally friendly cleaning supplies. It is good news that the city has this issue in its sights, and all of the ideas mentioned absolutely sound worth doing -- kudos!

One suggestion received by Planning Director Joe Adkins from a city employee had to do with forming "a group to prioritize and recommend sustainable practices," which sounds like a great idea. I hope we hear more about this soon! Behsudi also reports that residents are asking for more, which is the best news!

We do need more. First of all there are more opportunities to reduce waste and increase efficiencies. I don't know what they are, but someone does. Mr. Adkins is doing the right thing to start getting people thinking about it and offering suggestions. As suggestions come, more and more improvements can be made which will inspire more creativity. The different dapartments can share their best ideas with each other and that will cultivate the ground for more new ideas. Add in the idea of sharing lessons learned back and forth with the Frederick County Government and other towns and other counties and great strides will be made.

There's more, though.

As good and important and valuable as efficiency is, it is logically limited. Improved efficiency is still doing what we did before. Sure, we are doing it better, more efficiently, but we are still doing the same thing. Consider this absurd but apt metaphor: if we want to get from Frederick to Hagerstown but find ourselves going 85 mph on 70 East, slowing down to 45 won't help. We'll have to turn around.

So what is "turning around?" If we want to turn around how our government does everything by thinking more and more sustainably, what do we do?

I don't know, and neither does anyone else. Well, people like McDonough and Amory Lovins have a better idea than most of us, but really, we're going to have to figure it out as we go. To find true sustainability, we have to get out and explore the Rumsfeldian world of "unknown unknowns."

We have to discover sustainability.