ABC News Comes to Aspen for a Cooler View

ABC Looks at Aspen’s Approach to Global Warming

By Mitzi Rapkin, 5-05-06

Veteran ABC News Reporter Bill Blakemore has gone out of his way to do stories on global warming.

So Blakemore and Producer Clayton Sandell came to Aspen to film for potential stories on global warming solutions.

Last year the City of Aspen initiated a project called the Canary Initiative. The program is an action plan to identify steps to reduce global warming pollution in Aspen as well as around the world. It also aims to inform the public about the impacts from and solutions to climate change and to advocate for action locally, nationally, and internationally.

Blakemore and Sandell were in Aspen this week to report on the Canary Initiative and other programs the City of Aspen and the Town of Carbondale had in place even before the initiative was born.

These include the fact that the City of Aspen Utility Department offers 78% of its electricity from renewable energy sources with the aim of increasing that to 100%.

Dan Richardson is the Project Manager for the Canary Initiative. “We filmed a local hydro plant, a hybrid bus, and our new green affordable housing project among other things. They were pretty interested that Aspen even had a Global Warming Project Manager. ABC wanted to know how we were addressing transportation problems and we have a good model for that since 30% of vehicle trips that cross into Aspen is on RFTA (local public transportation system) which is a great percentage, the national average is two, maybe three percent.” It is still uncertain what footage will air.

Aspen author Susan Joy Hassol said the top reasons why she thinks Aspen is a model for combating global warming are the large percentage of renewable energy it offers its customers, the extensive mass transit system that includes hybrid buses, having Aspen Skiing Company (the biggest industry in the valley) committed to renewable energy and green principles and the Canary Initiative.

Hassol said the national attention could go far. “I hope that people all over the country will see that there is something we can do about global warming and it’s not the story of Chicken Little, it’s the story of the Engine that Could. Every community has to get engaged and take on the challenge and we can do this. It’s a man-made problem with man-made solution and hopefully it will instigate solutions on the federal level. It’s too big to handle on a voluntary basis, our efforts are important, they are a laboratory for solutions but we need national action.”


Editor's note: A previous version of this story included speculative information about what might be included in ABC's coverage of global warming. That information has been removed.

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