There has been a lot of talk about energy going around these days, locally as well nationally. Colorado Springs rates very high on many national surveys, but we are not the "greenest". There is so much land east of here to dump our waste, that recycling has never really taken off here. In addition, our proximity to the Wyoming coal fields and great rail access has made coal the fuel of choice for producing electricity. And the city is so spread out, with employment centers not being clustered very well, that mass transit is really used mostly by people who don't have cars (with a few exceptions), leaving everyone else in a "one person, one car" commute. Ironically, our historical utility costs are some of the lowest in the country, and our air among the cleanest, so we must be doing something right. There is good opportunity to develop wind energy east of here, and I suspect that wind will be the way the city comes into compliance with the state guidelines of having 10% of our power coming from renewable energy sources by 2020. Also, many of our homes are newer, and the new ones being built are mostly Energy Star rated, so we don't have a lot of homes leaking mass amounts of heat. In addition, our climate makes it easy not to run the furnace or the AC for much of the year, so in that regard, we are naturally blessed with a fairly energy efficient setting. Now if we could just fix all those huge pickup trucks and SUV's we tend to drive to get better mileage..... :-)
Sometimes having a few photos to share is reason enough to write. This was taken last Saturday near Cripple Creek, and you can there is still plenty of green, indicating it was really just the beginning of the color season. There are large stands of aspen with no trace of yellow yet.