I have just read the new summary of the County’s report on what the climate crisis will do—and is now doing—in our area: www.pecva.org/wp-content/uploads/Preparing-for-Resilience-An-Overview-of-Albemarle-County-Climate-Change-Impacts-web-res.pdf.
The summary skillfully sets out the damage to local industry, agriculture and health that we will experience. It’s a call to action—we need the proposed Comprehensive Plan to require that growth in the County be managed so as to reduce greenhouse gases.
The effects of climate change that the report describes here in Albemarle are no surprise to me: being a long-term home gardener, I’ve seen the increases in hot, dry periods alternating with destructive downpours, and the decrease in pollinators and other insects that used to live in our gardens. Even our car windshields tell the story—older residents will remember having to clean off the squashed bugs, but that no longer happens because insect populations are plummeting.
We need a County climate action plan now, and a Comprehensive Plan that works with it to make sure growth doesn’t increase greenhouse gases.
Beth Hodsdon
Crozet
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