Boulder's Efficiency Efforts Under the National Spotlight

This past weekend (Feb. 13 to be precise) Boulder found itself again in the national spotlight, the subject of a front-page article in the Wall Street Journal. This time, it was an in-depth article about Boulder's mixed results with pushing its citizenry towards energy efficiency. The tone of the article is not exactly positive, pointing out many of the challenges of the various programs that have been put in place over the last three or four years.

To be fair, not all of those quoted in the article have agreed that their comments were taken exactly in context. (See the Boulder Daily Camera's follow-up, here.) But in any case, the article highlights one of the main problems with any program that relies on people to take any sort of action for it to be successful: physics. Specifically, an object in motion will tend to stay in motion, and an object at rest tends to stay at rest. In this case, moving people to action is a problem not unique to Boulder, but is an issue of human nature. Despite this city's green leanings, the fact remains that it is simply easier to do nothing than it is to do something.

Click here for the WSJ article. (And, kudos to Boulder's Nate Burger of Eco Handyman for his moment in the national spotlight in the article's embedded video.)