If America's towns and counties don't take action to offset federal and state government inaction on climate change, there will be deadly consequences. Currently, most local elected officials are complicit in allowing for the ruination of life as we know it on this planet by not prioritizing renewable energy to replace fossil-fueled development. Local governments are major culprits in creating climate change emissions, so it is particularly egregious that they are dodging responsibility. For the last half-century, localities approved houses, roads, shopping malls, airports, power plants, and other development, that made America the leading contributor to global emissions. Further, by overdeveloping counties like Loudoun, American-style mega population growth and sprawl has also decimated the world's bird and mammal populations. Loudoun added almost 300,000 residents in the last three decades, blanketing a once rural landscape with sprawl. To pay for the costs of schools for the housing developments, Loudoun encouraged data center development using as much energy as 800,000 single-family homes!

Whereas the draft Loudoun plan reveals how the pro-development American land planning profession has dropped the ball on climate change, Costa Rican and other ethical planners around the world have taken the helm to address climate change and save biodiversity by instituting renewable energy systems. Smart growth planning consultants abound in this region to write Loudoun-style plans to deceive the public into believing that densifying existing suburbs will address climate change. Facts prove otherwise. Tysons Corner's coal and gas-fueled high rises are all flanked with huge parking garages.

Further, there is a great cause for concern over the expansion of the natural gas industry. Used as a short-term solution to pollution because it burns cleaner than coal, natural gas crowds out long-term renewable energy development. Its expanded use and export could create permanent dependency. For instance, by failing to require that high rise mixed-use centers be designed with solar and geothermal energy (which architects can do), counties, regional planning agencies and smart growth advocates in effect deliver new and potentially permanent gas customers to the utility investors. Is the publicly subsidized 100% gas-powered Hudson Yards, New York mixed-use project a harbinger of what developers want to propose nationwide in the name of smart growth? Half of U.S. natural gas is fracked with undisclosed chemicals. All of it emits methane which is 84 times more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Indeed, campaign finance reform and fossil fuel divestment actions are imperative to fully contend with the growing influence of the combined domestic energy and real estate development interests.

All said, Loudoun County's draft 2040 plan is not a plan to prevent the climate change the county helps to create, but rather, it is a plan to help make catastrophic climate change occur! The plan is not "sustainable," because it does not meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

Let's do the math. Fossil-fueled (existing residential and commercial development + existing and additional data centers + more scattered development in the rural areas eliminating wildlife habitat + net density around transit centers that doesn't transfer any density from rural area + expanded villages and towns + dense redevelopment of older areas) = environmental devastation of the local and global environment. Add in the county's promotion and reliance on the polluting airport, and voila, we have a special Loudoun County how to end the world plan.

Parents and children have the most political capital to change this equation in every county and town. Activate in your neighborhood to tell your representatives to revamp this deadly plan to prioritize renewable energy solutions. We can't wait for states and the fed government. This situation is dire and urgent, but fighting climate change in many ways can improve our quality of life. Now, that sounds like a plan!