By: Tommy Savoia
Around the campus, App State and the greater Boone area are adamant in moving forward to make the community completely carbon free by 2050. According to The Appalachian, this was kickstarted in January of this year, when the Boone Town Council appointed George Santucci as the town’s first Sustainability and Special Projects Manager, responsible for making sure operations move to environmentally-friendly methods. Santucci describes his plan as a “5 step approach” to ensure that by 2030 Boone’s government balances out any carbon emitting activities with an equal amount of nature-preservation action. App State’s Office of Sustainability is doing its part to assist Boone in the endeavor.
In local news, The Watauga Democrat reports that Boone’s own Publix location recently gave $10,000 in gift cards to the teachers and staff of Watauga County Schools. This gesture comes from Publix’s program, Tools for School, that lets community members donate when purchasing groceries. This resulted in over five-hundred gift cards making their way to the Watauga County School’s office to be put toward more school supplies and the teachers themselves. Watauga County Schools Superintendent Scott Elliot is on record stating that he is extremely grateful for the incredible gesture by the Boone community.
In national news, The Wall Street Journal reports that General Motors aims to become the leading manufacturer of electric cars by 2030 and achieve over twice its current revenue. GM claims to be able to reach this goal through “new battery-electric models and auto-related services” that will boost them up in the industry. This is stated to be in direct competition with Tesla Inc.’s own battery-powered automobiles. It will be quite some time until we see if General Motors can fulfill its bold new plan. However, it is clear that the automobile industry is on the path for more innovations and shake-ups than ever before.
Today’s weather is brought to us by Booneweather.com. Everything is on track to remain cloudy with a chance of intermittent rain throughout the afternoon. Winds will reach 15 mph with a low of 56 degrees and a high of 64 degrees. Stay dry, folks.