A "GREEN" PIONEER IN BOONE

One of our favorite Republicans is also a past chair of the local Watauga County Republican Party, so go figure ... but Rob Holton is a role model for how responsible environmentalism can be combined with a business interest. He's covered in this week's High Country Press for a "Green Business Plan" proposal he's thought up and presented to the local Tourism Development Authority, over which he's also the reigning chair.

We'll have to wait to see how his ideas about "market-driven" greening initiatives for local businesses work out, but we're willing to applaud his efforts and the notion that it'll take actual capitalists to lead these initiatives for anything really significant to change in the way people behave -- that is, the way we consume and throw away.

Maybe this is a moment analogous to Richard Nixon going to China. (Naw. Too many knots in that comparison.)