February 2008 Archives

British Columbia, Canada has implemented North America's first consumer-based carbon tax [ark | more\ark]. Fossil fuels are to be taxed to raise US$1.75 billion over three years. The initial tax rate is $10 per ton of carbon emissions, rising to $30 by 2012, an extra U.S. nine cents per U.S. gallon of gasoline rising to 27 cents.

If serious about maintaining both a habitable Earth and an operable atmosphere, while maintaining a market based economic system, there is no choice but to urgently embrace a similar global carbon tax [search] immediately. Such a tax as proposed in Ecological Internet's Lincoln Plan can and must be offset with reductions in other taxes [ark], and can be tightened as required to bring about necessary reductions in energy use.

If someone tells you solutions for global heating are easy and inexpensive, they are either lying, wishful or ignorant. A new Australian government report written by Professor Ross Garnaut makes clear the climate change crisis is dire and solutions will not be easy or cheap. The interim Garnaut report [search] notes dramatic emission cuts need to happen more quickly to stabilize atmospheric greenhouse gas levels than generally acknowledged, and that solutions will require dramatically more expensive energy prices [ark].

The Garnaut report brings policy recommendations [ark] more in line with current scientific truths. With a global economic system built upon finite ecosystems; yet predicated upon continuous exponential growth, ever larger human populations, and enlarging access to conspicuous unsustainable consumption; it is highly unlikely climate change and attendant global ecological crises will be dealt with without society experiencing wrenching social, economic and political change.

A major new study warns that continued rise of global average temperatures from emissions of man-made greenhouse gases is likely to result in sudden, dramatic, out of control changes to major geophysical elements of the Earth. The journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences identifies nine manners in which climate change could cross "tipping point" thresholds [ark | search] and lead to abrupt, non-linear ecosystem change.

Global warming crossing tipping points [ark] could trigger a runaway thaw of Greenland's ice sheet [search], dieback of Amazon rainforests [search], and failures of the Indian and West African Monsoons [search]. The report rejects complacency based upon smooth projections of global change, calling upon governments to note potential for small change to be amplified into massive, abrupt and potentially irreversible ecosystem failure. Though surrounded with uncertainty inherent in complex systems, the authors indicate some of these tipping points may be closer than thought.

Just days after President Bush promised to “fund new technologies that can generate coal power while capturing carbon emissions” his Department of Energy (DOE) has shut down America’s first major clean-coal project [ark | more2\ark2 | search]. The experimental FutureGen project in rural Illinois was to demonstrate carbon capture and storage [search]. Just a month after it started, the DOE has pulled out of the public/private partnership. The cancellation ensures dirty coal remains the rule [ark], and that any working and fully implemented carbon storage solution will come too late to address climate change.

Clearly the Bush administration and coal industry have been stringing us along with the myth of clean coal. The coal industry's propaganda leads us to believe that no mountains are razed to produce coal, and that its burning is safe, non-toxic and most certainly does not contain global warming causing carbon dioxide. This million dollar ad blitz fails to mention that carbon capture and burial does not exist, has not been tested, and development is proving expensive. Clean coal remains a pernicious myth.