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The solution to Climate Change is simple; Reduce CO2 levels
to a sustainable and manageable level. We need to reduce current
carbon dioxide emissions by about 60% globally to prevent the
CO2 levels rising and further. This however is not an easy task,
CO2 'production' is a product of all our human activity worldwide,
we are committed and reliant on a carbon burning economy to
maintain our current way of life, economy and human 'progress'.
The Kyoto accord is the first global legislation that attempts
to effect and stabilise global CO2 emissions, Change is a
global responsibility and there are many ways in which we
can act individually, industrially, economically and governmentally
to achieve a common objective of sustainable existence in
balance with the planet without threat to both our way of
life and that of the Earth as we know it.
The chart in Figure 1 shows the global distribution of CO2
emissions in terms of three major indices: emissions per capita
[Height of each block]; and total emissions (product of population
and emissions per capita = area of block). Per capita emissions
in the industrial countries are currently as much as ten times
the average in developing countries, particularly Africa and
the Indian subcontinent.
Source: The Carbon Trust with data from the USA Energy Information
Administration.
| One long distant international air flight produces
nearly one ton of CO2 per passenger. Each
person in the UK on average produces 9800 tons of CO2
per year.
Each person in the USA on average produces
18000 tons of CO2 per year.
One average car travelling 10000 miles per
year produces 3 tons of CO2 |
"Were society to make reducing carbon dioxide emissions
a priority - as I think it should to reduce the risks of environmental
havoc in the future - we need to pursue several strategies
at once. We would need to concentrate on using energy more
efficiently and on substituting noncarbon renewable or nuclear
energy sources for fossil fuel (coal, oil and natural gas
- the primary sources of manmade atmospheric carbon dioxide).
And we would need to employ a method that is receiving increasing
attention: capturing carbon dioxide and storing, or sequestrating
it underground rather than releasing it into the atmosphere.
Nothing says that CO2 must be emitted into the air. The atmosphere
has been our prime waste repository, because discharging exhaust
up through smokestacks, tail pipes and chimneys is the simplest
and least [immediately] costly think to do. The good news
is that the technology for capture already exists and that
the obstacles hindering implication seem to be surmountable.
A new large (1000 mega watt generating) coal fired power
station produces six million tons of CO2 annually. The world's
total output (roughly equivalent to the production of 1000
large planets - 6,000,000,000 tons of CO2 per year) could
double over the next few decades as the USA, China, India
and many other countries construct new power- generating stations.
The strategy that combines the capture of carbon dioxide emissions
from coal power plants and their subsequent injection into
geologic formations for long term storage could contribute
significantly to slowing the rise of the atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Fortunately, opportunities for affordable storage and capture
efforts are plentiful. The owner of a new coal power plant
would face a 50% rise in the cost of power the coal plants
put on the grid, about 2 cents per kilowatt-hour on top of
a base cost of around 4 cents per kWh. The home owner or consumer
buying only coal-based electricity, who now pays an average
of about 10 cents per kWh, would experience one-fifth higher
electricity costs."
Scientific America, July 2005 'The Carbon Trap' Robert H Socolow. |
