Wednesday, April 06, 2005
More on energy
In this article from Foreign Affairs, the author tells us that basically there's no way with any current technology or any predictable technologies to actually reduce greenhouse emissions. It's a rather bleak outlook in that regard, but he makes a solid enough case. He's focusing mainly on energy production and ignores the role of personal vehicles, but he's speaking globally so it's not as big an issue. Anyway, he brings up a process whereby we basically take all the carbon dioxide a power plant produces and stick it back in the ground where it came from. It's an interesting proposal, and certainly it's one way to deal with the problem.
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3 comments:
I think the author's agenda is to demonstrate the necessity of what he proposes, not to blame anyone for causing that necessity. Besides which, either we're all to blame or our ancestors who failed to take any preventative measures are.
I think it's important to realize that although no single action is going to solve the problem both of energy usage and pollution, de-coupling cars from gasoline is a major way of decreasing both. This author has pointed out how we might keep up energy production without ruining the atmosphere and use less gasoline at the same time, by using electricity for electric vehicles. I think adopting both measures would go a long way towards solving the immediate problem, and give us time to solve it permanently.
It's a good "realistic" take on the current energy situation. I think people on the left and environmentalists can be accused of being somewhat too dreamy-eyed, when they act like all we need to do are replace all gasoline cars with electric cars, and start using only renewable sources and suddenly our issues are solved. But the author is a pragmatist; it may be difficult, but it's something that needs to be done, and the hardships are all the more reason to start now before it really is too late.
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