At this point, it is pretty clear to most of us that climate change is real, that it increasingly will threaten lives and property, and that it is going to take some real changes in society’s behavior to slow it down.
Given all that, it is really troubling how little progress we have made in the fight to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. It is troubling but it is not mystifying. The simple truth is that enormous amounts of money are made doing things that emit carbon dioxide and making enormous amounts of money pretty much trumps any other consideration.
One way to break out of this trap is to actually make money reducing carbon emissions. This is not as far fetched as it might sound. There are a growing number of companies whose aim is to convert carbon dioxide into useful chemicals. Carbon dioxide can be combined with things like salt, water and electricity to produce such things as baking soda, hydrochloric acid, bleach, polymer plastics, and even hydrocarbon fuels.
The primary vision for continuing to emit carbon but reducing global warming has been carbon capture and storage or CCS. The first part of that – capturing the emitted carbon – is an unavoidable part of any strategy. But if instead of storing the stuff – which is likely to be complicated and expensive – we can turn it into useful and profitable commodities, then we might have a strategy for combating climate change that would truly be a win-win.
The most effective way to get society to do the right thing is to make it profitable too.
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Web Links
How to Reduce Global Warming for Fun and Profit
Photo, posted January 4, 2010, courtesy of Mikael Miettinen via Flickr.
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Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.