Cap and tax

The previous discussion is missing the "reply to" Cap and trade will worsen the recession = economic down turn, not only in the USA but many other countries which depend on the USA to buy the stuff they export to the USA. There will be less investor money to build big wind turbines and install them. Vehicle makers will slow down their plans to produce CNG vehicles. The continuing bad ecconomy will reduce the carbon dioxide emissions more in 2009 than Cap and trade will reduce emissions in many years. USA may become a third world country, (in days) if Cap and trade passes.
If we are at the start of a new ice age, reducing carbon dioxide entering our atmosphere will hasten the crushing of Northern cities, as the mile tall ice cap moves South. Does any one know any good results likely to follow Cap and Trade? Neil

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Permalink Reply by Dee Dudas on June 29, 2009 at 7:53pm

I agree I think the Cap and Trade will harm everyone with higher heating, electricity, gasoline and everything
manufactured in the USA. Most people can not afford all of these items to increase in price and think of all the businesses we will lose and jobs. I urge everyone to call their Senators to vote against this Cap and Trade.
I think The Pickens Plan is great because it will have us using our own natural gas to fuel big semi trucks and use wind mills for energy. If we use our own fuel we can create jobs here in the USA and not raise taxes.
Dee

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Permalink Reply by Sandie Abel on June 30, 2009 at 6:35pm

The whole scheme of trying to cram all that carbon dioxide down into the earth, where it will of course stay forever, is stupid on the face of it. But good results could follow!

I have to admit it's an excellent way to line the pockets of the coal industry; it's a whole new field of endeavor for BS artists; and it will allow those who believe in the existence of the Tooth Fairy to believe in something else that's just as credible.

The idea of having the coal industry pay the government to pollute the atmosphere to their hearts' content is an interesting one. It's already been going on for years. For the past 40 years or so, coal fired electric plants have been able to pay a fine in lieu of complying with clean air standards. This was supposed to be a temporary measure. 40 years is an incredible amount of temporary, as Bryant Gumbel found out in a "Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel" episode a couple of years ago.

Gumbel was reporting on the high incidence of asthma in the Central Atlantic states, where most of the electricity is provided by coal plants. Many children living near these plants have asthma, and are unable to participate in sports due to the air pollution. Which is caused in great part by the coal industry's ability to buy its way out of the expense of installing scrubbers.

Gumbel interviewed a PR man for the industry. He asked the PR man about the impact of air pollution on people living near coal fired plants. With his pasted on smile beaming cheerfully, the man replied that the plant's customers were happy with their service and with the low cost of their electric bills.

Then Gumbel struck with a question out of left field. "It's been 40 years since the passage of the Clean Air Act. You've had 40 years to deal with the pollution your plants cause. How many more years will it be until you comply with the Act?"

The PR man's smile vanished. Groping for words, he finally managed to stammer out the truth: "Uh, well, we can't give you a *finite number of years*." (emphasis mine).

At last, some truth from a PR person! The coal industry will continue to pollute for an infinite number of years unless stopped. The only people who can put an end to the many problems caused by burning coal? The American people.

Even if carbon has nothing to do with climate change, coal-caused air pollution has a bad impact on our health and the health of other creatures who must breathe air to live.

"Clean Coal" has a good deal in common with "kosher pork", "dry water", and English-speaking earthworms. There's simply no there there. Even if St. Jude were to put all of his resources behind "clean coal", his chances of success in the current millennium would resemble those of a snowball's chance in hell. Folks, there just ain't no such thing as clean coal.

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Permalink Reply by Luane Todd on July 1, 2009 at 11:05am

Sandie,

Instead of trying to cram carbon down into holes...I am still trying to decide who will make the money from this incredibly expensive technique...why don't we take advantage of Nature's solution to the problem.
Interestingly, we can sequester carbon and improve water retention and create a quality food all at the same time. Now that is the kind of solution I can support.

From a 2008 interview with Timothy LaSalle, director of Rodale Institute...
"I realized that your training can be your impediment to growth, because it stops you from getting to solutions. You're stuck in the paradigm and you can't get out of it. The candlestick makers didn't invent the light bulb."

"Organic farming can also help us deal with another actor of global warming: droughts. We know that healthy, carbon-rich soil holds water: 1 pound of carbon holds 40 pounds of water. We know that we can put 1,000 pounds of carbon back into an acre each season; that means 40,000 pounds of water will be in that soil. In wet years it will permeate through the soil. The plants will do better"

"Synthetic fertilizer and oil-based pesticides release carbon dioxide into the air. But the organic approach, which is truly regenerative agriculture, sequesters carbon: It takes carbon out of the air and puts it back in the soil.

If we pulled these synthetics out and put in compost and cover crops and changed rangeland and valued old-growth forests ... we could pull so much carbon dioxide out of the air it would be phenomenal. Between improving forestry management, protecting our grasslands, and promoting organic agriculture, I'm not sure we couldn't mitigate climate change by sequestering so much carbon.

With regenerative farming, we're building in the soil mychorrhiza fungi, which creates a protein, an encasement, that has a 1,000-year half-life. So it sits down there in the soil and holds carbon for a long, long time.

When you pour fertilizer down there, you kill the fungi and it volatizes into the atmosphere into carbon dioxide. Agriculture as we now practice it is one of the biggest contributors to global warming, but it could be one of the biggest mitigators."

Why do you prefer the term "regenerative farming" to "organic farming"?

"I like to say "regenerative" because it gets at core principles: Some people can grow "organic," but do so without the composts and cover crops and without building the root systems that I'm talking about. It's profound farming: We're saying this is the way nature wants to work.

We're also talking about grassland management. Well-managed grasslands mean, for instance, letting large herds come through to trample the grasses, kick up the soil, and move on. This is the way the Earth existed long before we humans came around, and that's what we need to foster."

For the complete interview check the attached file..Farm Team, Rodale

The second file from Allan Savory is a worthwhile read if you wish to take the time.

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Permalink Reply by neil cox on October 23, 2009 at 5:55pm

Hi Luane: Compost can surely help our carbon emissions, but I don't think there is sufficient raw material to make more than a cubic mile of compost per year. Since Earth has about ten million square miles of tilled land, That makes a layer of compost 1/10,000,000 miles thick = 1/1894 feet thick = 158/1000 inches thick in one year = 1/6 of an inch = a long time to make rich composted soil. We may only have a year or two to show that solutions are close at hand. Compost can be perhaps 1% of the solution = every little bit helps. Neil