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Re: fHuman vs. natural influences on the environment



All locked up and nowhere to go <cage@critech.com> wrote:
>charliew@hal-pc.org (charliew) wrote:
>>...  The 
>>other group seems to be of the opinion that zero emissions, 
>>zero risk, zero tolerance, etc., is the goal that we should 
>>be setting for ourselves. 
>
>Then there is a third camp, to which I belong.  This camp looks at
>the increasingly firm evidence of global effects, the huge demand
>for energy and the consequent emission of formerly-fossil carbon
>into the atmosphere at still-rising rates, and advocates "go slow".
>If it should turn out to be necessary to freeze atmospheric CO2
>concentrations at anything close to current levels to avoid
>unacceptable consequences, we have no means of doing this without
>enormous pain and disruption.

I guess I am in a third camp too, or perhaps we should call it a fourth 
camp, because it's different from the one you describe.  I'm looking at 
the same stuff you are, but my conclusion is that we should begin 
immediately to implement modest policies to reduce greenhouse gas 
emissions.  I've done some back of the envelope numbers that indicate 
that if we were to establish a national goal of obtaining 10% of our 
electricity from wind by 20 years from now and established a program of 
subsidies to accomplish same, the net bill would be on the order of 
$5/household/year.  

This is a far more ambitious program than any national government has 
proposed anywhere in the world, but the cost is still beans.  I still 
don't think we are even thinking in the right order of magnitude yet with 
respect to possible solutions.  I think we are still befuddled by what I 
guess I would call, for lack of a better phrase, "economic 
extremism"--the notion that there must be overwhelming justification for 
any policy that would inflict the slightest cost on any identifiable 
group.  Funny how this does not apply with respect to environmental
costs.

Tom Gray
Director of Communications
American Wind Energy Association

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-----------------------------------------------------------------
Tom Gray <tomgray@econet.org>




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