Word: carbonates
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Another way to get a green cleaning is to use liquid carbon dioxide. CO2 is nontoxic - thankfully, since so much of it is in the atmosphere. In CO2 cleaning, clothes are put in a vacuum chamber with gaseous and liquid CO2, which dissolves dirt and oil. The drawback here is price: a new CO2 dry-cleaning machine can run more than $100,000. Cleaning green "does take longer and cost more," admits Kistner. How much more? Green Apple charges at least $6.16 to clean a shirt using wet methods or CO2. (See TIME's special report on the climate change...
...leadership, they are all engineers," says Julian Wong, an analyst with the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. "They look at how the U.S. has grown by being a technological leader. China wants to do the same. They've seen the low-carbon sector...
...much less burning of biomass and any diesel combustion tends to be much cleaner, as the clearing skies over major U.S. cities demonstrate.) Though India is responsible for less than 3% of global greenhouse-gas emissions, according to Ramanathan it is responsible for about 6% of global black-carbon emissions, give or take a significant margin of error. India and other developing countries rightly argue that rich nations are responsible for the majority of carbon already in the atmosphere, and should therefore take the lead on cutting emissions, but if black carbon is definitively proven to play a large role...
...science is evolving - it's so new that black carbon wasn't even listed as a warming agent in the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - but it cannot be ignored. Black carbon is already having an impact on the ice atop the Himalayas, the massive glaciers that feed the major rivers of Asia when they melt each spring. Thanks to global warming, these glaciers are receding, threatening the long-term water supplies for the region. Ramanathan, Wilcox and an Indian glaciologist Syed Iqbal Hasnain are working to figure out the impact of black carbon...
...good news is that while taking CO2 out of our energy cycle has proven very difficult - especially in poorer developing nations - black-carbon emissions should be easier to curb. Reducing deforestation will help - the burning of tropical rain forests is a big contributor to the black-carbon load. Next, diesel filters in cars can be upgraded, and biomass-burning stoves can be exchanged for technology that uses solar power or natural gas. These changes will cost money, but they should be cheaper than decarbonization. And cutting back on black carbon will also pay immediate health dividends, with less air pollution...