Word: carbonations
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Farms vs. forests - that's the usual dynamic in tropical countries, where the growth of agriculture often comes at the expense of trees. In nations like Brazil and Indonesia - where deforestation is behind the vast majority of carbon emissions - rain forests are not just cut down for logging but also burned to make room for new farms and pastureland. As more people need more food - and biofuels as well - there's a risk that we could see many of our remaining virgin rain forests wiped out completely...
...burning is a result of what's known as agroforestry, an increasingly popular practice, which according to Dennis Garrity, the Nairobi-based director-general of the WAC, could be a "real compensation for deforestation." Farmers are planting trees on their property not because they want to suck up carbon dioxide - at least, not yet. Rather, trees can add value to agriculture. Fruit and nut trees provide additional income or even subsistence food, especially in times of drought, since trees are generally hardier than crops. Trees also provide salable commodities like coffee, rubber, gum and timber. And even if a stand...
...efficiency rules for U.S. refrigerators alone save more energy than the controversial Three Gorges Dam in China's Hubei province will produce. He's especially obsessed with promoting white roofs and light-colored pavement, constantly citing Rosenfeld's calculation that having them throughout the U.S. would save as much carbon as taking every car off the roads for 11 years...
...clear message Chu took home from China was that its leaders are dead serious about climate change and clean energy. They won't accept an emissions cap before we do - understandably, since our per capita emissions are still four times higher - but they're preparing for a carbon-constrained economy. They already have cars that are more fuel-efficient than ours, and they're developing more-advanced transmission lines. They're still building a new coal-fired plant almost every week, but two years ago, they were building two of them every week. They're making a huge push into...
...fact, GOP leaders have said that global warming is a hoax, that fears about carbon are "almost comical," that the earth is actually cooling. When I asked Chu about the earth-is-cooling argument, he rolled his eyes and whipped out a chart showing that the 10 hottest years on record have all been in the past 12 years - and that 1998 was the hottest. He mocked the skeptics who focus on that post-1998 blip while ignoring a century-long trend of rising temperatures: "See? It's gone down! The earth must be cooling!" But then he got serious...