Word: carbons
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...There are some of us who believe that the problem of warming is as bad as the First and Second World Wars combined," Branson told TIME in a recent interview at the climate summit in Copenhagen. "It's that serious, and you know the key is carbon, [but] there's no war room coordinating the attack on carbon...
...Branson has taken it upon himself - unsurprisingly - to lead the charge against carbon. In 2010, he will officially launch the Carbon War Room, a corporate think tank of sorts, designed to incubate and spread the best ways to cut carbon in corporate sectors ranging from aviation to shipping to construction. It's a global-warming remedy by business for business, and given the paralysis in the international effort to curb climate change, it could be the right idea for the right time. "I think if the government can't deliver, it's up to industries to themselves," says Branson...
Branson's operation will start by addressing carbon emissions from a significant but little-known source that is not covered by any national or international regulations: global marine shipping. The massive container ships that ply the ocean lanes are the backbone of globalization, but they are also carbon hogs. Each year, about 100,000 ships contribute some 1.3 billion tons of CO2 to the atmosphere, about 3% of global carbon emissions. In addition, ships spew out huge amounts of traditional air pollutants, like nitrous oxides (NOx) and sulfur oxides (SOx), and emit black carbon soot, a leading contributor to melting...
...despite the sheer amount of carbon the shipping industry produces, its biggest emitters are relatively few. Bradford estimates that about 20,000 of the biggest and most polluting ships contribute about half the carbon emitted by the industry as a whole, so any solution to the emissions problem could be implemented much more easily than, say, changing the 800 million or so passenger cars in the world. "Ships could be retrofitted to be cleaner and more efficient quickly," says Bradford. (See the world's most polluted places...
...Amping up the sport of sailing is the point of Extreme 40 racing - and fortunately nobody has died yet. Collisions and capsizes come with the territory (when a sail the size of a tennis court fills with wind, a 1,300-kg carbon-fiber boat feels like it could flip over in a trice). What are described as "close-combat races" are concluded in minutes instead of days, and take place not on empty ocean stretches but on courses close to shore, where thousands of spectators can crowd onto grandstands. Top sailors have joined the circuit, including British double world...