Word: co2
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...most efficient and effective way to spur conservation is to raise the cost of fossil fuels. Current prices fail to reflect the very real environmental costs of pumping carbon dioxide into the air. The answer is a tax on CO2 emissions -- or a CO2 user fee, if that is a more palatable term. The fee need not raise a country's overall tax burden; it could be offset by reductions in income taxes or other levies...
Imposing a CO2 fee would not be as difficult as it sounds. It is easy to quantify how much CO2 comes from burning a gallon of gasoline, a ton of coal or a cubic yard of natural gas. Most countries already have gasoline taxes; similar fees, set according to the amount of CO2 produced, could be put on all fossil-fuel sources. At the same time, companies could be given credits against their CO2 taxes if they planted trees to take some of the CO2...
...user fee would have benefits beyond forcing a cutback in CO2 emissions. The fuels that generate carbon dioxide also generate other pollutants, like soot, along with nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide, the primary causes of acid rain. The CO2 tax would be a powerful incentive for consumers to switch from high-CO2 fuels, such as coal and oil, to power sources that produce less CO2, notably natural gas. When burned, methane generates only half as much CO2 as coal, for example, in producing the same amount of energy...
Ultimately, though, the world must move away from fossil fuels for most of its energy needs. Said Berrien Moore, director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, Oceans and Space at the University of New Hampshire: "Even if you cut emissions of CO2 in half, the atmospheric concentration will keep going up. You're still adding CO2 faster than you're withdrawing it, so the balance keeps rising...
...photovoltaic collectors providing cheap electricity that can be transmitted over long distances. Alternatively, the electricity could be used to produce hydrogen from water. That could open up all sorts of possibilities. Cars, for example, could be redesigned to run on hydrogen, and that would produce a dramatic reduction in CO2 emissions...