Word: fossilizing
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...prosperity where it does, without wrecking the climate? Continuing with energy “business as usual” will not do. A scenario in the middle of the range considered by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in terms of economic growth, energy-efficiency improvements, and reduction in fossil-fuel dependence during the 21st century ends up with nearly three times the pre-industrial atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration by 2100—a trajectory that seems likely to have intolerable impacts on global climate long before then. Can that be avoided without similarly intolerable impacts on the world?...
...must try to develop and deploy advanced fossil-fuel technologies that can capture carbon dioxide and sequester it away from the atmosphere at affordable cost, thus allowing continued large-scale use of fossil-fuels in a greenhouse-gas-constrained world...
Environmental problems, unfortunately, are no longer local. They have expanded now to global scale. The end product of combustion of fossil fuels is carbon dioxide, which has the potential to alter global climate with implications for temperature, rainfall, and even for sea level. Warmer temperatures and uncertain supplies of precipitation can exacerbate the problems for those least equipped to cope. We have a moral imperative, I believe, to anticipate these problems and to do what we can to mitigate their consequences...
Today, wind power is economically competitive with fossil sources of electricity even without subsidies. To realize its potential, we need to upgrade and expand the national electric grid so that power generated in a farmer’s field in North Dakota can be made available to consumers far removed. Excess power could be used to generate hydrogen which could substitute at least partially for oil in the transportation sector. And we should think seriously about a new generation of nuclear power plants with appropriate planning to deal with issues of safety and waste...
...need leadership from the U.S. to mobilize the intellectual and entrepreneurial skills required to effect the transition from an unsustainable fossil fuel world to an environmentally friendlier alternative. It is a cruel hoax to pretend that global warming is not a problem, that Alaskan oil can reduce our dependence on the Middle East, that coal can be cleaned to the point where its environmental footprint is negligible, and that we can be isolated from the problems of poverty and environmental destruction in Africa. We live in an interconnected world. It is our god-given responsibility to ensure that its proper...