Word: fossils
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Tree planting will have negligible impact, however, if people continue to pump CO2 into the atmosphere at current rates. While wood and fossil-fuel burning will never be eliminated, they can be cut down significantly. An immediate way to do so is through conservation. When oil prices soared in the 1970s, industries responded by becoming much more energy efficient. But the plunge in the price of oil from $36 per bbl. in 1982 to less than $12 per bbl. this fall has cooled the enthusiasm for conservation. Governments must rekindle that interest and boost energy saving by setting or raising...
...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...
...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...
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...
...problem that can, and must, be solved. Third World countries do not have the technical or managerial expertise to deal with the complexities of nuclear power. They will be forced, at least for the foreseeable future, to rely primarily on environmentally harmful fossil fuels. That is going to put pressure on the developed world to produce increasing amounts of cheaper, safer nuclear power...