Northeast States to Reduce Emissions

[jpak]

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/nat-gen/2005/aug/24/082407145.html

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) - Officials of nine Northeastern states have reached a preliminary agreement on an initiative to freeze power plant greenhouse gas emissions at current levels and reduce them by 10 percent by 2020, a newspaper reported Wednesday.

The New York Times cited a confidential draft proposal in its report.

The agreement, led by New York Gov. George Pataki, would be the first of its kind in the nation and comes after the Bush administration decided not to act and refused to join more than 150 other nations on the Kyoto anti-emissions treaty.

<snip>

The regional initiative would create a market-driven system to control carbon dioxide emissions from more than 600 electric generators in the nine states. Utilities that came in under their targets for emission reductions could sell their excess emissions capacity credits to other utilities.

<more>

[phantom power]

1. And what if none of them come in under their targets?

This what I hate about "cap and trade" schemes. Who enforces the "cap?" For that matter, who enforces the "trade?"

[castiron]

2. That's great: it still is not enough to

turn the massive global warming ship around, even if every state and every country did the same thing. I read that somewhere.

[dcfirefighter]

3. So fuck it, live for the now.

You read something somewhere that said that there is nothing we can do.

No point in posting here, I should be baking hash brownies and looking for loose women.

[phantom power]

4. By most accounts...

if the entire world magically cut CO2 emissions to zero tomorrow, it would take decades for the effects to wear off.

And, as somebody else pointed out, this process has now taken on a life of it's own. What we've set in motion won't stop, even if human emissions disappeared forever. Earth's systems are now into a positive feedback loop.

Whatever the new equilibrium climate turns out to be, I think we're now committed to it. We're all gonna learn the real meaning of "New World Order"

See you on the other side...
:-)

[Dogmudgeon]

5. The world isn't coming to an end -- only the interstadial epoch

If we're "just" heading into a resumption of the usual, glacial, "stadial" climate that has been the norm for the past 2 1/2 million years, as I think we are, then it's certainly not going to be the end of the world.

The problems we will have to deal with in our lifetimes (over the next 50 years or so) will mainly have to do with food production. The climate will become drier and farming areas will shift and shrink. In spite of the eventual return of the ice sheets, quick mass evacuation will probably not be necessary, since those ice sheets take over a thousand years to become established.

So, once again, we will be faced with a fundamentally simple dilemma: Do we intelligently solve our problems and improve our common lot, or do we blunder and stumble into an era of disaster and regress?

Any wagers?

--p!