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Going green
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HOW $700 BILLION WOULD FIX THE PLANET
It was inevitable that there would be an agreement between the Bush administration and Congress on the $700 billion bail out for Wall Street to soothe nervous markets and fire up the US financial system. The deal was rushed through because no one wanted excessive toxic mortgages to precipitate a repeat of the Great Depression of the 1930s or a collapse of the world economy. But what if this same amount of money (slightly more than the current $650 billion cost of the Iraq war) were used to finance a package of solutions to reverse global warming thereby averting the threat of severe climate change while switching the world off dirty fossil fuels and onto an abundance of clean renewable energy. While there has been a lot of reckless lending in the USA over recent decades very little creative financing has gone into fixing climate change, even though most climate scientists agree that the world has a window of only seven to 10 years to reduce emissions or temperatures on the planet will most likely soar by more than 4C. Climate summits over the past four years have been steering governments into agreeing on a world climate treaty that will be finalized one way or another in Copenhagen next year. But the greed of the financial institutions - that allowed homeowners to inflate the value of their houses to cover mortgage loans they couldn't afford to pay back - has taken the global focus off climate change and into the fear syndrome of financial survival. At a time when many Americans couldn't afford to take out the loans offered to them, a plethora of happy bankers followed the lead to buy up the high-yielding financial instruments linked to the inflated values of the bad loans that sent Wall Street reeling. Consequently, the big investment banks with global tentacles got themselves stuck with loads of sticky toxic financial waste that couldn't be dumped or lifted from their books. The financial state of the union remains a toxic mess. Just how toxic isn't reflected by the official National Debt of $9,193,222,137,000.00 that, according to the Treasury Department's number crunchers, is growing b y $1 million every minute. Underneath this figure is another set of red digits that show the real national debt figure to be six times higher at $55,146,513,890,000.00. This higher debt accumulation includes liabilities such as future payment obligations for Social Security benefits and Medicare recipients, as well as the government workers' and military pensions. $55 trillion is a whopping debt and, understandably, no one in the Congressional Research Service wants to talk about the hidden obligations that can't be removed or offset from the books. There are, however, some striking similarities between financial recklessness and climate neglect. While the build-up of dangerous emissions in Earth's fragile atmosphere continues, caused by the excessive burning of fossil fuels, much of the developed world has conveniently ignored the collision course set with the accumulations of toxic debt. In the world money markets the trigger point has been a lowering of the U.S. dollar currency in parallel with sharp fluctuations in crude oil prices. These are the prime symptoms of a toxic financial system that needs treatment to its whole structure and not just a quick fix for the ailing toxic mortgages part. Throwing $700 billion at the sub-prime mortgage paper is more likely to be the beginning and not the end to the problem. But if this same amount of money were to be diverted into a package of solutions to avoid severe climate implosions - and overcoming the looming energy crisis by providing the fast fix of clean renewable power - then the threat of climate change would not only be removed but the entire world could move into a new era of low cost clean energy. Here's seven ways $700 billion could be spent to bring about a transition - if not a revolution -that would put an end to humanity's addiction for dirty fossil fuels and fix the problem of toxic emissions. WORLD CARBON EMISSIONS AUTHORITY Fledging cap and trade carbon systems are being stymied by international competition and irrational disagreements over what structural model can best buy, sell and auction emissions permits. What world governments and all businesses need immediately is a carbon trading authority that has the power to set one world price for carbon with one set of rules and regulations to cap and trade emissions to reduce CO2 emission by a minimum of 20 percent by 2020 as well, as kick starting competitive enterprise to facilitate clean energy innovations and applications. $100 billion would be enough to set up the World Carbon Emissions Authority that would within five years be self-funding, transparent and efficient. ELECTRIC VEHICLES TRANSITION COMMISSION The world's main manufacturers of combustion engines for motorbikes, cars, trucks and ships are stalling the world's switch to plug-in electric engines in order rto protect their billion dollar profits. But the time has come for the auto industry to take the leap forward and embrace the plug-in electric engine as the clean way forward for all transportation. Back in the 1980's electric cars proved that plug-in engines are quick, reliable and affordable. The establishment of the Electric Vehicles Transition Commission with a $50 billion budget to bring battery technology into line with prototype electric powered engines - ready for rapid deployment transition into the mainstream of transportation - would bring about a phase out of all fossil fuel combustion engines by 2020. BILLIONS OF TREES FOR RAIN FORESTS Deforestation of the Earth's forests is the main reason why CO2 levels in he atmosphere have risen to near the danger zone of 400 parts per million. The allocation of $150 billion to grow billions of trees in the depleted rain forests would sink millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide into the earth's soil and provide a lot more oxygen for the planet that is being effected by severe carbon emissions pollution. CRACKDOWN ON WORLDWIDE TOXIC WASTE CRIME Human toxic waste is not just pollution it's criminal activity that's destroying Earth's bounty and natural splendor. The Pacific Ocean has vast areas of plastic soup while on land huge open fills are stacked with raw garbage that leaks poisonous liquids into farmlands growing essential food crops. Tonnes of toxic chemicals and other hazardous wastes are being transported illegally every day from developed to the underdeveloped Asian and African countries. Dealing in toxic wastes should be declared a crime against humanity, and $100 billion dollars would adequately set up the Criminal Investigation Bureau of Toxic Wastes to track down and prosecute those dealing in illegal waste shipments and storage. THE RENEWABLE ENERGY REVOLUTION Climate science insists that the world must engage renewable energy and replace 50% of fossil fuel power in order to curb the advent of severe climate change. The allocation of $100 billion to establishing new grids linked to renewable power would see the final demise of fossil fuel power plants. New technologies for solar, wind and wave power have already been proven reliable and viable and can supply cleanly 50% of the world's electricity requirements by 2020. LET THERE BE CLEAN COAL OR NO COAL For four years the coal industry has been claiming the merits of clean coal technology. But despite frequent reports of new initiatives to prove the commercial viability of extracting carbon emissions from coal and burying the toxic gas underground or in the deep sea, no government or environmental group has been shown any proof that clean coal is real. There is only one way to sort out the truth from fiction concerning clean coal and that's to set up an independent investigative commission. $100 billion would be sufficient to thoroughly test the technology that purportedly can extract and store carbon emissions from coal-fired electricity generation. Enough enough cash would be left over to broker a deal to phase out coal production if the commission's investigation showed that coal emissions can't be satisfactorily extracted and stored safely underground. ADVANCED TECH TO MONITOR CLIMATE CHANGE Global skeptics are right when they say that climate scientists base their forecasts on imprecise computer models and temperature recordings that aren't always reliable. $100 billon dollars would be sufficient to set up the Advanced Satellite Sensor Agency for Climate Change that would eliminate all the guess work about climate forecasting and finally put an end to skeptics' obsessions that require total proof that human-made emissions are effecting daily weather and seasonal climate. A satellite network with advanced sensor technology with super computer monitors would provide science with all the necessary data to show exactly how much effect human-made greenhouse gas emissions are having on the planet's environment. The State of the Planet Viedo http://www.youtube.com/user/earthcharter For latest daily news on climate change and planet opinion http://www.dailyplanetmedia.com Read all about the Earth Charter for a sustainable planet http://www.earthcharterfoundation.com
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