Another day, another report, another call for immediate action

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Posted on February 28, 2007
Filed Under Global warming/Climate change, Deep ecology, Greenhouse gas emissions, Ecological hope, Consumer culture, Fossil fuel dependency, Environmental disasters, Earth spirituality, Renewable fuels

Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:

Well, you can’t say the world isn’t studying global warming to death — let’s hope that isn’t prophetic. So another group of scientists convened by the United Nations has called for swift and immediate action to curb the carbon emissions that are causing global warming. The group of 18 scientists from 11 countries were able to do what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was not allowed to do — make policy recommendations.

The study was conducted under the sponsorship of the United Nations Foundation and Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society.

You can access the summary and report here.

Since they mention one of the pet issues of this site, we will highlight this point: they call for an immediate ban on the construction of coal-fired power plants unless they are equipped to capture and store carbon dioxide, without danger of later release into the atmosphere.

You know, coal just ain’t looking too good in this new world we have entered.

So this is what we need now from our lawmakers, engineers, policy wonks, and the rest —


a national plan to wean ourselves from coal as the major source of electricity (in the same way that we must wean ourselves from oil as the main source for our transport).


This is going to take some real effort, and it needs to begin now — with laws to ban the construction of new coal-fired plants not designed with this capture-and-sequester technology, with plans for the transition away from coal with special attention to the needs of coal-miners and poor communities in coal country, with massive infusions of funds into the development and construction of new energy sources, wind, solar, geothermal (a true jobs generation program), and a highly visible national campaign for energy efficiency led by political, cultural, educational, religious, and other leaders.

We need to find funds (one reason we must end this war in Iraq now!) to subsidize solar panels for homes and wind turbines of various scales in local communities, as well as wind farms. We need to set a year, very soon, when incandescent lightbulbs are banned, and when all appliances must have the latest energy efficient technology. And we should all be relentlessly encouraged to reduce our electricity consumption in every aspect of our energy wasteful lives.

That would foster some real ecological hope, don’t you think?


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