Want to cut global warming? Dig into your pockets

NEW YORK: Global warming is by nature a big-enough problem to create the kind of necessity that could be mother, father and midwife to invention.

And plenty of big ideas are out there to address it, some that may even lead to substantial enterprises, much as our military needs have.

But ideas being backed in the United States are things like biofuels and carbon-emissions trading. These are good approaches, but they may not hold much potential for actually staving off climate change.

James Lovelock, a British scientist whose 2006 book, “The Revenge of Gaia,” argued that most of humankind is doomed, does not think much of renewable energy. At a panel on climate change at the University of Cambridge this summer, Lovelock was asked what would be the most effective action people could take.
Because humans and their pets and livestock produce about a quarter of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, he said, “just stop breathing.”

Now there’s a fine idea.

But even a gloom-and-doomer like Lovelock thinks all is not lost.

He supports replacing coal-powered utilities with nuclear power, but he also extols largely untested processes, like shooting particles into the atmosphere to deflect the sun’s rays. He also endorses sucking carbon dioxide out of the air and burying it, a process known as carbon sequestration.

These are big ideas, and all of them aim directly at global warming, but they are too costly for individual inventors or even companies to pursue.

International Herald Tribune