We hear so much about the problems and about the heroes doing heroic things.  We hear about goals and legislation.  But we hear so little about believable solutions that will actually save our civilization.  

How are we going to heat whole cities, power our industries, light our homes, drive our cars, and so on without CO2 pollution?

Even if all coal power plants, new and old, used carbon sequestration we would only affect 30% of the problem.  How are we to reduce global fossil fuels combustion by 80%?  Where is the leadership on this problem?

sunflower:
You ask how we are going to continue our civilization without CO2 pollution.  The answer is that we, each and every one of us, needs to take responsibility for our part and act responsibly with what we can do.

First step: conserve.  For less than $250. you can change your lightbulbs (and turn them off) to CFLs and reduce your personal carbon footprint by 1.5 lbs. of CO2 per kWh of electricity saved.  Then look critically at the rest of your electrical usage: your coffepot, dishwasher, washer, dryer, refrigerator, water heater (basically everything) and turn it off, use it less, or replace it with a more efficient model.

When your kWh draw is as low as you can get it, then we can talk about generating your own electricity from the sun to cover your usage, or meeting your heating needs with solar.  When you take the last step, you've done YOUR part and it'll be up to the rest of us to do ours.

I live in a passive solar plus firewood home constructed from recycled materials, carpool in a Prius, grow my own food, eat organic, don't fly, use swirl lights, preserve forests, develop low-carbon energy technology, and I advocate hope whenever possible.  But this is not about me.  I'm going to die.  The survival of civilization is the issue.

My neighbors around the world are too busy struggling for existence to follow a volunteer carbon mitigated lifestyle.  And pinning our hopes on such human behavior is not believable.  

The question for John and Teresa Heinz Kerry and their readership is:  Where is the leadership for believable solutions to global warming?

I agree that the average person does not have the resources to build a Green home or replace their present vehicle and we all just can't wait until Walmart and Costco and the rest bring the prices down. There are numerous small things that can be done.
My husband doesn't know how to turn off a light. If you have someone like that in your house, take the time to do it for them!
Stop using synthetic fertilizers on your lawn, the organic ones are much cheaper now plus you will improve your soil so much that it will not need all that fertilizer. It will also require a lot less water!
Instead of spraying pesticides, try some beneficial insects and some home rememdies. You wouldn't believe what is in your kitchen that you can use without harming the environment. There is one solution of baking soda and water that does a real job on moss. Vinegar with lemon or orange oil and some dish detergent sprayed on weed leaves will kill them. Corn Gluten which can be eaten is a great pre-emergence. These things are so safe, your kids and pets can walk on them.
Instead of putting in a ton of annual flowers that need lots of water, put in native perennial plants.
Make a compost pile. A great deal of your kitchen garbage can go in it along with leaves,etc. from your yard. After it turns to 'black gold'...put in on your yard or flower beds.
If you have a depression in your yard, don't fill it in...turn it into a rain garden.
There are many things you can do aside from recycle & re-use...don't wait to build a 'green house'or have the money to switch over to solar or other large ticket item...every little thing helps...start small and you can start now!

You've got to be kidding.   The hieress of a billionaire food manufacturer's fortune?

You have the nerve to call these people "green"?

I'm surprised you didn't get any mayonaisse banner ads from it, Grist.

Hmm. For someone whose sigline implies that they know something about the value of intelligent text memes, jbailo, that is a profoundly thick-headed and meaningless comment.

Yes, it is true that Teresa Heinz Kerry's late husband, Senator Henry Heinz (R-PA), was an heir to the Heinz family of, among many other things, ketchup-making fame.

That particular biographical factoid is, though, completely and totally irrelevant to anything discussed in this article or in the book on environmental activism that she co-wrote with her current husband, Senator John Kerry (D-MA).

Teresa Heinz Kerry has been an ardent environmentalist activist for her entire public life (as, for that matter, has Senator Kerry). She has a great deal of well-established credibility on this subject.

Your off-topic (and, by the way, misspelled) reference to her being a Heinz family inheritor -- as though that had some meaning in this context outside of a self-serving effort to slip in a bit of gratuitous snarkasm on your part -- clearly indicates that you, however, do not.

Your rebuttal is a fallacy.  Even if the Kerry's were environmental terrorists, it doesn't weaken their argument in the least on any rational level.

It is wonderful that Senator Kerry and his wife Teresa are putting such a focus on environment right now. However, I cannot stop thinking that what they are doing is just not enough. Unfortunately, when John Kerry ran for President he did not put enough of a focus on the environment and on the need for sustainable development to make it a primary issue in the campaign; and personally I believe it cost him the Presidency. And it will probably cost our country far more than that over the long run too.

But it is not too late for the two of them to help us turn our country around. For the past five years I have worked on the development of a US Campaign for Leadership on Sustainability, based on the idea that we all need to join together to figure out how we can make a rapid transition to a fully sustainable future before it is too late. I went to Boston for the Democratic Convention to try to get Senator Kerry to embrace this effort, but with no success.

During the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002 all of the UN Member States agreed not only to create National Strategies for Sustainability but also to begin to implement them by 2005. The Clinton Administration took some first steps in this direction in response to the 1992 Rio Earth Summit with the work of the President's Council on Sustainable Development, but nothing has been done on this since. I thus spoke with John and Teresa's son Andre in Boston and asked him to talk with them about this commitment and make it a part of Senator Kerry's Presidential Campaign.

Unfortunately, it never happened; but it may not be too late now. If Senator Kerry would introduce a bill in Congress that would require the US government to create and implement a National Strategy for Sustainability and to fulfill the Bush Administration's global commitment, then we may be able to make this an issue in the Presidential Campaign and be able to get a good number of the candidates to agree to support and work on it. Certainly John Kerry has the stature and visibility to put this matter on the table now; and to be able to convince the people, as well as the politicians, that it is something that we just have to deal with.

If anyone is willing to help me work on this, you contact me, Rob Wheeler, at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) //= 0; i=i-1){ if (l[i].substring(0, 1) == ' ') output += "&#"+unescape(l[i].substring(1))+";"; else output += unescape(l[i]); } document.getElementById('eeEncEmail_E0lITVG1qV').innerHTML = output; //]]> and (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) //= 0; i=i-1){ if (l[i].substring(0, 1) == ' ') output += "&#"+unescape(l[i].substring(1))+";"; else output += unescape(l[i]); } document.getElementById('eeEncEmail_unkPMEAHbt').innerHTML = output; //]]> or call 717-264-5036.

Thank you,

Rob Wheeler
US Citizens Network for Sustainable Development
World Movement for Global Democracy

Why is it that there are two "New" inventions that no one is willing to put into the forefront as something that will work.  One is generating your own electricity with propane, oil,soybean or corn oil, etc and producing water as the emission - which can be consumed.  Two is the water engine.  The hydro engine that runs on water by burning the hydrogen and emitting water.  If there was enough grass roots behind these two inventions, we would cut green house gasses tremendiously.  Why are we letting these wonderful things fade into the background.  We as the Grass roots should be demanding such innovations.

RedClay, "the hydro engine that runs on water"?  C'mon now, get a grip on reality.  If you believe in that, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

Most Grist readers are savvy enough to understand that hydrogen, as in H2 molecules, as in the potential basis of a 'hydrogen economy', has promising potential as an energy storage and transport medium, but it is not some miraculous energy resource.  

Anyone who paid attention in high school chemistry knows it requires a large amount of energy to liberate hydrogen gas from water.  So where will your hydro engine get that energy to produce H2?  From hydrogen gas?  Congratulations, it sounds like you've just invented a perpetual motion machine.

I personally think hydrogen does have great potential down the line as a means of storing energy generated in one location (e.g. wind farms) and transporting it elsewhere where it can be used for other applications (e.g. hydrogen fuel cell vehicles).  Which, as your post suggests, would generate only water as a 'pollutant'.  However, ultimately, such a vehicle's energy would come from the wind.

If she has any influence in the Heinz company, and truly cares about the environment, the best thing she can do is remove the high fructose corn syrup from the Heinz Ketchup. This pesticide is as bad for you as mecury or any of the others, yet it's included on the list of ingredients in Heinz Ketchup.

If you need proof, look at the back of the bottle and read the ingredients for yourself. If she is serious, she will look into this along with Mr. Kerry.

If she has no influence over what is put in the Heinz products, she should say so in her next interview. I've boycotted all products with high fructose corn syrup in them. High fructose corn syrup raises health care expenses for our nation, and is the main cause behind the obesity problems.

It makes no sense, to worry about pesticides in fisheries, if we don't even have clean food and water. If Teresa Heinz Kerry is serious, she should be the person to address this issue or at least take a leadership position and tell us what we can do.

Heinz Organic Ketchup does exist, so this is not an attack on the Heinz company. However, Heinz is not a green company. Any company which sells products with any pesticides in it, cannot be considered a green company.

Actually there are engines which run on air, there are engines which run on water, there are engines which run on electricity, there are engines which run on human waste. We could create a urine powered engine if we wanted to.

It's not that the technology does not exist, it's more that the industry behind the technology does not exist, and the organization does not exist.

If you are going to create new industries, new economic eco-systems, you need a 10 year plan, and you need to meet at summits, and discuss that 10 year plan, then execute the 10 year plan locally.

Each technology connects to each other like a large puzzle in an eco-system, and until someone figures how it all connects together and creates a plan it's going to be difficult to connect it all.

Then after it's all connected, stragetically, and the eco-system is defined, you still have to finance it, so it's going to take billions of finance dollars to get the ball rolling. Finally once the ball is rolling, then consumer demand will pick up.

I think solar is the easiest place to start, and I think all houses should be built with solar panels built it. This would mean architects and home builders, people who design and build homes, have to actually start building with eco-friendly designs in the first place. I'm still seeing houses built with designs that were created 100 years ago. The houses are not modern enough for our century, and this is why it's difficult to solve the climate change problem.

When you buy a new house, it should have all of this stuff built in by default, just like every house has a bathroom, toilet, shower, all of that is expected. Each house should also have solar energy panels and be designed to blend in with the land itself.

The cheap urban designs, are part of the reasons why we have ghettos in the first place. If we stop designing ghettos, we won't have them. This means we have to design communities again, and focus on efficiency.