>> # "First, there should be a moratorium on building any more coal-fired power plants until we have the technology to capture and sequester the CO2." >>>

this would be a FATAL, irreversible mistake......

I am pro-future of LIFE... I advocate completely clean energy
BUT NOT NOW !!!!!!

You know not what your wishes will bring...

Grey Falcon writes:
<<
Well there is an option C for coal fired power plants.

Switch to burning bio-charcoal.

Would mean almost certainly that other renewable technologies would be able to outcompete it on a raw cost basis ;D
>>

Look, Grey Falcon, you have seriously contributed some good, thoughtful, well-thought-out stuff.

Clearly, you are a very intelligent scientist and engineer, and you have a great deal to offer.

Hopefully, you will learn before long to accommodate the rest of us, Ms. Raptor, into the way your mind soars.

Meanwhile, FYI, you lose me.  My loss, I know. : (

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

Any aficionado of dog imagery will appreciate the following recent exchange:
<<
"It is cynical to declare that the war is lost because you believe it gives you political advantage," Cheney said.

Reid, D-Nev., dismissed Cheney's comments. "I'm not going to get into a name-calling match with the administration's chief attack dog," he told reporters.
>>

"Cynical," of course, means, "I am as a dog [kyon,  genitive kynos)and no better than a dog, and I believe that no one else is any better than any groveling, miserable, hungry, opportunistic dog."

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

Greyflcn:
<emAll</em> charcoal is bio-charcoal

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

All charcoal is bio-charcoal

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

Don't know if they'll print it; it's probably too long.  So what the hell.  Here it is.

First up, great job. I hope it's the beginning of a new engagement, by The Nation, with the "climate issue."

I only have one criticism, and it's mostly by way of noting an omission. It would have been good to have one more article, focused on the battles raging within and around the international climate negotiations themselves, as we gear up for the expiration of the Kyoto Protocol (2012) and the shaping of the "post Kyoto" regime. This battle, rarely foregrounded by the US movement, has to be understood if climate politics as a whole is to be intelligible, or to understand the significance and limits of our own national responses. This is, moreover, true for that very interesting reason that the international climate policy impasse is, fundamentally, an impasse between the rich and the poor worlds.

Mark Hertsgaard got closest to this territory with his talk about "climate change reparations" and his discussion of the all important matter of responsibility. But he only began to follow the thread. Yes, it's true that climate change will be a humanitarian catastrophe, and that the rich world will be largely responsible for the poor world's adaptation, to the extent that such adaptation is even possible. But the rich world will, by any reasonable calculus, also be responsible for most of the necessary mitigation, and not just within its own territories. This for the bone-crushingly obvious reason that the global carbon budget is just about exhausted, and that the "development" it purchased is, by and large, ours to enjoy.

Within the negotiations, with their unenviable mandate to contrive a "global burden sharing" scheme that might actually work, the logic of international obligation is so well known as to be axiomatic. The pragmatists, of course, do their best to ignore it, but it's really not possible. When we signed and ratified the United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change, we accepted an obligation to prevent "dangerous climate change," one in which the United States, like all nations, would act "on the basis of equity and in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities." That last word, "capabilities," is of course code for wealth, and everyone knows it.

There's lots of talk in climate circles about how post-Bush America will bring "US leadership" back onto the international stage. In fact, such leadership will only be accepted when the US begins to meet its true obligations. When it stands to advocate a global climate regime that is actually fair, or at least fair enough. And it's past time for us to talk about just what such a regime would entail.

Tom Athanasiou (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_saEiaDcR2I').innerHTML = output; //]]>

Not easy, how Americans in positions of power should proceed at this point.

This is a very good letter, Tom.  If the editors do not print it, it is their loss.

What I do not understand is this: Once the 2008 election takes place, is the US slate rubbed clean?  Can the new president summon a summit meeting in, say, February, 2009, in which the US sits back and behaves like just another partner?  And everybody automatically trusts us?  Or rather does not distrust us, any more than anybody distrusts Paraguay, or Madagascar?

Or will it always (until our decline declines a bit further) be the case that the US must show leadership?  Is the rest of the world still waiting for the US to establish the agenda?

And if so, how easy will it be, really, to put Bush/Cheney behind us?  In many superficial ways, all sorts of changes are likely to take place, we may suppose.  But more to the core, do not the elections of 2002 and 2004 impress the world more with who Americans really are, than does the reactive, non-positive election of 2006, and than will the presumably similar (!a ver!) election of 2008?

Is it not the mere truth, that US authority will count for little or nothing, in most of the world, for the next few decades?

I feel very sorry for David Roberts, and other Americans of his generation, who are raising children at this time.

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

I'm a long-time admirer of The Nation ... not because I agree with everything they have to say (I find Alexander Cockburn, for example, to be noxiously self-righteous), but because I admire the magazine's willingness to challenge the status quo and showcase truly excellent journalism.

Therefore I was pleased to receive The Nation issue this week on living green.  My only complaint: pages and pages of discussion, but not a single mention of the underlying cancer of exponential population growth on our planet.  Not once, as far as I can tell!

I guess that topic is too politically-incorrect for a leftist magazine to highlight.  

Too bad.  Until we look that problem in the eye and begin to address it, all of our other actions on this little planet of ours are simply  acts of re-arranging deck chairs on a ship that is sinking under the weight of 6.5 billion people, going on 9.  When peak oil arrives it's gonna be one ugly scramble for the table scraps ...

All charcoal is bio-charcoal

How about BioCoal then?

The "Bio" tends to give a more direct conitation to those who may or may not know where charcoal comes from.

_

Unless we go off the deep end with nuclear.

BioCoal offers a flexible, reliable, and effecient way to bridge the gap between intermitant renewables.

Especially given the existing dominant infrastructure of coal fired power plants.

And the tightening restrictions on Sulfur and Mercury emmisions are unneccisary if there is non to begin with  (Both of which Coal power plants would need to spend lots of money to deal with anyways)

_

Not to mention, there's plenty of room for improvement.

Algae biomass for instance grows just great off of coal fired power plant emmisions.  (Eats up about 85% of the Nitrogen, and 30% of the carbon)
In daylight, it can double in size in about 3 hours.

The power plants are also a great source of cogenerated heat for drying/charring biomass.
(Runs at about 1600°C)

Direct Carbon Fuel Cells that are availible can utilize charcoal at 80% effeciency.
(Also good for heat cogeneration, runs at about 750°C)

_

Getting off of Oil is going to be easy.
Just need to switch to diesel/hybrids/electric.

But getting off of Coal is going to be much harder. And without a fuel subsitute, it will be multiple decades before our coal plants cycle out of production.

Cars by comparison are replaced relatively often.

When peak oil arrives it's gonna be one ugly scramble for the table scraps ...

Who needs oil when you got electricity?

Atleast two electric sedans out next year will have more horsepower than Hummers.