Would capping and trading carbon pollution create a prosperous clean energy economy? Or would it be a boondoggle for Wall Street and scammers in developing countries? Touted as a market-based way to put a price on carbon, cap and trade is increasingly questioned by regulators, investors and environmentalists. Yes the state of California and many companies have a lot invested in a cap and trade system. Does it still have a pulse?
Bio
Kristin Eberhard
Larry Goulder
Michael Shellenberger
Michael Shellenberger works on and writes about everything from energy to technology innovation to changing social values. As president of the Breakthrough Institute, he is a leading national advocate for the U.S. to make a 10-year, $500 billion public-private investment into cutting-edge clean energy technologies to achieve energy independence and restore America's economic competitiveness.
He is co-author of Break Through and The Death of Environmentalism. Michael has written for L.A. Times, the American Prospect, Glamour Magazine, and other publications. Michael has worked as a strategist for efforts to win action on global warming, save the world's last redwoods, and improve working conditions for Nike factory workers in China.
He was raised in Greeley, Colorado, received his B.A. from Earlham in Indiana, and received a Masters Degree in cultural anthropology from the University of California.
Could you please provide a reference to back-up that claim? It is in fact false:
Quote:
The contribution to the present dat atmospheric CO2 loading from volcanic emissions is, however, relatively insignificant, and it has been estimated that subaerial volcanism releases around 300 Mt/year CO2, equivalent to just 1% of anthropogenic emissions (Morner & Etiope, 2002).
See Vicky Hards, Volcanic Contributions to the Global Carbon Cycle, British Geological Survey, Sustainable and Renewable Energy Occasional Publication No. 10, 2005. Available at http://www.bgs.ac.uk/downloads/start.cfm?id=432
Quote:
Human activities, responsible for some 36,300 million metric tons of CO2 emissions in 2008 [Le Quéré et al., 2009], release at least a hundred times more CO2 annually than all the world’s degassing subaerial and submarine volcanoes (Gerlach, 2010).
I like the numbers, but I know that volcanoes and vulcanism causes 10,000 times more emmission pollution that the industrial and transportation pollutions together. And volcanoes are increasing in number and severity. Cap and trade would be credible except fossil fuels do not make up the majority of the pollution problem, based on my study of the environment.