[AGL] Re: Al Gore - not a chicken little but certainly urgent

[Connie Clark]

thank you Roger.  I have been looking for the text of his major speech this week. The concepts of Carbon Capture and sequestration and the electranet are explained.
  and I found for the first time his suggestion to do away with taxes on labor (all our payroll taxes) and replace with pollution tax to encourage businesses to reduce pollution to reduce their tax bill rather than reduce payroll.
   
  The speech is long and worth the read, but I excerpted these interesting ideas for those who might be interested.

   
  highlights:
     
  Small windmills and photovoltaic solar cells distributed widely
throughout the electricity grid would sharply reduce CO2 emissions
and at the same time increase our energy security. Likewise, widely
dispersed ethanol and biodiesel production facilities would shift our
transportation fuel stocks to renewable forms of energy while making
us less dependent on and vulnerable to disruptions in the supply of
expensive crude oil from the Persian Gulf, Venezuela and Nigeria, all
of which are extremely unreliable sources upon which to base our
future economic vitality. It would also make us less vulnerable to
the impact of a category 5 hurricane hitting coastal refineries or to
a terrorist attack on ports or key parts of our current energy
infrastructure.

Just as a robust information economy was triggered by the
introduction of the Internet, a dynamic new renewable energy economy
can be stimulated by the development of an "electranet," or smart
grid, that allows individual homeowners and business-owners anywhere
in America to use their own renewable sources of energy to sell
electricity into the grid when they have a surplus and purchase it
from the grid when they don't. The same electranet could give
homeowners and business-owners accurate and powerful tools with which
to precisely measure how much energy they are using where and when,
and identify opportunities for eliminating unnecessary costs and
wasteful usage patterns.

--------
  Fortunately, there may be a way to capture the 
CO2 produced as
coal as burned and sequester it safely to prevent it 
from adding to
the climate crisis. It is not easy. This technique, 
known as carbon
capture and sequestration (CCS) is expensive and most 
users of coal
have resisted the investments necessary to use it. 
However, when the
cost of not using it is calculated, it becomes obvious 
that CCS will
play a significant and growing role as one of the 
major building
blocks of a solution to the climate crisis.

     Interestingly, the most advanced and 
environmentally responsible
project for capturing and sequestering CO2 is in one 
of the most
forbidding locations for energy production anywhere in 
the world - in
the Norwegian portions of the North Sea. Norway, as it 
turns out, has
hefty CO2 taxes; and, even though there are many 
exceptions and
exemptions, oil production is not one of them. As a 
result, the oil
producers have found it quite economical and 
profitable to develop
and use advanced CCS technologies in order to avoid 
the tax they
would otherwise pay for the CO2 they would otherwise 
emit. The use of
similar techniques could be required for coal-fired 
generating
plants, and can be used in combination with advanced 
approaches like
integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC). Even 
with the most
advanced techniques, however, the economics of carbon 
capture and
sequestration will depend upon the availability of and 
proximity to
safe deep storage reservoirs. Nevertheless, it is time 
to recognize
that the phrase "clean coal technology" is devoid of 
meaning unless
it means "zero carbon emissions" technology.

  ----------------------------
  For the last fourteen years, I have advocated the 
elimination of
all payroll taxes - including those for social 
security and
unemployment compensation - and the replacement of 
that revenue in
the form of pollution taxes - principally on CO2. The 
overall level
of taxation would remain exactly the same. It would 
be, in other
words, a revenue neutral tax swap. But, instead of 
discouraging
businesses from hiring more employees, it would 
discourage business
from producing more pollution.

     Global warming pollution, indeed all pollution, 
is now described
by economists as an "externality." This absurd label 
means, in
essence: we don't to keep track of this stuff so let's 
pretend it
doesn't exist.

     And sure enough, when it's not recognized in the 
marketplace, it
does make it much easier for government, business, and 
all the rest
of us to pretend that it doesn't exist. But what we're 
pretending
doesn't exist is the stuff that is destroying the 
habitability of the
planet. We put 70 million tons of it into the 
atmosphere every 24
hours and the amount is increasing day by day. 
Penalizing pollution
instead of penalizing employment will work to reduce 
that pollution.
When we place a more accurate value on the 
consequences of the
choices we make, our choices get better. At present, 
when business
has to pay more taxes in order to hire more people, it 
is discouraged
from hiring more people. If we change that and 
discourage them from
creating more pollution they will reduce their 
pollution. Our market
economy can help us solve this problem if we send it 
the right
signals and tell ourselves the truth about the 
economic impact of
pollution.



 		
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