Putting a Price Tag on Carbon

The New York Times came out with an article today addressing the cost benefits of reducing carbon emissions sooner rather than later, and how climate change is as much an economic problem as it is an environmental problem. One of the interesting things the article states is that by using current technology carbon emissions could be reduced by more than ½ by 2020, and implementing the use of these current technologies would save businesses and consumers money in the short term as well as the long term. The article is one in a series called: The Energy Challenge: Fossil Fuel Economics, which examines “the ways in which the world is, and is not, mobbing toward a more energy efficient, environmentally benign future”. It is possible that at some point in the near future reducing carbon emissions will be seen as the economically sound path to take for the future of our country and the world.

In related news, a report released today in Geophysical Research Letters predicts that if greenhouse gasses are released at the current rate, the Arctic will have no Summer ice by the year 2040. This loss of sea ice would raise global sea level dramatically and flood many of the world’s current economic and population centers.

New York Times article:
The Cost of an Overheated Planet

Read other articles in The Energy Challenge series

MSNBC:
Arctic Summer Could be Ice-Free by 2040

Photo: EPA