The NYTimes has a good article about California’s push to produce 25% carbon dioxide by 2020. They are attacking the problem several different ways:
– No longer buying dirty electricity – all those coal plants out of state are no longer a way to get around California’s regulations.
– Continuing pollution regulations for transport
– Continuing efficiency regulations for electronics, including taking aim at vampire power draw – electronics’ standby mode that draws power when not in full use.
– Industry specific caps and targets for pollution, by way of a cap-and-trade system.
– Promoting green power options for new homes and conversions (Million Solar Roofs Bill)
There will inevitably be challenges, and things could change dramatically depending on what the supreme court says about CO2. The article raises the point that California is already pretty efficient, so why focus more on it? The simple answer is that CA is a huge market, and by promoting change there you directly influence what gets produced elsewhere. Many things are cleaner and more efficienct because of the California market. This has been happening for 40 years already, here is hoping for another 40.
As things stand, the future does not look good. The frozen bogs of Siberia are melting, and the thaw could have devastating consequences for the planet, scientists have discovered:
They have found that Arctic permafrost, which is starting to melt due to global warming, is releasing five times more methane gas than their calculations had predicted. That level of emission is alarming because methane itself is a greenhouse gas. Increased amounts will therefore accelerate warming, cause more melting of Siberian bogs and Arctic wasteland, and so release even more.
Of course, if we don’t change things, scenarios are pretty shocking. But no one knows exactly what will happen. You can help change that by running Climate Prediction using “spare” cpu cycles. This is interesting in a way, since you are contributing to global warming by leaving a modern computer running models, rather than sleeping or idle (roughly 25 extra watts in my case). But the idea is the research will be worth the carbon production. We shall see…