Biomass — wood chips, tree parts and agricultural waste burned to generate heat and electricity — currently generates more 50% of the United States’ renewable energy production. Because biomass is carbon neutral, it has significant advantages over fossil fuels.
As the economic output and populations of China, India and Brazil grow, the countries’ energy consumption will continue to rise. Because traditional energy sources such as oil and coal are both nonrenewable and limited, these countries are pushing to develop new forms of alternative energy. Given that the United States remains the highest per capita consumer of energy, the need for sustainable energy sources is considered by many domestically to be a vital national interest.
Cap and trade is a market approach for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The government sets a cap for a particular pollutant and then allows companies to negotiate among themselves on how to meet the limit; those that are most efficient at reducing emissions are rewarded for doing so.
Plastic trash is a potential — and plentiful — fuel source, but up to the present many regions of the United States have been reluctant to adopt waste-to-energy technologies. Among the reasons are the availability of relatively cheap land for trash disposal, recyclers who viewed such programs as potential threats, and resistance by local homeowners.
In the past, studies of large-scale changes to the Earth’s oceans have been restricted both by the limited nature of physical sampling and the reality that often these changes occur over great lengths of time.
The general public continues to perceive a large degree of uncertainty among scientists on issues relating to climate change. A May 2011 survey sponsored by Yale University and George Mason University, for instance, showed that only 39% of the public believes that most scientists agree on global warming (up from 34% in 2010.)
Press coverage of energy, whether from fossil fuels, nuclear, or renewables, tends to be dominated by talk of production. Production is only half the story, though: Every energy equation is a balance between generation and consumption, and both count equally.
Coal currently provides more than half the United States’ electricity. Because burning a single ton of coal can create more than two tons of CO2, a primary contributor to climate change, a technique known as carbon capture and storage (CCS) is under development.
In economics, the word externality refers to costs or benefits of a good or service not reflected in its price. For example, making gasoline requires petroleum extraction, transportation, and refinement; driving creates pollution, noise and congestion. These in turn cause health and environmental damage.
