What can governments do to reduce global warming?

Question

Policies they can implement, international efforts they can join? I'm referring to all governments in general, not just the US one.

Answer 1

•Well, they need to stop being so hypocritical. On the local level where I live the city is always going on about saving energy. Like they'll say ride your bike to work. But then they build a new extension to the city to lead to the new Wal-Mart and they don't bother with any pedestrian planning--things like sidewalks and bike lanes. NO. Instead you see all these poor workers walking on the edge of a narrow highway trying not to get killed on their way to work. Or they start a water meter program so we now have to pay for our water, but then the reason that there is a sudden water shortage is because they've approved all these major resort development plans for a bunch of rich city yahoos and we're expected to pay because they want to be able to connect to the water system that wasn't even designed to support that many people.
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•People knock Canada because our emissions are up, but there are under 40 million people living in this country and its damn cold up here. We need our heat. The state of New York probably put out as much emission in a month as the entire country of Canada does in a whole year, not even to mention China.
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•Right now I would say the most important thing governments can do on the global level is to help smaller less rich countries develop their energy efficiency. Indian and China are probably the worst offenders. They have so many people and have done more polluting in the past two decades that N. America has done this entire century. Unless we reign them in any other environmental measures we enact our only going to be a little drop in a very large dirty pot.

Answer 2

First, they can stop blowing hot air.

Second, they can do something. Mandate real fuel efficiency for autos, and no letting manufacturers sell these 12 MPG vehicles, have minumum 30 MPG city, no exceptions.

Third, impose real taxes on natural gas, oil and coal and get the price of those fuels higher than non-carbon sources. Then you will see a flurry of change like we only talk about.

I am convinced that hitting peoples' pocketbooks is the only way to make change happen in this area.

It would be painful and no elected official (US at least) has the intestinal fortitude to admit that this is what we must do. They would rather give tax breaks that don't get the job done and increase the federal deficit than take forceful action.

Answer 3

The real problem is global cooling. Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe solar cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth.

Beginning to plan for adaptation to such a cool period, one which may continue well beyond one 11-year cycle, as did the Little Ice Age, should be a priority for governments. It is global cooling, not warming, that is the major climate threat to the world, especially Canada. As a country at the northern limit to agriculture in the world, it would take very little cooling to destroy Canadian food crops.

Answer 4

Hi Cheri, The goverments can implement every plan they can devise. In the end it comes down to each of us personaly to find ways not to contribute to global warming.
Personaly I'm on 50/50 solar power an elect. co. This cuts 50% on my part from polution from power plants. We drive gas efficent cars, I ride a motorcycle that gets 85 M.P.G. on the highway an will excede 80 M.P.H. if i desire. Not a moped.
We use pump hair spray, an recycle as much as possible.
Again I repeat its up to the people to change on their own.
Buying a soda? Buy a can instead of plastic. Either way recycle the empty.
Virago Man

Answer 5

Create a carbon cap and trading system, so that they can set a limit on how much carbon industries can emit.

Oh, wait...Dana just said that.

So did Enron:
http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA384.html
" With a payoff worth tens of billions of dollars at stake, Enron Corporation laid out millions in campaign contributions in the 1990s apparently in part to persuade the Clinton Administration and the U.S. Senate to support the Kyoto global warming treaty.

Enron hoped to cash in on the Kyoto treaty by masterminding a worldwide trading network in which major industries could buy and sell credits to emit carbon dioxide - the inert gas that some scientists and most environmentalists believe contributes to global warming.

The Houston firm's lobbying push appeared to be on the verge of success when Vice President Al Gore signed the Kyoto Protocol in November of 1998."


Great minds think alike...



...unfortunately, so do disturbed.

Answer 6

I don't think they can effect global warming, but they can tax the heck out of everyone for the cost of gas and oil. They can reduce pollution by restricting the emissions of power plants, gasoline powered vehicles and so on. Or they could give tax breaks for those who purchase those expensive little "green" cars and to those who purchase solar panels and wind generators. They could allow the power companies to line the highways with solar panels and wind generators. They could allow more nuclear power plants to be built. They could help provide infrastructure for hydrogen powered vehicles. Whatever they do, you can bet it will cost the tax payers a lot more money.

Answer 7

No doubt there will be some in government that think the way to reduce global warming will be to introduces new taxes left, right and centre. At best all this is going to do is to delay the inevitable. If human activities alone are going to bring a halt to global warming then we're looking at such drastic changes that it will be like stepping back in time by 200 years.

Our lifestyles are so dependent on processes that produce greenhouse gases that we can't make big enough cuts without all but doing away with transport, power generation, communications, heat, light, intensive agriculture, mining, quarrying and everything that separates us from our cave dwelling ancestors.

There are schemes being considered that if implemented could reduce, halt or even reverse global warming. Such schemes are termed geoengineering and a few are outlined below for you...

1) HUMAN VOLCANO
Volcanic eruptions emit large quantities of sulphur dioxide which blocks out some of the heat from the sun. One proposal is to simulate natural volcanoes by firing pellets of sulphur into the upper atmosphere where the particles of sulphur will reflect back some of the solar radiation.

2) SULPHUR BLANKET
Professor Crutzen's idea is to launch rockets into the stratosphere (10 to 50km above Earth's surface) and release one million tons of sulphur. This radical plan could have drawbacks including an increase in acid rain and damage to the ozone layer.

3) SOLAR MIRRORS
The US National Academy of Sciences has proposed a scheme that would involve positioning 55,000 gigantic mirrors in space. Each mirror would be 100 square kilometres in area and the effect would be to reflect some of the sun's heat energy back into space.

4) GLOBAL SUNSHADE
British astronomer Roger Angel has proposed creating a giant sunshade consisting of 16 trillion glass discs, each one microscopically thin and weighing just one gram. On board each disc would be a tiny camera, computer and solar sails allowing each disc to align itself so as to refract light from the sun just enough so it misses Earth.

5) MOVING EARTH
Perhaps the most ambitious of all schemes so far proposed is one to actually move planet Earth into a different orbit. It has been estimated that if Earth were 1.5 million miles further from the sun then the reduced heat energy received from the sun would compensate for anthropogenic global warming. It has calculated that the energy required to move the Earth this far would be the equivalent of 5 quadrillion hydrogen bombs (5,000,000,000,000,000).

6) CLOUD SEEDING
Cloud seeding isn't a new concept and one variation on this theme is to launch a fleet of self propelled vessels to sail the world's oceans and spray a fine mist of sea water particles into the atmosphere, this would produce specific clouds which would reflect some of the solar radiation back into space.

7) SYNTHETIC TREES
In the artificial trees air passes through the device and hydrogen sulphide absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, each 'tree' could remove 90,000 tons of carbon dioxide each year. The carbon dioxide would need to be permanently stored and one option could be drilling holes thousands of metres deep into porous rock beneath the oceans into which the CO2 would be injected.

8) PHYTOPLANKTON
Phytoplankton are microscopic marine plants, like all plants they photosynthesise - taking in carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen. Increasing the quantity of phytoplankton will result in more carbon dioxide being absorbed and when the plants die they sink to the ocean floor taking the carbon with them.

Some of these schemes are quite clearly extraordinarily ambitious and beyond the capabilities of any current technology, some of them have price tags as much as $452 trillion. But there are others that have been successfully trailed and could be implemented for just a few billion dollars.

It's feasible that within perhaps 10 years or so one or more schemes could be up and running and a large enough scale to begin to make a difference.

Answer 8

i think of a few persons nonetheless taking section in residing and desire that we and generations to return can relish that privilege whilst ultimate healthful and having animals around, etc. *Oh, sorry... a million & 2 are your concepts/comments and not mine. 3. not stable, yet what does that probable could do with this subject rely? 4. additionally a huge "HUH?" as to the relation to the question, yet company accountability could pass a protracted way.

Answer 9

Nothing, and getting the government, any government involved is the last thing we should consider. Government programs are never the answer, they always creat more problems than they solve.

Answer 10

They can set the example for everyone else by erecting wind generators and solar panels on the grounds of their Presidential palaces and legislative assembly buildings. If its good enough for us little people it shouldn't bother them, should it?