I want to start helping earth and doing what have to. I have three kids and i would for them to have a clean earth.

While it is refreshing to see our country going green with our energy sources what can you do now to reduce polution. See what you can do immediately to reduce your cars emissions up to 80% NOW.
www.LessEmissionsNow.com
Rob Nichols

The most common soil contaminants are petroleum-based. Hydrocarbons from diesel fuel and gasoline are widespread problems, as are polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAH). Many PAHs are known carcinogens, and others are suspected problem chemicals that need to be kept from contaminating drinking water   Read More »

The basic problem is our consumption of fossil fuels - more particularly, allowing the CO2 waste produced by the combustion of fossil fuels to be dumped into the atmosphere as if it were an open sewer (to borrow one of Mr. Gore's descriptions). Unfortunately the problem is going to continue to get worse until we either stop burning fossil fuels entirely or until we sequester more CO2 than we produce. Our atmosphere is a closed loop system and even a 90% reduction in CO2 emissions would still result in an ongoing build-up of CO2 - just at a slower rate than before.

The basic challenge is to wean ourselves from fossil fuels as quickly and cleanly as possible - either that or we have to come up with a carbon sink that can capture and sequester 10 billion tons of carbon each year. My guess is that we will eventually settle on a combination of alternative energy sources and carbon sequestration.

Speaking of sequestration. There isn't anything wrong with burning coal or gasoline if you can capture and sequester an equivalent (or greater) quantity of CO2 than produced during combustion. No harm no foul. That said, planting trees feels good however it doesn't permanently sequester carbon. True sequestration is difficult. Pumping CO2 back into the ground in the place of natural gas is one approach that is permanent. I'm not sure if there are any others.

Back to the main point. Why not simply impose a carbon tax that gradually escalates over time? We have seen what $4 / gallon does to SUV and light truck sales. Wouldn't it have been easier to simply slap a carbon tax on gasoline rather than trying to regulate mileage standards? Apply the same approach to all fossil based fuels. Tax the heck out of them, use the proceeds to upgrade the public transport system, fund basic research into alternative energy sources and/or carbon sequestration, and perhaps subsidize the cost of buying electric vehicles.

You wouldn't need an internal cap and trade system. You wouldn't need to worry about mileage standards. As the cost of fossil fuels continues to rise their consumption will inevitably fall. Economics 101. As that consumption falls so too does our trade deficit.

Could it really be that easy?

I stepped into my garage early one morning recently to find my water heater leaking. It was kind of an emergency situation that I needed to get taken care of quickly as many hot water replacements are. I called Home Depot and talked to one of their people who walked me through selecting a new water heater. I would have liked to taken my time and made sure that I purchased a very efficient unit but unfortunately I just didn't have the time. I asked the Home Depot representative if the unit I was choosing was Energy Star rated. He replied "yes". So I figured that it couldn't be too inefficient. Based on this, I decided to go with the water heater he suggested. Later I discovered that water heaters are not Energy Star rated presently. Further, the energy usage sticker on the side of the unit indicated that it uses more than the average amount of energy. I really feel like I was lied to by the Home Depot representative. Now I am stuck with a brand new water heater which is not very efficient. At least it is a natural gas unit which I believe are significantly more efficient that electric. I just wanted everyone to know about my bad experience so that it might not happen to you.