I can put us on a path to solve climate change in 3-5 years:
1. Federal loans/subsidies for nuclear energy, opening of Yucca. There are two nuclear power plants that can be completed in short order - the one in Georgia and the other one in South Carolina.
2. Reforestation through 3 main methods:
a. We end the ethanol mandate for fuel and use farmland currently used to grow corn (and which is depleting our water table) to restart forestation
b. The locally-grown movement must end. It is not a good use of land to grow massive amounts of broccoli/tomatoes/peppers in the Great Lakes region, just like we don't grow apples in Louisiana. Use farmland more efficiently. The locally-grown movement is a farce and destroys forests.
c. Acquire land around already-protected state and national parks to extend their boundaries, especially on our coasts. Also, many golf courses are barely used. They need to be returned to nature.
d. Let the market develop for bio-engineered food, including meat. My neighbor is a biochemist and believe me, you will be eating lab-grown burgers soon. Then reforest pasture land.
If Trump wants an issue to unite people on, he can start with Points 1 and 2c above. The rest are probably too controversial at this time.
And guess what? They do not require much in the way of new taxes, if any.
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You can have my golf clubs when you pry them from my cold, dead, hands!
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Working the field?
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totally wrong all the time?
The only viable, long-term solution is geo-engineering.
Soon we will come to accept that.
-France derives about 75% of its electricity from nuclear energy, due to a long-standing policy based on energy security. Government policy is to reduce this to 50% by 2035.
-France is the world's largest net exporter of electricity due to its very low cost of generation, and gains over €3 billion per year from this.
-The country has been very active in developing nuclear technology. Reactors and especially fuel products and services have been a significant export.
-About 17% of France's electricity is from recycled nuclear fuel.
Link: http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france.aspx
Climate change is merely the latest means toward that end.
Discusses the far greater contribution of deforestation to increased atmospheric carbon levels - both through loss of CO2 respiration and through release of massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This contribution is far, far greater than man’s combustion contribution per studies. Yet, the Left’s focus has been on the cause whose remedy would require wealth redistribution.
If one believes that the elevated atmospheric CO2 is the cause of warmer temperatures, and if one further believes that mankind has the ability to bring that temperature down with proper measures, then the primary focus should be on preserving rainforests, preventing deforestation everywhere, and replanting trees.
Unfortunately for the Left, such an effort would not require the sweeping changes they want in wealth redistribution, and it might even reinforce the status quo in many countries.
We are left with the obvious conclusion that the Left is simply using the convenient issue to accomplish their socioeconomic goals. This is further supported by their continued use of air travel to accept their Climate Change awards, their giant houses in Tennessee, and their not continuing on with the supposedly critical Paris Accord without our country which is still well ahead of other countries in green tech and changeover. If they really believed that the issue was critical, they would have pushed on without us. They didn’t.
plants, and bought fallow land and turned it into forestland.
All great points by you. It's a shame we can't work incrementally on this issue. Do the things we agree on and debate the rest.
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..and I would like what it does for the environment and how it would reduce pollution.
But...CC was not not their real reason for the Paris Accord.
Trump should make this move, I agree.