Sunday, December 13, 2009

A Greener Way to Get Electricity from Natural Gas

The folks at MIT have done it again. This time they've discovered a way for natural gas burning electricity power plants to have zero carbon dioxide emissions. They also say that these natural gas power plants can be competitive economically with coal-burning power plants if a price is set on carbon dioxide emissions. The wise folks at MIT seem to be suggesting that the only way to get the United States to reduce their carbon emissions is to put a price tag on those emissions. The recent EPA decision to label carbon dioxide a pollutant is the first step towards a carbon tax of some sort.

I think that the most frustrating thing to me is that there are plenty of amazing and viable technologies to help us reduce our carbon emissions yet they are out of reach because they are "more expensive" than existing technologies. Since we are reaching the end of our rope with respect to climate change and since humans seem to be ruled by a sever case of myopia, I think that a carbon tax on emissions is a way to expedite the production of less-polluting or zero emissions technologies. Copenhagen couldn't have come at a more critical time.

What do you folks think about a tax on carbon emissions?

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