SOLUTIONS  (CONT)

crop. Plans call for the county to be home to Taylor Biomass, which will convert bagged household waste into electricity, and Masada Oxynol, which will convert bagged garbage into cellulosic ethanol.

The sixth and seventh wedges go together in what is called "carbon capture and sequestration."

What this means is the carbon produced by burning coal would be trapped and piped underground to be stored in depleted oil reserves. That's the "capture."

Trees naturally store carbon in their woody parts. This is "sequestration." The world's rain forests are responsible for sequestering an entire wedge (or 1 GtC). If we stopped clear-cutting the world's forests, we could save half a wedge. If we reforested some of the areas that have already been cleared, we could save another half-wedge.

While this plan can reduce our emissions by 50 percent, writer Bill McKibben, whose 1989 book, "The End of Nature," sounded one of the earliest alarms about global warming, points out that it won't be enough to keep pace with the crisis.

His "Step It Up" organization is calling on Congress to cap greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent over the next 50 years. That is only 2 percent per year.

The United Kingdom announced plans last week to set a "legally binding" target to cut carbon emissions by 60 percent by 2050.
Every one of you reading this right now has enough potential energy in your body to light up your hometown for a week!

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