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Myles Allen’s proposal to bury the carbon problem

Wottsupwiththatblog has very kindly let me write a guest post on his blog.

I am reblogging it here in case any of my readers are interested. Myles Allen's proposal to bury the carbon problem.

A guest post by Rachel
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Because Wotts is very busy at the moment and because I’m quite keen for a post about Myles Allen’s proposal to bury carbon and because Wotts, I think, has quite different views to me about this, I thought I’d write a guest post.

Myles Allen has an article in the Guardian today, Green levies may be ‘crap’. The way to deal with carbon is to bury it. This article follows on from a similar one he wrote in June this year, Climate change: let’s bury the CO2 problem.

Myles Allen is proposing that rather than pricing carbon, we should make it compulsory for anyone who extracts or imports fossil fuels to sequester the carbon. His suggestion is to start sequestering a fraction of the total carbon emitted and to gradually increase this to 100%. His logic is that we need to reduce emissions to zero; pricing carbon is not achieving this fast enough, and the people with the best resources for sequestering carbon are those in the fossil fuel industry. Yet they have no incentive to do it unless we force them to.

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Comments

9 responses to “Myles Allen’s proposal to bury the carbon problem”

  1. prkralex Avatar
    prkralex

    A report released on Friday highlights that two thirds of carbon emissions are made by just 90 companies – the majority of which are fossil fuel firms. But can we really blame climate change on fossil fuel providers alone – aren’t the public and government responsible too?

    Reply
    1. Rachel Avatar
      Rachel

      Yes, I saw that report. I agree that we are all to blame but I also think that compulsory CCS will see repercussions for all of us. It will make fossil fuels more expensive and ultimately the customer will pay with higher energy costs.

      Reply
      1. prkralex Avatar
        prkralex

        We have a great solution to depend more on renewable energy like solar, wind…. I think this can change things drastically.

  2. Kit Carruthers Avatar
    Kit Carruthers

    Rachel, glad to have made a comment on Wotts’ blog, as you’d hoped. How could I resist? 🙂

    Reply
    1. Rachel Avatar
      Rachel

      Thank you! And what’s this about CCS not being sexy? Not true at all. I think you’ve picked an up and coming field to be involved with and one in which there will be no shortage of jobs.

      Reply
      1. Kit Carruthers Avatar
        Kit Carruthers

        Aye, well there’s no [industry] jobs at the moment, so I’m keeping fingers and toes crossed for the future!

  3. grahamatlinc Avatar
    grahamatlinc

    Please excuse me for commenting the same on both blogs, but it needs saying.

    It will require all efforts of every kind and it is still going to hurt. Answers will be ugly, costly and inefficient because it has been delayed too long.

    Scepticism, vested interest, argument, singular pet ideas; these are all our enemies. I believe the only way to deal with those problems is to ride straight over them with solid information and positive pursuits. We cannot now find perfect solutions. It is too late. We must accept whatever will help. Otherwise in ten years, the choices wil be even harder and the consequences worse.

    Reply
    1. Rachel Avatar
      Rachel

      Thanks, Graham. It’s fine to comment in both places. I wasn’t sure whether to post this here as well but then I thought what the heck.

      I feel much the same way as you. I am not fussy about what solution we choose. I just want to choose one and start solving. The years are ticking by and nothing seems to change. I have a slightly impatient personality and I’m tired of too much talking and too little action.

      Reply
      1. grahamatlinc Avatar
        grahamatlinc

        Impatience is, in this case, entirely appropriate.

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