5.2 Clean Energy and Climate Stability

Growing concerns about the effects of fossil fuels on climate change as well as on human and environmental health have led to international discourse on the need for global action.  Increasing the use of clean energy is a key means of reducing fossil fuel-induced carbon dioxide (C0₂) emissions that are the largest contributor to global warming.  Human activities—particularly burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas)—increase atmospheric C0₂, methane, nitrous oxide and other gases, which, when they accumulate, increase the intensity of the natural “greenhouse effect” and result in global warming. America’s use of fossil fuel energy currently produces about one-fourth of the world's C0₂ emissions.  Projections show that in the absence of policies to impose controls C0₂ concentrations in the atmosphere would be double their historic rate of some 280 part per million by about 2050, causing what some scientists believe may be an irrevocable series of feedback loops such as the melting of Greenland to ice sheets.

According to experts, other sources of energy have the potential to produce huge quantities of power without the polluting effects of C0₂.  Possibilities for primary energy sources include solar and wind energy, biomass, wave/tidal technology, geo-thermal, hydroelectricity and landfill gas.  Non-primary sources include efficiency improvements, hydrogen production, super-conducting global electric grids, and geo-engineering.  Some of these sources, such as wind energy and biomass, are already commercially viable; others require research and development.