Reducing Global Warming Worldwide Through Clean Technology
To help avoid some of the worst and most expensive consequences of global warming, the United States must reduce its heat-trapping emissions by at least 80 percent by 2050, alongside deep reductions in other countries including developing nations like China and India. The world needs a rapid transition to clean energy that dramatically reduces heat-trapping emissions globally.
Using Clean Technology to Reduce Heat-Trapping Emissions at Home
Investing in a clean energy economy can be a tremendous source of business opportunity and energy savings for Americans. A 2009 study from UCS shows how the U.S. can make deep reductions in its emissions by 2030, with billions of dollars in energy savings for consumers and businesses, by implementing a comprehensive suite of climate and energy policies.
One of the easiest ways to quickly reduce heat-trapping emissions is to increase energy efficiency. By improving home heating and cooling systems, installing building insulation, improving the industrial processes, and raising the fuel efficiency of vehicles, we can reduce our use of fossil fuels and thus lower our global warming pollution. Using more renewable electricity—from wind, sunlight, biomass, and geothermal sources—and providing low-emission transportation choices are also solutions that are already affordable and whose costs will decline further as they are more widely implemented. We must also invest in the research and development of the next generation of new technologies to bring down the costs of future global warming pollution reductions.
Using Clean Technology to Drive Sustainable Development Globally
Across the globe, 1.4 billion people live in abject poverty, 1.5 billion do not have access to electricity, and 3 billion people depend directly on burning very polluting fuels (coal, biomass, and dung) for their household energy needs. Most of these people live in developing countries, where the immediate economic priority must be raising living standards and increasing access to necessities like clean, reliable sources of energy. Because much of the energy infrastructure in these countries is yet to be built, it is possible for them to leapfrog the polluting technologies that currently dominate in developed countries and choose cleaner technologies instead. We should help these countries transition to sustainable low-carbon development pathways, even as we do the same at home, so that they can increase their economic well-being without exacerbating global warming.
Moving away from an energy system based on fossil-fuels to cleaner source of energy would also bring significant public health benefits. In addition to producing heat-trapping emissions, burning fossil fuels in power plants and vehicles also produces other harmful pollution, including carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, hydrocarbons, particulates, mercury and other heavy metals. These pollutants can lead to health problems, like respiratory and heart ailments and developmental delays in young children, as well environmental pollution in the form of smog and acid rain. In addition, coal mining is one of the most dangerous industries in the world, exposing workers to lung diseases as well as the possibility of injury and even death
Preventing Global Warming Pollution Anywhere Helps People Everywhere
Every bit of global warming pollution traps heat in Earth’s atmosphere, regardless of what source or which country it comes from. Thus, to address global warming, we need to encourage global cooperation in reducing emissions.
If we fail to act, unchecked climate change would impose immense social, environmental and economic costs on all countries, especially the poorest and most vulnerable ones. The U.S. could face significant costs due to sea-level rise, more severe storms, altered weather patterns, heat waves, and the loss of water resources and vital ecosystems. Elsewhere, changes in monsoon rainfall could threaten food security for hundreds of millions of people in the Indian subcontinent, increased droughts could further jeopardize the residents of sub-Saharan Africa, snow pack loss is already disrupting water supplies in the Andean countries, and many small island states could be wiped out by sea-level rise.
Addressing global warming today by investing in clean technologies, both in the United States and around the globe, will save lives and money for years to come.
