NPR: U.S. Climate Change Plan Is Idea Rich, Cash Poor

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121166917

U.S. Climate Change Plan Is Idea Rich, Cash Poor

by Christopher Joyce

December 7, 2009

The warming climate is driving several thousand people north, to Copenhagen — for two weeks, anyway. Representatives from nearly 200 countries are gathering there to try to work out a new international treaty to curb global warming, one that would supplant the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

Prospects are dim, though, for a binding agreement at the Conference of the Parties to the United Nation's Framework Convention on Climate Change. But negotiators say they hope to at least plot a course toward a new agreement that could be signed at next year's climate conference in Mexico City.

With or without a new treaty this month, the effort to curb climate change has accelerated since the 1997 Kyoto conference. Although the United States never ratified the Kyoto Protocol, numerous efforts are under way in the States to limit warming by attacking the main culprit: burning fossil fuels.

Below, a look at some of the technologies, as well as social mechanisms, aimed at changing how we consume energy — and slow climate change.

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[Kolesar]

1. Would have to build a pipeline network...to sites where the geology is appropriate for long-term CO2

That sounds more expensive than building renewable-energy generation plants. The pipeline siting will require "eminent domain" proceedings on a huge scale, too. It will take "forever" to accomplish that.