But the unavoidable reality is that fossil fuels like coal are deeply embedded in our energy system, and we'll have to use them for years.
To paraphrase Oscar Wilde: One deadly explosion while extracting fossil fuels may be regarded as a misfortune, but two within a month looks like carelessness.
That means any efforts aimed at limiting greenhouse gas concentrations will have to be even more stringent in reducing the burning of fossil fuels, clearing of forests and the like.
You believe that instead of trying to replace fossil fuels with other energy sources, we should let the system slide.
It seems to me that it is entirely possible for science to have developed without the rapid massive industrialization that the wide use of fossil fuels made possible.
Could it be that having all this free energy lying around in fossil fuels offered us a dangerous dose of cultural steroids, the evolutionary equivalent of human growth hormone?
But the other trend is that the price of coal and other fossil fuels are going up.
They pointed out that the excavation of fossil fuels has its own history of catastrophic accidents, including coal mine collapses and the recent BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Atmospheric brown clouds are made up mostly of soot - suspended carbon particles - produced by people burning biomass and fossil fuels.
That would involve putting a floor under the price of fossil fuels by imposing a price on carbon emissions and import duties on oil to keep the domestic price above, say, $70 per barrel.
It's a tall order: Over the next few decades, the world will need to wean itself from dependence on fossil fuels and drastically reduce greenhouse gases.
Compared with free electrons, fossil fuels would be seen as ludicrously expensive and dirty, and so carbon emissions would plummet.
It is produced from the burning of fossil fuels (coal and oil) and the smelting of mineral ores that contain sulfur.
It could alternatively be used to grow bioenergy crops, which would displace fossil fuels.
Taxing fossil fuels or their use to reflect their environmental damages also makes sense.
國文精選館
