Earth Equity News

James Hanson Makes Personal Appeal to Obama for Carbon Tax. By James Randerson, Guardian (UK), January 4, 2009. "One of the world's top climate scientists has written a personal new year appeal to Barack and Michelle Obama, warning of the 'profound disconnect' between public policy on climate change and the magnitude of the problem... Professor James Hansen, who heads Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies... lambasts the current international approach of setting targets through 'cap and trade' schemes as not up to the task. 'This approach is ineffectual and not commensurate with the climate threat. It could waste another decade, locking in disastrous consequences for our planet and humanity,' the letter from Hansen and his wife, Anniek, reads... Hansen advocates a three-pronged attack on the climate problem. First, he wants a phasing out of coal-fired power stations -- which he calls 'factories of death' -- that do not incorporate carbon capture... Second, he proposes a 'carbon tax and 100% dividend'... The idea is to tax carbon at source, then redistribute the revenue equally among taxpayers, so that high carbon users are penalised while low carbon users are rewarded. Finally, he urges a renewed research effort into so-called fourth generation nuclear plants, which can use nuclear waste as fuel."