Venture Capitalist Claims Soot and Smog Reductions Key to Agreement with China
China Can Reduce Its Smog and Quickly Protect the Planet
MENLO PARK, California (December 14, 2009) – Silicon Valley venture capitalist Elton Sherwin in his new book, Addicted to Energy, claims that reducing soot and smog are key to affordably protecting the planet from rapid warming and vital for reaching an agreement with China. Drawing on research from U.C. Berkeley, Stanford and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Sherwin says that reducing non-CO2 greenhouse agents is faster and cheaper than reducing CO2. “We still need to dramatically reduce CO2 in the U.S. and China, but reducing soot and smog is a quick, affordable way to work together and lessen the likelihood of crossing a major climate threshold or tipping point.”
“By lowering soot and smog emissions, the Chinese can make a major positive contribution,” says Sherwin. “There is reluctance to discuss this because it might slow progress on CO2. But the impact of soot and smog are so great they cannot be ignored. They are comparatively less expensive to mitigate and they provide an opportunity for the Chinese to meet or exceed western reductions without having to slow their economic growth.”
Smog contains several potent greenhouse agents. Soot contains large amounts of black carbon. One U.S. House of Representatives report says that reducing black carbon alone “will immediately slow global warming.”*
A recent article published in Foreign Affairs, co-authored by one of the world’s leading climate scientists, says, “Fully applying existing emissions-control technologies could cut black carbon emissions by about 50 percent. And that would be enough to offset the warming effects of one to two decades’ worth of carbon dioxide emissions.”**
Sherwin uses an intriguing analogy:
“Image you inherit a home and discover the attic packed full of dynamite, blasting caps and fuses. What does the local bomb squad do? They remove the fuses and blasting caps first, and then the dynamite.”
In Sherwin’s analogy, CO2 is the dynamite, but soot and smog are the fuses and blasting caps – the first priorities.
Continuing the analogy Sherwin says, “The house is a metaphor for our planet and we are living in one room and the Chinese are living in another room. We can argue with the Chinese about who is most responsible for the mess in the attic for another decade or two and pass the problem to our children. But by then it may be too late. We need to clean up the attic now.”
Sherwin says that the U.S. and China should jointly lead a worldwide crash program to reduce soot and tropospheric ozone (one of the key components in smog) while simultaneously reducing CO2 emissions. He says, “Filters that trap soot should be an immediate priority. This is too big an opportunity to ignore.”
He continues, “The Chinese produce so much soot and ozone, they could meet virtually any treaty obligation if these two powerful agents of climate change were included.”
Sherwin adds one word of caution, “The Chinese also release vast quantities of reflective particles into the atmosphere mixed together with their soot. Today, these reflective particles protect the earth, and it is critically important that they continue this practice while filtering out the black carbon.” Sherwin adds, “It is imperative that we accurately account for all these particles and take actions that really protect the climate.”
Source : energyhousepublishing.com
* Google “Hearing Examines Black Carbon and Global Warming.” From the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, U.S. House of Representatives.
** “The Other Climate Changers: Why Black Carbon and Ozone Also Matter,” Jessica Seddon Wallack and Veerabhadran Ramanathan, Foreign Affairs, September/October 2009 Issue.
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