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That plan would:
hahaha8226; Redirect energy subsidies in industrial nations. The United States spends more than $20 billion a year to subsidize coal and oil; industrial countries overall spend about $200 billion. If those subsidies were put behind renewable energy sources, oil companies and others would follow the money and use it to become aggressive developers of fuel cells, wind farms and solar systems.
hahaha8226; Create a fund of about $300 billion a year to transfer clean energy to poor countries. Virtually all developing countries -- including China with its extremely air-polluted cities -- would love to go solar; virtually none can afford it. The fund could be financed by a small tax on international currency transactions, which total more than $1.5 trillion every day. A tax of a quarter-penny-per-dollar on those transactions would yield about $300 billion a year. Alternatively, financing could come from a carbon tax in industrial countries or a tax on international airline travel.
hahaha8226; Establish a mandatory fossil-fuel efficiency standard that rises 5 percent per year. Starting at its current baseline, each country would produce the same amount of goods next year with 5 percent less carbon fuel or produce 5 percent more with the same amount of carbon fuel -- until the 70 percent reduction was attained.
Nations would initially meet the goal through low-cost efficiency measures. When those efficiencies were exhausted, countries would draw more and more energy from non-carbon sources. That would create the mass markets for renewables that would lower their costs and make them economically competitive with coal and oil.
This plan is one model. There may be better approaches. The point is we need to start thinking big, and fast.
Look out the window. Time's up.
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