CO2 Levels Highest in 650,000 Years
Scientists at Hawaii’s Mauna Loa observatory say that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are 387 parts per million, up nearly 40% since the industrial revolution. This is the highest CO2 levels have been in more than half a million years, and 35% higher than scientists expected.
A study carried out last year suggests that the recent surge in atmospheric CO2 levels was due to heavy use of coal in china, overall growth in the global economy, and a weakening of ‘carbon sinks’ like forests and seas.
Martin Parry, co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s working group on impacts, elaborated.
“Despite all the talk, the situation is getting worse. Levels of greenhouse gases continue to rise in the atmosphere and the rate of that rise is accelerating. We are already seeing the impacts of climate change and the scale of those impacts will also accelerate, until we decide to do something about it.”
Greentech Will Save the US Economy
Michael Novogratz, president of the Fortress Investment Group, compared our economic climate to the millenium’s dot-com bubble burst. However, just as web 2.0 came to save us in the early 2000s, so will greentech see us out of this slump. Greentech, Novogratz maintains, is the only economic bubble that can generate enough wealth to lift us out of this recession.
“As the price of oil goes up, there’s got to be a green revolution. I think of what will be the next driver of the American economy, and its green energy. That’s a huge growth opportunity. It’s not about the pollution. It’s about the energy. Gas will go to $10 a gallon.”
Angel investor Eric Janzen also points to the “green bubble” as the one surefire way to cure our economic woes. However, he’s reticent to refer to it as a bubble. As he told Wired,
“It’s not really a bubble. I think of it as a legitimate use of the way that our economy works and [how] our financial markets function now. The alternative title for the Harper’s piece was “The Good Bubble.” Clean tech could be an extremely efficient use of capital.”
The World’s Carbon Trading Doubles In One Year
According to the World Bank, carbon trading actually doubled between 2007 and 2008.
From the Financial Times:
Carbon trading was worth about $64bn last year, after a sharp rise in numbers of transactions in the fledgling market for greenhouse gases, the World Bank reckons.
In its annual review of the emissions trading market, it said the value of trades more than doubled from 2006 to 2007. The European Union’s emissions trading scheme (EU ETS) made up the bulk of the market, as it has done since its inception in January 2005.
Transactions under the EU ETS nearly doubled, as did the value of carbon permits sold by the scheme.
Last year, 2.1bn EU permits changed hands, against 1.1bn in 2006. The total value of trades was $50bn, against $24bn the previous year.
