Word: co2
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Frenchman: the French have for several years levied a compulsory tax on airline tickets to help fund development projects and have long sought to get others to join them, with mixed success. Brazil is one of only a few countries to have followed suit. Norway also taxes airline CO2 emissions and uses the receipts for overseas aid. (Read "France Considers a Tax on Carbon Emissions...
...Sweden, Denmark and Finland all imposed similar levies as early as the 1990s, but France - should its lawmakers approve the plan - will become the biggest country yet to try taxes to slow global warming. Initially set at $25 per ton of emitted carbon dioxide (CO2), the tax on the use of oil, natural gas and coal would nudge up the cost of a liter of petrol by $0.06 ($0.23 a gallon), Sarkozy said, and diesel by a little more, helping generate roughly $4.4 billion in annual revenues. A pledge to return that money to taxpayers through various new rebates...
...uses of energy. Critics of taxes say that they're open to fluctuation and that certain industries can win exemptions, undermining a tax's efficacy. Opponents of cap and trade systems, meantime, level similar charges. This much is sure: while taxes might fix the short-term cost of emitting CO2, helping homes and businesses figure out how much to invest in energy saving measures, they don't guarantee a drop in emissions. Cap and trade schemes, on the other hand, set the desired emissions level first. "If our aim is to reduce emissions," says Jonathan Lash, president of the World...
...first comprehensive look at the exact concentrations and consequences of the gas. The investigators found that although N2O is only one-sixtieth as dangerous to the ozone layer as CFCs on a gram-by-gram basis, the sheer amount of N2O - each year nearly 1 billion metric tons of CO2 equivalent are released globally - means that it now poses a more significant threat to the atmosphere. (N2O emissions are calculated in terms of their impact on global warming, and CO2 is used as a kind of base level.) (See Q&A: "Regional Nuclear War and the Environment...
...doing: two-thirds of global N2O emissions come from the planet itself, as bacteria in soil and the oceans break down nitrogen. Though N2O is regulated by the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 as a greenhouse gas - and one that is nearly 300 times more potent for global warming than CO2 - that treaty doesn't cover all nations, and will expire in 2012. "The question is how are we going to reduce these gases," says Daniel. "We need to bridge that gap between science and policy." (See pictures of the effects of global warming...