Today s politicians focus narrowly on how high a carbon tax should be to stop people from using fossil fuels.

Biofuels offer some 60 per cent carbon dioxide saving on their fossil fuel equivalents.

In the longer term, it is hoped that carbon capture and sequestration will lead to zero emissions fossil fuel energy systems.

Regardless, fossil fuels will remain an important part of the global energy mix for the foreseeable future, and it is thus critical that fossil energy technologies continue to evolve towards cleaner, more efficient and less carbon intensive systems.

We need to use energy far more wisely while shifting from fossil fuels to low carbon energy sources.

Proponents of carbon cuts argue that green energy technologies only seem more expensive, because the price of fossil fuels does not reflect the cost of their impact on the climate.

For example, information on fossil fuel inputs to each sector can be used to investigate flows of embodied carbon within and between different economies.

Agriculture is already responding positively to climate change mitigation through substitution of fossil fuels, continued energy efficiency and carbon sequestration.

Indeed, their contribution to rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere is beginning to overshadow the other problems.

It is generally believed that the appropriate preventive measure is to stop burning fossil fuels and reduce the abundance of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

In order for the whole planet to make a sustainable shift away from fossil fuels, we need to make low carbon energy both cheaper and more efficient.

Process, transportation and distribution of agricultural goods, as well as use of farm machinery that operate based on the use of fossil fuels, contribute to the production of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Carbon emissions can be reduced through increasing the use of wood (which is a renewable resource), either for durable wood products or for biofuel, in place of fossil fuels.

And, the World Bank s energy financing remains overwhelmingly dedicated to fossil fuels, despite limited efforts to establish funding for low carbon energy.

Every major user of fossil fuel would need to buy permits to emit CO2, and those permits would trade in a special marketplace.

There is no real alternative. High carbon growth is doomed, crippled by high prices for fossil fuels and killed off by the hostile physical environment that climate change will create.

Fossil fuels

Most CO2 emissions result from the burning of fossil fuels coal, oil, and natural gas for energy, global consumption of which is rising as the world economy grows.

Testing the Limits of Fossil Fuels

Instead of offering unsustainable and environmentally damaging subsidies for fossil fuels, public finance should encourage the development of new industries and businesses that are emerging in the course of the low carbon transition.

If the EU is successful in reducing CO2 emissions by 20 by 2020, Böhringer and Keller find that its reliance on imported fossil fuel would be reduced by just two percentage points.

The challenge for farmers is, on the one hand, to meet food demands while on the other hand to protect the environment through minimizing the use of fossil fuels and providing bioenergy, carbon sinks, etc.

Over time but this could take years consumers could invest in alternative energy sources and reduce demand for fossil fuels via carbon taxes and new technologies.

Please Steal Our Fossil Fuels

Escaping the Fossil Fuel Trap

Germany doesn t have a low carbon alternative if it shutters its nuclear plants, and the same is true of most other countries. Alternative energy sources are too expensive and nowhere near reliable enough to replace fossil fuels.

We need to use energy far more wisely while shifting from fossil fuels to low carbon energy sources. Such decisive improvements are certainly possible and economically realistic.

Investing heavily in research and development of low carbon energy, solar power, or other new technologies would become cheaper than fossil fuels much more quickly.

Although science has demonstrated that CO2 from fossil fuels is heating the planet, politicians are unwilling to follow his advice and stop building coal fired power plants.

Biofuels come in two forms biodiesel used as a fossil fuel diesel substitute and bioethanol used as a fossil fuel gasoline substitute.

Americans are bombarded by industry funded media downplaying climate change, while countries that are much poorer in fossil fuels are already making the necessary transition to a low carbon future.

Addressing the problem of climate change requires reducing emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels, which in turn involves choices in technology, some of which already exists and much of which needs to be developed.

The fossil record adds little to the issue.

Of course, fossil fuels brought their own environmental problems.

We cannot break that dependence overnight. Yet we recognize that continuing to pour trillions of dollars into carbon based infrastructure and fossil fuel subsidies is like investing in sub prime real estate.

Owing to fossil fuel emissions, there is now one third more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than at any time in at least a million years, as the latest ice drilling in Antarctica has revealed.

At the same time, the group adds, we must recognize that we won t make any real progress in cutting CO2 emissions until we can provide developing economies with affordable alternatives to the fossil fuels on which they currently depend.

Indeed, the remaining carbon emissions budget until 2050, adherence to which is required to limit the global temperature increase to 2 C, is five times smaller than the carbon equivalent of proven fossil fuel reserves.

Net changes in carbon stocks are converted to CO2 by multiplying C by 44 12 and by changing the sign for net CO2 removals to be negative ( ) and for net CO2 emissions to be positive ( ).

Divest in a Better Future

Setting the long term goal to get off fossil fuels

Steam reforming Fossil fuels are the dominant source of industrial hydrogen.

The 1998 Declaration on HCFCs, HFCs and PFCs could also usefully be revisited.

Given the highly complex nature and rapid evolution of energy research and development, it is important that decision makers at all levels have access to the most recent and accurate scientific and technological information.

Most notable is the fact that carbon dioxide, the major anthropogenic greenhouse gas, and many conventional air pollutants come from the same sources (burning of fossil fuels) and can thus be simultaneously addressed through mitigation of those sources.