Regulations to Limit Carbon Emissions? It's the Thought That Counts...

The article "New Clean Air Rules Would Do Little" can be found in The New York Times. This Article was written by Burton Richter on October 23, 2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/24/opinion/new-clean-air-rules-would-do-little.html?ref=globalwarming

       In the article "New Clean Air Rules Would Do Little," published on October 23rd to The New York Times website, author Burton Richter enlightens us on how effective or, in this case, not effective the laws about limits on carbon dioxide emissions would be.
     
       Richter explains that; "President Obama's recently proposed regulations to limit carbon-dioxide emissions from new power plants have been much heralded by environmentalists because they would make new coal-fired power plants too costly to operate. In truth, they accomplish almost nothing."  He later goes on to explain that these rules would only apply to new power plants but there aren't many power plants that have been built recently and there aren't many plans to build much more in the future. So, basically, these new laws won't have much of an effect on decreasing emissions of carbon dioxide because there are so many older power plants that are still emitting tons of carbon into the air that have no limits.

        The new rules state that new coal-fired power plants must capture carbon dioxide from smokestacks before it is released into the environment and then send it to a location where it would be held underground for long-term isolation. The Environmental Protection Agency says this method is ready to be used large-scale use, but Richter says that most experts  "'not yet,' because it has not been tested at the required scale." 
            

       

      There is definitely controversy in the article over whether these laws are effective or not. My opinion is that these laws really aren't helping that much. They aren't putting any restrictions on the previously existing coal-firing power plants that emit tons of carbon into the air. They are restricting the new plants, but there really aren't that many that have been built recently so they aren't really making much of a contribution.

     I thought this article was extremely relevant because it is current and it is what we are learning about in biology. We are learning about the carbon cycle and we learned that carbon is considered a greenhouse gas. This means that it traps in heat from escaping the atmosphere. This increases global temperatures which is extremely dangerous for our environment. If we don't do something about it now, the affects on our planet will be devastating. 

   

   The article was pretty interesting and it made me think of the movie we watched in class, The Lorax, because it is a lot like this where in both situations there are people trying to undo the horrible damage that has already been done. There's no way we can just cut down carbon emissions from a couple plants and expect things to be better in no time, but just like in The Lorax when they plant that last Trufula seed, we are working towards making our Earth the much cleaner and better place it once was.  If we want that to happen then we need to take larger and more effective steps towards limiting our carbon emissions like using our cars less and putting better regulations on power plants. Then maybe our earth can go somewhat back to normal.