Ten Ways to Save the World
It has been a tough week for climate watchers. Each day brought depressing news as scientists meeting in Copenhagen told us global warming is taking place more rapidly than expected. The seas are rising faster than predicted; the polar ice caps are melting more quickly; and the Amazon rainforest is doomed unless urgent action is taken.
The main solutions are widely agreed. Use energy more efficiently, increase the share from renewable sources. Nuclear power and biofuels are much more controversial, but are likely to be used to some extent. But new, much less familiar solutions are also emerging. The UK Independent offers 10 suggestions on how to save the world. For example:
Wise up the grid
Barack Obama, David Cameron and Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google, are all sold on creating a “smart grid,” which the Tory leader describes as like moving from “the plain old telephone system to the internet.” The present “dumb grid” just delivers electricity from generators to consumers; the smart one would enable them to communicate with each other. So, it can make fridges and washing machines and other appliances use power when it is abundant and cheap, and avoid peak times when it would be much more expensive. Smoothing out demand in this way means that the grid needs fewer power stations, and can accommodate renewable energy more easily. It would also provide a huge boost to a “rooftop revolution” where households generate their own electricity from the sun or the wind and sell what they do not need back to the grid.