Climate Change Policies Failing, NASA Scientist Warns Obama

The Guardian, January 1, 2009

In a personal New Year appeal to Barack Obama, Prof James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said current approaches to deal with climate change are ineffectual. Hansen advocates a three-pronged attack on the climate problem. First, he wants a moratorium and phase-out of coal-fired power stations – which he calls "factories of death" – that do not incorporate carbon capture and storage. Second, he proposes a "carbon tax and 100% dividend": a mechanism for putting a price on carbon without raising money for government coffers. The idea is to tax carbon at source, then redistribute the revenue equally among taxpayers, so high carbon users are penalised while low carbon users are rewarded. Finally, Hansen wants a renewed research effort into so-called fourth generation nuclear plants, which can use nuclear waste as fuel.

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