Thorium: Energy Cheaper than Coal

Energy cheaper than from coal

Published Robert Hargraves on July 11th, 2010
When economic well-being measured by the gross domestic product exceeds a threshold, birthrate drops sharply.

Global warming now threatens irreversible climate damage, ending glacial water flows needed to sustain food production for hundreds of millions of people, and shrinking the polar cold water regions of the ocean where algae start the ocean food chain. Atmospheric CO2 dissolving into the ocean acidifies it, killing corals and stressing ocean life. Demand for biofuels increases destruction of CO2 absorbing forests and jungles.

Burning coal for power is the largest source of atmospheric CO2, which drives global warming. Airborne coal soot causes 24,000 annual deaths in the US and 400,000 in China. We seek alternatives such as burying CO2, or substituting wind, solar, and nuclear power.

Let's Get This Party Started

Financial Transaction Tax Spawns an Advocacy Movement

Suggestions for a minuscule but highly productive levy on currency trading and/or financial transactions have been around since the Tobin Tax proposal in the Seventies, but have been effectively stifled by the brokerage and banking worlds ever since. Recently, however, the public's energetic animosity toward the speculation-driven economic meltdown and bailout antics have birthed fresh revivals of the concept such as the following UK movement for a "Robin Hood tax"

An overview of the proposal: "An Idea Whose Time Has Come: Adopt a Financial Transactions Tax" (pdf file) by John Dillon, May 2010

Related articles

• ECB's Trichet wary of financial transaction tax (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• 60 states to lobby U.N. for currency transaction tax (reuters.com)