From David Bates
Our tropical rainforests basically use sunlight and water to convert carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into carbon-containing solids, such as trees, which can then be used as construction materials or as biomass fuel to generate energy.
Would it be possible to build large “carbon islands” on which suitable species could be grown hydroponically to provide such fuel and materials? These islands could be towed to suitable offshore locations in tropical seas where they could be anchored in large groups, many kilometres in area. Their harvested materials could then be exported to purchasing countries.
Could such carbon islands be large enough to influence local sea and air temperatures, and perhaps even modify the formation of hurricanes?
Although some innovative design work would be required, this could perhaps be essentially a low-tech concept, commencing quickly and expanding over the next 50 years or so. Could such projects help to reduce our inevitable global warming problems?
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From John Bush
To reduce our consumption of fossil fuels, each nation should replace all existing taxes with one simple tax calculated to bring in the required revenue. It would be charged at so much per unit of carbon in all fossil fuels, whether extracted from a country’s own resources or imported, and payable by the extractors and importers, who would then add it onto their sale price. Individual citizens would no longer need to calculate or pay tax at all.
Fossil fuels would become many times more expensive than at present. Citizens could then reduce their expenditure by simply using less fossil fuel. Renewable energy would become cheaper than traditional sources. Workers would live near their work again, and our addiction to air and road travel would be reduced. Smaller cars would be driven, houses would be insulated and we would wear warm clothes again. Locally grown food would be eaten in preference to that brought from around the world.
This new tax would be much cheaper and easier to administer. The enormous army of accountants and other office workers currently engaged in enforcing, calculating or avoiding the complicated tax laws would be freed from this work, and could be usefully employed in the renewable energy field.
Mount Barker, Western Australia
Woodsetton, West Midlands, UK
