Obama Administration Accomplishments List
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- Accomplishment: Ended the previous policy of not regulating and labeling carbon dioxide emissions (ref) and Created Interagency Task Force on Carbon Capture and Storage (ref).
- What is it?
Two accomplishments that I have combined because both strive to reduce carbon emissions in our environment: the first by regulating what gets put into the air, and the second finding ways to remove existing carbon from the air. (ref) - Why does it matter?
There are about a million books, scientific journal articles, educational television programs and movies, and websites dedicated to explaining that carbon emissions cause global climate change. Nothing so dramatic as that horrific Waterworld movie, but such consequences as increased severity of storms, resulting in mudslides, tornadoes, people getting stuck in blizzards, increased power outages, et cetera.
For some reason, the first example that always comes to my mind is the "3,000 scientists" survey. As proof it's far less helpful than the many other articles that focus on scientific data, since telling me a lot of other people believe in something, like crop circles and ghosts, isn't enough to convince me that it's true, but I like it because I saw someone with a parody t-shirt where everyone was agreeing that my favorite author, Neil Gaiman, is hot. Which means that everyone was wrong -- the planet is warming up because of all the hotness that's radiating off Neil.
Back to the point, though, just quick off the top of my head, some good resources on information are EnvironmentalChemistry, Climate Crisis, and Breathing Earth. Getting this junk out of our atmosphere is vital, and CCS is extremely important to that goal, particularly if we and most other countries don't rapidly decrease our omissions. The particulars of how CSS works is beyond my scope of knowledge, but there is information at NZEC.
Follow up note: I noticed that my headline might appear to imply that we already have reduced carbon emissions. This has not happened, as we currently still are continuing our trend to ever increasing emissions. What I meant is the accomplishments put into motions steps to reduce and remove our emissions.
