Hot Danish

It doesn’t look like a climate change agreement will be reached in Copenhagen next week. All the more reason the U.S. and China have to work together to save the world from the looming climate crisis that knows no borders. Science dictates action now. Political rhetoric of future mid-century intentions is not good enough or acceptable to prevent a global warming apocalypse.

America’s will to cut carbon emissions by only 17 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels, when compared to the European Union’s 20 percent, Japan’s 25 percent and China’s 40 to 45 percent, is shortsighted and shameful.

Just cutting greenhouse gas emissions is not good enough either. China and the U.S. have to lead the world and get it to place a greater focus on the reduction of deforestation and on research for new clean technologies.

Reducing deforestation is the cheapest way to mitigate climate change in the short term. If we stop cutting and burning tropical forests in Brazil and Indonesia we can eliminate 17 percent of all global emissions. But to do so requires putting in place a whole new system of economic development that makes it more profitable for the poorer, forest rich countries to preserve and manage their trees than chop them down to make furniture and toys. Without a new system for economic development in the timber-rich tropics, the rain forests are doomed.

Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio da Silva wants “gringos” to pay Amazon nations to prevent deforestation as a price for their environmental sins of the past.

Laser Inertial Fusion Energy, or LIFE, is a new clean cutting edge technology worth pursuing. It is a controlled nuclear fusion ─ fusing nuclei rather than splitting a nucleus, as happens in existing nuclear-fission power plants ─ can produce an endless supply of safe, clean energy. In a fission reaction, the nucleus of a uranium atom is split into two small atoms, releasing energy in the form of heat. The heat is used to make steam, which drives a turbine and generates electricity. In fusion energy, the second half of this process, that is heat makes steam makes electricity, remains the same. But instead of splitting the nucleus of an atom, you’re trying to force a deuterium nucleus to merge, or fuse, with a tritium nucleus. When that happens, helium is produced that throws off energy.

Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California have been given $3.5 billion of taxpayer money to develop this new fusion technology in a commercially viable way. It involves a small pellet that contains a few milligrams of deuterium and tritium, isotopes of hydrogen that can be extracted from water that is blasted with a powerful laser that creates a reaction like the one that takes place at the center of the sun. Harness that reaction, and you’ve created a star on earth, and with the heat from that star you can generate electricity without creating any pollution. It is real solar power that can replace nuclear, coal and oil power plants.

LIFE would produce energy with no carbon emissions, from a fuel that is cheap and abundant. Ten gallons of water could produce as much energy as a supertanker of oil.

Scientists believe utility companies could be building prototype “LIFE engines” by 2020, and have commercial plants up and running by 2030

China is also pursuing nuclear fusion energy. Why don't China and the U.S. develop fusion technology together? Fusion energy is a potential solution to a looming crisis.

China, the front runner in the fight to address climate change, is prepared to lead the climate change charge alone or with the other BRIC countries. It certainly has the money to do so. If it does, it will literally leave the U.S. in its dust.