Quote from drjekyllus:
So the entire west has access to geothermal. What about the central and eastern parts?
You really are a black or white kind of guy If 1/3 of the country could reduce it's impact, that would more than meet the Kyoto goals, and then some.
The country/government/private business could then 1) sell the electricity to other countries and bring more money into the economy and 2) sell the carbon credits to other countries.
You are comparing a country that has 100% access to geothermal to the US. A completely bogus and dishonest comparison.
Why? What's preventing the US from doing the same thing? It's not transmission of electricity, technology, or lack of resources.
There's two types of geothermal, one which would be useful for power generation which extracts heat from faults, the other just does heat exchange with ground loops and it doesn't require volcanic activity. The east coast could easily be encouraged to install these for home heating.
So Volcanos don't release CO2? Well now that is news. The word fraud comes to mind.
I'm not sure how you interpreted that from what I wrote. Geothermal doesn't release CO2. Volcanoes are background CO2 and release it anyway and are part of the pre-existing Earth's climatic equilibrium.
Can all power really be transported efficiently? The loss on electrical lines is 7.2%.
So I guess the US must immediately stop importing power from Canada. By the way, the loss of electrical lines is 0% if the right lines are used. That's another infrastructure investment which would be a wise choice.
Its a market priced commodity sold by the US government. If the US government is the end recipent of the funds, so how can you classify it as anything other than a tax.
If your theory was true then other countries would be paying the US for CO2 -- that's simply not going to happen. No, just like SO2 markets right now, the government caps the output and the market sets the price by demand.