The conquest of global warming is clearly a morality issue. The question is, “How much are we willing to damage the earth for our descendants?  Many think that it would be unthinkably immoral to continue on our current course and threaten life on earth even if the harm is millenniums in the future.

Many pundits show complete ignorance of the technological potential for countering global warming.  They speak of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 80% by 2050.  This is a disastrous approach.  Reduction by 80% will only push the time of melting of all the ice out a short time.  To save the earth from our excess we must completely stop emitting carbon dioxide.  The path to total elimination of carbon dioxide is straight forward: encourage conservation, harvest all renewable energy possible, using the Apollo program as a model, develop nuclear fusion in a timely manner, and finally develop a hydrogen based energy distribution system.  The barriers to this approach are the reluctance of all to sacrifice, resistance from current energy suppliers, and puny leadership from politicians.

There is a clear example of the proper method of curing this type of challenge.  An instructive example is found in the logistics of supplying goods in New York City.  In 1900 large cities depended on horses for transport of both people and goods.  The horses, of course, created massive amounts of waste (a proxy for carbon dioxide). By 1900, New York had 1,250 tons of horse manure and 60,000 gallons of urine dumped on its streets every day.  Each year 15,000 horses were killed in accidents and were removed.  This situation was limiting the continued grow of large cities.  Control was achieved, not by passing laws concerning the use and/or behavior of horses, but by replacing that horse based transportation with a new technology that was better than the old.  The new transportation technology was the fossil fuel powered vehicle.  Cars and trucks were built.  Governments at all levels subsidized building of roads for the vehicles.  Within about 10 years, the problem of horse waste was dwindling and in 30 years it was eliminated.

Large cities had to eliminate horse waste and the planet earth must eliminate the waste from the combustion of fossil fuels.  Renewable energy sources are useful and should be harvested, but are unlikely to provide the quantity of energy needed.  Sir David King, the chief science advisor for the United Kingdom, recommends that fusion (not uranium fission) is the answer to future energy needs (King, David, ‘Fast Forward to Fusion’ New Scientist, Issue 2442, 10 April 2004).  Fusion reactors use hydrogen isotopes and/or boron as fuels and cannot be used to make bombs.  A fusion reactor produced positive energy in 1992 prompting an international program titled the “International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor” (ITER) program (http://www.iter.org or, http://www.efda.org)

The deniers will proclaim that we have been examining fusion for 50 years and still do not have a reactor. This is true, but fake, there has never been an Apollo type push for success; the past projects have been treated as class rooms for training future physics PhDs and not, as Sir David King suggests, humanity’s hope for abundant clean energy.

In support of success within a decade, see the 1976 report, FUSION POWER BY MAGNETIC CONFINEMENT, ERDA-76/110/1, UC-20, Page 8.  (ERDA is the United States Energy Research and Development Administration, a precursor to the current DOE).  This 1976 ERDA report states that building a pilot fusion reactor would take 10 to 13 years with a Maximum Effective Effort (using 1976 computers and technology).  Using what we have learned in the last 31 years combined with the improvements in computer aided design hardware and software we should be able to start the production of utility fusion reactors within a decade.

The notion that developing fusion is expensive is very exasperating.  Currently the world consumes approximately 80 billion barrels of oil per year.  At $70.00 per barrel, 5.6 trillion ($ 5,600,000,000,000.) is spent on oil.  A similar, possibly somewhat smaller, amount is spent to purchase coal, nuclear and other forms of energy, for a total of $8 to $10 trillion for energy.  Spending 1/2% of $8 trillion, ($40 billion) to develop an energy sources that would protect us from the near term damage of the atmosphere would seem a bargain.  This would be an expenditure of $40 billion per year for about ten years.  At this level, an Apollo type effort could easily achieve a facility fusion reactor within a decade.  The facility reactors can be sold worldwide and the initial development investment quickly recovered.  I think we can make a sound case that saving humanity’s energy dependent civilization and the earth from debilitating climate degradation is worth far more than $40 billion per year.  To help earth we must look deeply into how to determine the very long range value of a stable environment, and total recycle of resources.

Whether one likes it or not, the earth is a space craft and for at least the next century we will be limited to the use of matter currently on the earth.  With 6.5 billion people to care for we need the most advanced and efficient technology possible.