Expense of Regulating Carbon Dioxide is Emense

There is now widespread agreement that the climate is changing. But many questions remain unresolved about the precise cause and effect relationship. The 64,000-dollar question is, To what extent does human activity and the use of fossil fuels contribute to the globe's current warming cycle?

Whatever the scientific community ultimately decides about greenhouse gases, we need to keep a couple of things in mind:

• First, the expense of regulating carbon dioxide will be enormous. There are currently no viable CO2 control technologies on the market, and it could take decades and huge R&D investments to develop them. The question, "Who is going to pay?" looms large. The answer: all of us will pay as these enormous costs are reflected in the price of the product.
• Second, climate change is a global issue that calls for global cooperation. At the very least, the U.S. needs a policy that is national in scope - one that does not single out the power industry, which accounts for only about one-third of the nation's CO2 emissions. The remaining two-thirds come from the transportation sector - cars and trucks - and other parts of the economy.

The fourth issue on my list is the nation's aging power fleet. Coal is the real workhorse in this regard. It is our most abundant domestic fuel source. Few people realize that the U.S. has a greater share of the world's coal than Saudi Arabia does of the world's oil. At current usage levels, our coal supplies could last some 300 years.

Coal accounts for about one-third of our nation's total electric generating capacity and more than 50 percent of the electricity actually produced. That percentage has been dropping recently due to the rising environmental costs I have already discussed.

By 2015, almost one-fourth of the coal units in the eastern and central U.S. will be at least 50 years old. Aging plants are being retired almost as fast as new units can be put in service.