Fred Pearce wrote about the upcoming decision on the proposed Keystone XL pipeline to bring tar sands oil from Canada to the US (26 January, p 26). One has to ask: why are we mining tar sands? We don't need to.
The problem is that carbon burners pay nothing for their pollution. Yet if I ran a factory belching out, say, lead arsenate, I would be required to clean up every atom of this harmful material. I would pass on the cost to the consumers of my products.
Now apply this model to fossil fuel. If oil companies had to pay for the clean-up of every molecule of carbon dioxide their product created, the cost of fuel would soar. Overnight, renewable energy would become the cheaper option.
We taxpayers subsidise the fossil fuel mega corporations as we pay for the climate costs of CO2 emissions. Put a real price ...
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