Green Options

Korea’s rapid industrialization can be felt everywhere, from the coastal landscapes, which are dotted with factories, to the large cities–Seoul, Busan, and Daegu–which often have air quality so poor that skylines are swallowed in smog.

Now, the outgoing government of Korea has passed new legislation to combat this pollution and join in the international battle against climate change.

The aptly named “Act on Climate Change” will establish an emissions trading market, raise the bar for renewable energy, assist in reducing industrial, home, and vehicle emissions, and increase carbon capture.

In an article that ran earlier this month, I learned the Swedish government has announced that Sweden is beating emissions targets as laid out by the Kyoto Protocol.

“Sweden was allowed to increase its emissions by more than four percent.

[But] emissions have decreased by nearly nine percent so [overall] that means Sweden has reduced its emissions by 12.7 percent, more than agreed under the Kyoto Protocol,” said the political advisor Hannes Borg.

For the first time ever, a U.S. regulatory agency denied a coal plant permit solely on the basis of its carbon dioxide emissions. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a main contributor to global warming.

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) denied permits to two large, 700-megawatt plants proposed by Sunflower Electric Power. The plants would have cost about $3.6 billion and spewed 11 million tons of CO2 into the air each year. That’s almost

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