Broadway Dems Talk Emissions

Klaus Lackner, Columbia professor of geophysics, spoke to a packed meeting of the Broadway Democrats last night in the basement of Bank Street College on 112th Street. He presented a vision of alternative energy that he said would reduce the world's emission of carbon dioxide to almost zero.

Following club business concerning Tuesday's primaries, Lackner was introduced by Assemblyman Danny O'Donnell, fresh from his Democratic renomination, who described energy independence as "the most important issue facing our nation."

Lackner, also director of the Earth Institute's Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy, has long been an advocate of zero-emissions power plants. An expert in the field of carbon sequestration, he spent an hour explaining how such a strategy could eliminate the 20 billion tons of carbon dioxide humans pump into the atmosphere each year-while providing enough energy to support a projected population of 10 billion people.

"I do believe that it can be done if we have the will. But it will add something to your electricity bill," Lackner said. "We can fix these externalities, rather than paying for the damages, by doing it right."

Lackner described several methods by which carbon dioxide emissions-which have been shown to cause ecological disruption in the form of higher sea levels, retarded coral growth, and other consequences-could be reduced by the necessary 97 percent.

The technology exists, Lackner said, to strip carbon from industrial emissions as well as to pump carbon dioxide back into the oceans, use it to force oil out of the ground, or recapture it from the air using chemical filters. To pay for this, Lackner proposed requiring businesses to purchase permits for the carbon dioxide they emit-as Norway has done-to the tune of $50 per ton.