Aaron Young
Professor Hallsted
English 1- Freshman Composition
5 November 2012
Solutions to Increasing Emission Rates
Global warming and greenhouse gases have become a very popular topic among environmentalists. According to National Geographic, the increasing use of carbon emissions in human activities like driving cars, flying planes, conducting power plants, and the burning of fossil fuels in the last 150 years, has led to higher carbon emissions levels than ever recorded in the hundreds of thousands of years before this. As a result, National Geographic says that the smog levels have increased, especially in the United States’ biggest cities such as New York and Los Angeles. That should be pretty obvious given the fact that New York and Los Angeles are the densest and second densest populated cities in the US, respectively (Hawthorn). For years, people have spent countless hours studying and researching trying to design the most innovated solution to reduce emissions. Driving and flying less seems like the most obvious cure to emissions, but it is easier said than done. Everyone claims to have the best solution, the right solution, or even better, the absolute only solution that will forever reduce emission rates. Some have suggested worldwide building upgrades to increase insolation to help lower energy costs and ultimately reduce emissions since worldwide buildings contribute to thirty-three percent of all carbon emission (Biello). Some others include moving closer to work, consuming less and even being more efficient. Many people have also suggested a philosophy called cap and trade. Cap and trade is better explained by Annie Leonard in her video “The Story of Cap and Trade” as Enron’s, the designer of energy trading, and Goldman Sachs’, prestigious wall street financers, newest money-making market of carbon trading by creating a limit on emissions and