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Editor: Rod Sullivan
Profession: Maritime Attorney

Category: General

Permit it to take off my maritime lawyer wig and replace it with my engineer's cap for a moment. I want to tell you what we can do about global warming.

I may be one of the few lawyers who believes that global warming exists, that it is a phenomenon caused by the burning of coal, gas, and gasoline, and the earth won't be able to correct global warming by itself. I've taken the time to "crunch the numbers." After doing the math I've come to a sobering conclusion: the warming trend cannot be reversed without nuclear energy.

A recent newspaper editorial entitled "Go on the Offensive" praised the development of "plug in hybrid" technology and predicted that 70 mile per gallon gasoline-electric cars and biofuels would produce "cleaner air, a stabler economy, and starving Middle East oil sheiks." While all that may be true, the fact is that it won't cure global warming. Even if we all drove hybrid cars, the earth would continue to get warmer.

The reason why hybrid cars won't save the earth is because in most states electricity is nothing more than coal, oil, or gas in a different form. According to DOE calculations, one kilowatt hour (kWh) of power from coal produces 2.1 pounds of CO2. The average electric customer uses between 1,200 and 1,400 kWh per month. Unless I've crunched the numbers wrong, that's an average of 32,760 lbs of CO2 per electric customer per year. In short, if CO2 were sacks of flour, we could fill a truck with the amount each customer produces each year. Someone, please tell me I'm wrong.

Now, let's look at our cars. According to the EPA the average 2005 Ford Escape produces 16,000 lbs of CO2 a year while the average 2005 Toyota Prius, a hybrid, produces 7000 lbs of CO2. By going to a hybrid car, you can reduce CO2 production by 9,000 lbs a year at best. However, when you add in home energy usage your total CO2 has only gone from 48,760 to 39,760 lbs of CO2 every year. Still a truckload of CO2, if CO2 were flour.

CO2 is not a solid, it's a gas. One pound of it takes up 8.8 cubic feet. 48,760 lbs, the amount that a family produces a year, takes up 430,000 cubic feet of space. That's about 2/3rd's of a square mile of land, covered one foot deep in CO2. That's just for one year.

Hybrid cars, biofuels, photovoltaics, wind power and any other alternative you think of won't fill the gap. Like placebos, they may make you feel good, but they won't significantly affect the problem.

The sobering fact is that the French, who supply 80% of their electrical needs with nuclear energy, got it right. My conclusion, and you are welcome to prove me wrong, is that we either start planning for a nuclear future, or we live with global warming.