Who would have believed on 22 April 1970, the 1st Earth Day and thereafter the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement, that by the beginning of the 21st century the scope of environmental challenges facing our planet would also include carbon management. Carbon, as in carbon dioxide-the ubiquitous gas we generate during respiration and that plants use for photosynthesis.
No less than the Science Mission Directorate at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)the US space agency better known for looking beyond this planet-identifies carbon management as a national priority. According to NASA, carbon management is one of the key resource management and policy issues of the 21st century. The atmospheric concentration of CO 2 increased by about 25% during the 20th century and is continuing to increase in part due to the burning of fossil fuels and changes in land cover and land use. NASA believes that increases in the atmospheric concentration of CO 2 and other greenhouse gases will likely produce significant changes in global climate and accompanying changes in energy and water cycles. These changes will have profound impacts on the Earth's ecosystems and society.
There is little doubt our society will soon adopt a global low-carb(on) diet. Most scientific and public opinion have come to the shared conclusions that there is an unreasonable accumulation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, especially CO 2 , in our atmosphere and that human activity is largely to blame. The carbon management that is envisioned by national and international environmental agencies and organizations is expected to integrate all aspects of manufacturing, agriculture, transportation, and power generation around technologies that produce energy and materials with the lowest GHG emissions. In the future, carbon neutrality will factor into sustainable practices and reliance on renewable resources. It is not so far-fetched to envision that the transition to a lowcarbon diet in an economically viable fashion will require society to impose a carbon tax on consumer products and services. At this early stage of the carbon diet, emissionstrading markets that attach cost (per unit output) to GHG emissions are emerging in some countries.
If Nobel laureates Mr. Albert Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are to be believed, then globally implemented, nationally coordinated carbon management programs may be the only means to avoid catastrophic climate change. Such programs would likely be the precursors of a carbon-neutral global economy.