Today is May 1, 2008. This is the Global Warming Era. Thanks to Al Gore, everyone seems to be familiar with the pressing issue of Global Warming and Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emissions, but in case you haven’t, allow me to recap.

Globally, we emit nearly 8 Billion tons of CO2 per year, a number that, until recent years, had been growing at about 1.5% annually. This staggering amount of CO2 has had numerous detrimental effects on our environment and rumors of legislation taxing CO2 emitting plants have never been stronger.

This sort of legislation exists in European countries like Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, yet on average, CO2 emissions in those countries has remained on the rise. Yes, despite these governments slapping businesses with millions and millions in taxes, they have continued emitting even more CO2 than ever before. Crazy? Not exactly.

As we all know, the threat of receiving a parking ticket will have little effect long term if no other parking alternative is provided (Think - college campuses). In a sense, this parking ticket example is a microcosm of the overarching CO2 tax issue. Despite the officials who believe that simply taxing CO2 emitters here in the USA will reduce annual emissions, we should look to our European friends as an example.

The cement manufacturing industry accounts for nearly 10% of the world’s CO2 emissions. Consider Markus Akermann, CEO of Holcim, one of the world’s largest cement suppliers. As CEO, Akermann has two choices. He can spend millions upon millions of dollars to set up an internal research and development team whose sole focus would be to alter their existing cement production process to rid CO2 emissions. Alternatively, he can continue supplying cement and accept a few million dollar decrease in revenue due to the proposed carbon tax. Considering an internal R&D team may amount to no process improvements with regards to CO2, which would you choose?

Until technologies for permanently sequestering CO2 become readily available, the government should spend its time investing in potential technologies rather than implementing a money-making carbon tax. Simply put, this resembles the ever old argument of which came first, the chicken or the egg. Without alternatives, CO2 emitters will not invest their own money into ddevloping cleaner technologies. And, without taxing companies, the government lacks the funds to invest in research. Essentially, this has resulted in a stand still, preventing any major improvements on the most important issue of our time: Global Warming.