• Robert Redford
  

We all know or should know by now that CO2 is one of the villains in global warming. But there are other problems that arise from CO2. Higher doses of CO2 can cause damage to vegetation and life forms that lie slightly below the surface of the ground. Higher doses than what is considered normal can be toxic to plants and other creatures as well. Large quantities of CO2 can be deadly to the larger life forums that inhabit the earth. In 1986 when a substantial amount of natural CO2 was released from the bottom of Lake Nyos in Cameroon, asphyxiated about 1,800 people.
Dangerous amounts of CO2 releases from sequestration sites are highly unlikely, unless there were to be a accident, due to monitoring failure, but the possibility must be considered. It would be more likely that the ill effects would be at minimum and that the worse possible scenario would be that the release would reverse any benefits that the sequestration process had achieved before hand.
Injecting CO2 involves the contamination of shallow groundwater used for drinking and irrigation. The mineral leaching that is sought-after for sequestering CO2 deep underground would make drinking water unpalatable. Is it a good idea to contaminate our drinking water? It has been predicted that water supply for the entire earth will be short in the next two decades and that there will be millions of displaced peoples in the world because of contaminated water and drought related problems. In fact we are seeing areas already suffering from the lack of water.
Although sequestration supporters insist that the CO2 will be injected into deep aquifers where the water is brackish and unsuitable for living forms to drink, the problem is that the pressure might cause a change in the balance of the under ground formations and could cause the undrinkable water to rise up into the clean aquifers that people and animals depend on to survive.
Earthquakes could be a result of sequestration; the pressure of forcing C02 into the cracks in the rocks could enlarge the cracks setting off earthquakes. For example, In the 1960s, the U.S. Army injected about 165 million gallons of liquid toxic waste from munitions manufacture into a formation under the Denver basin. From 1962 - 1967, there were some 1,500 seismic "measures" centered on the injection area, including three earthquakes at or above magnitude 5.
The Columbia Basin is several hundred miles from the Pacific Subduction zone, where it is predicted that there is an intimate event of a 9+ earthquake due at anytime, as history shows. As a result of a 9-magnitude earthquake at this location, would trigger at least a 5 magnitude on the scale in the Columbia Basalt region. Scientist do not know what the results would be in the basalt areas.
Supporters of the sequestration process imply that the past history of air and water trapped in basalt for millions of years, have not been effected by earthquakes. So therefore sequestration in basalt would be safe, and that the basalt would contain the injected CO2 trapping it and not allowing it to leave the point of entry. But then others contradict this theory.
Many environmentalists are concerned about the side effects of carbon sequestration, adding that if the process were a sure thing it would already be in use. Adding that no one knows if the earths crust could bear the immeasurable amounts of CO2 injection, that it would take to stop global warming. More tests are needed before sequestration can be proven safe. We do not have the time needed to wait on this research.
As inhabitants of this earth we need to stop global warming in its tracks, and quickly, we have run out of time our attack on our planet has come back to bite us. If we are to have a planet to live on, that will sustain our lives and the lives of every living thing on this planet, we need to act now in reducing and stopping global warming. It is up to each and every one of us to do our part, to reduce our carbon footprint. We need to demand that all corporations in the world stop releasing contaminates into our air and water, we need to demand that our elected officials write legislation to concur with standards that far surpasses what is in place of minimizing pollution. Demand enforcement of environmental laws, introduce huge fines against corporations who ignore environmental laws, make it more costly to ignore the law than to abide by the law.
As a group we should ban together, refusing to buy products from companies that are not environmentally sound. We could have a monetary impact on corporations that do not adhere to environmentally sound practices, after all, if a corporation loses money, that will be, what it will take, for them to be responsible citizens of this planet.