There is an interesting post made by Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs, on Project Syndicate who suggests away to deal with the long adverse effects caused by burning crude oil and coal that emits CO2 and contribute to the greenhouse effects.
One way of dealing with these emissions is by taxing companies that produce such CO2 emissions and allocating these funds to solar power plants.
I think that it’s a very good and feasible suggestion, however the problem of switching from high emissions CO2 economy to a low one can only be dealt by the public and not the private sector, i.e. the government should be responsible for making this switch from using coal and oil to cleaner coal and solar power. This claim is made since it’s a national concern of reducing greenhouse effects on the one hand, and the level of investment in switching to more “green” energy solutions (such as solar plants) is very high, on the other; the private sector will find it hard to make this transition. The governments of the big economies such as US and China move slowly on this issue, because they lack motivation to make the transition from coal and oil to energy solutions emitting less greenhouse gases. I think that until there will form a “strong” international committee that will have the power to enforce and even tax countries to pay for their pollution, the switch to solar power and other less polluting energy solutions will continue to dwindle. Since forming such a committee is very far fetched and more resemble a sci-fi reality, we will need to deal with this problem using the means we have, such as the suggestion made by Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs.
For further reading on the subject:
A post written by Dirk Messner from the oilprice.com website titled An Optimistic View on Tackling Climate Change.