This refers to Sunita Narain’s 'Carbon capture strategy' (June 19). The piece is thought-provoking. Hope it serves as a timely warning to our businessmen and politicians who are so obsessed with importing western technology, even if its success has not been proved. The prospects of the dreaded carbon leaking from pipelines and unleashing havoc on innocent humans are indeed frightening. Narain is absolutely right that burying carbon is akin to burying our sins.
I wish she had got her facts also absolutely right. FutureGen, the Illinois-based clean-coal power plant, has not been scrapped. It has been revived by the Democrats (despite President Obama citing it as an example of keeping pork out of the stimulus bill). The US Energy Department has committed a billion dollars (from the stimulus bill) to ‘shovel-ready’ FutureGen, according to a statement by Energy Secretary Steven Chu. (Of course, this is not Obama's first pirouette, he has done that on the issue of the Gitmo prisoners also).
S V Krishnamachari, via e-mail
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