What could local communities do to improve their air quality? What can individuals do? What will ...

Enforcing air pollution laws is important for communities. Adding green spaces can be helpful as well. Maintaining
vehicle engines is important. As vehicles that use nonpolluting fuels become available and economical, we all need
to think about changing the kinds of cars and trucks we drive. Avoiding the burning of trash is another way to
improve air quality

Carbon sequestration is the process of capturing carbon in long-term storage. The ocean has huge deposits of carbon
compounds dissolved in the water and deposited on the ocean floor. Every day, more carbon is captured from
the air and sequestered in the ocean. Research is underway to determine how humans can begin to sequester
more carbon by capturing it and burying it. One technique that holds promise is burying biomass, such as used
paper, in underground sites or landfills.

Burning coal and oil, and to a lesser extent wood, have increased the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse
gasses in the atmosphere. We need to find ways to decrease our use of fossil fuels such as coal and oil to
generate energy. Increasing mileage in our vehicles and conserving energy will help in the short run. In the long
run, we must find other ways to generate the energy we use that will not continue to increase the amounts of
greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere

Just as the greenhouse effect is a natural process, so is global warming. Global warming is the process that takes
place when the greenhouse effect warms the atmosphere. Global warming has been a natural process for at least
the last 5,000 years and probably for the past 15,000 years. Unfortunately, some gasses such as carbon dioxide
and methane are much more effective at trapping infrared energy and converting it to heat than are nitrogen and
oxygen. Most scientists are convinced that excess global warming results from the increases of those gasses that
have resulted from human activity. As the term is used today, global warming is generally used to refer to the excess
warming of the atmosphere over what would have occurred without human activity.