Funding opportunities for small businesses : Grants and low-interest environmental loans are available to help small businesses meet or exceed environmental regulations. Minnesota GreenCorps: An AmeriCorps program coordinated by the MPCA that places members with organizations around the state to address environmental issues, including air quality.
Nonprofit, government and school districts are eligible to host members to work on qualified projects. Skip to main content. Air How's the air? What we're doing to improve air quality What you can do about air pollution There are many small, but critical sources of air pollution in our homes and neighborhoods. Drive your car less. Vehicle exhaust is a major source of air pollution in Minnesota.
Electric vehicles. How could you burn less fuel? Keep your car in good repair. Fix exhaust and oxygen sensor problems ASAP. Check tire pressure monthly. Turn off your engine. An idling engine creates a hot spot of pollution. Buses and big trucks produce particularly unhealthy exhaust.
Parents and teachers can help their schools and daycares develop and implement no-idling policies. MPCA has resources to get started. Don't burn your garbage. Jump to main content. Contact Us. Carpool, use public transportation, bike, or walk whenever possible. Follow gasoline refueling instructions for efficient vapor recovery, being careful not to spill fuel and always tightening your gas cap securely. Keep car, boat, and other engines properly tuned. Be sure your tires are properly inflated.
Use environmentally safe paints and cleaning products whenever possible. Also, heating the coal to high enough temperatures uses a great deal of energy, so the technology is not energy efficient.
In addition, large amounts of the greenhouse gas CO 2 are still released with clean coal technology. Nonetheless, a few of these plants are operating in the United States and around the world. One success story in reducing pollutants that harm the atmosphere concerns ozone-destroying chemicals. In , scientists calculated that CFCs could reach the stratosphere and break apart. This would release chlorine atoms, which would then destroy ozone.
Based only on their calculations, the United States and most Scandinavian countries banned CFCs in spray cans in More confirmation that CFCs break down ozone was needed before more was done to reduce production of ozone-destroying chemicals. The Montreal Protocol controls the production and consumption of 96 chemicals that damage the ozone layer Figure below. Hazardous substances are phased out first by developed nations and one decade later by developing nations.
More hazardous substances are phased out more quickly. CFCs have been mostly phased out since , although were used in developing nations until Some of the less hazardous substances will not be phased out until The Protocol also requires that wealthier nations donate money to develop technologies that will replace these chemicals. Ozone levels over North America decreased between and Models of the future predict what ozone levels would have been if CFCs were not being phased out.
Warmer colors indicate more ozone. Had CFCs not been phased out, by there would have been 10 times more skin cancer cases than in The result would have been about 20 million more cases of skin cancer in the United States and million cases globally. Since CFCs take many years to reach the stratosphere and they can survive there a long time before they break down, the ozone hole will probably continue to grow for some time before it begins to shrink.
The ozone layer will reach the same levels it had before around and levels in one or two centuries. Climate scientists agree that climate change is a global problem that must be attacked by a unified world with a single goal.
All nations must come together to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, getting nations to agree on anything has proven to be difficult. A few ideas have been proposed and in some nations are being enacted. The first attempt to cap greenhouse gas emissions was the Kyoto Protocol, which climate scientists agree did not do enough in terms of cutting emissions or in getting nations to participate.
The Kyoto Protocol set up a cap-and-trade system. Cap-and-trade provides a monetary incentive for nations to develop technologies that will reduce emissions and to conserve energy. Some states and cities within the United States have begun their own cap-and-trade systems. Although recommendations are made each year, the group has not gotten the nations to sign on to a binding agreement.
By doing nothing we are doing something — continuing to raise greenhouse gas levels and failing to prepare for the coming environmental changes.
How bad could a few degrees be? National Geographic has a set of videos about what to expect if temperature rises by each of these amounts by degree Celsius. The easiest and quickest way is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to increase energy efficiency. One effective way to encourage efficiency is financial. A carbon tax can be placed on CO 2 emissions to encourage conservation.
The tax would be placed on gasoline, carbon dioxide emitted by factories, and home energy bills so people or businesses that emit more carbon would pay more money. This would encourage conservation since when people purchase a new car, for example, they would be more likely to purchase an energy efficient model.
The money from the carbon tax would be used for research into alternative energy sources.
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