Compact or dispersed? dilution is no solution

It has taken many years to establish the argument that pollution prevention is required to control environmental damage. Policies for pollution dispersal influenced by the self-interest of the industrial lobbies gave us taller chimneys (and acid rain) and longer outfalls (and polluted seas). Pollution dispersal has been a failure. Moreover, the most pressing pollution problem we face is already dispersed: the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere with the associated threat of an unprecedented rate of climate change. It is the total quantity of carbon dioxide (C02) in the atmosphere that is the problem: not whether it is concentrated or dispersed. Climate change has rapidly climbed national and international political and research agendas. The main contributors to the problem are carbon dioxide, CFCs, methane, nitrogen oxides and ozone. The 1990 report of the inter Governmental Panel on Climate Change indicated that a reduction in carbon dioxide