| Summary: | There is increased recognition by the world's scientific, industrial, and political communities that the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the earth's atmosphere, particularly CO_2, are increasing. For example, recent studies of Antarctic ice cores to depths of over 3600 m, spanning over 420 000 years, indicate an 80 ppm increase in atmospheric CO_2 in the past 200 years (with most of this increase occurring in the past 50 years) compared to the previous 80 ppm increase that required 10 000 years.2 The 160 nation Framework Convention for Climate Change (FCCC) in Kyoto focused world attention on possible links between CO2 and future climate change and active discussion of these issues continues.3 In the United States, the PCAST report4 "Federal Energy Research and Development for the Challenges of the Twenty First Century" focused attention on the growing worldwide demand for energy and the need to move away from current fossil fuel utilization. According to the U.S. DOE Energy Information Administration,5 carbon emission from the transportation (air, ground, sea), industrial (heavy manufacturing, agriculture, construction, mining, chemicals, petroleum), buildings (internal heating, cooling, lighting), and electrical (power generation) sectors of the World economy amounted to ca. 1823 million metric tons (MMT) in 1990, with an estimated increase to 2466 MMT in 2008-2012 (Table 1). © 2001 American Chemical Society. Received 20 June 2000. Published online 11 April 2001. Published in print 1 April 2001. The authors thank the Council on Chemical Sciences of the United States Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Chemical Sciences, for sponsorship of the workshop that led to this article. We also thank S. Ahmed, D. Bennett, D. Clark, R. Farrauto, D. Hucul, R. Kumer, R.W. McCabe,W. Millman, S. Oh, G. A. Olah, K. Ott, C. Peden, L.C. Satek, A. Sattelberger, M. Shelef, N. Vanderborg, B. K. Warren, and R. Weber for helpful comments. We thank Ms. Alice Christensen, Mr. Mathew Metz, Ms. ...
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