Politicians are obviously at odds with scientists on how to deal with the issue of global warming. There is already a price tag placed on global warming, $45 trillion dollars, that's
trillion with a "T". (USA's annual budget $3 trillion). When we start putting price tags on anything, to include even an alleged crisis, it means somebody's looking more for money and less for actual solutions.
As I've said before, free market economics will have us off fossil fuels faster than government dictates, mandates, deadlines, and taxation. Those will cause economic hardship for everybody involved, sort of like government mandated ethanol development has done for the starving nations and everyone's grocery bills.
People want hydrogen powered cars, Ben. There's a huge demand for a non fossil fuel burning vehicles right now! If we had them, GM Ford, and Chrysler would have banner yera with profits unseen by any corporation save for Exxon/ Mobil. But, know why GM hasn't got one in the showroom floor? Because despite the internet rumors, the technology isn't there yet to build a cost effective reliable version for popular use and no government can speed it up via hair-brained deadlines, cap & trade schemes, carbon footprint taxation, and political lip service.
We need to drill our own oil in ANWR, Dakota, and the Gulf. Yeah, it won't be on line until roughly ten years out, but the impact of just passing the legislation to start the work will shake OPEC enough that they'll open their tap up a little bit more. Oh, and if Clinton didn't veto the ANWR drilling bill that passed congress in 1994, that oil would have been in the pipeline right now.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080606/ap_on_sc/japan_iea_climate_change
http://www.american.edu/ted/alaska.htm---------------------------------------
"When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators." - P.J. O'Rourke
-Pete
