Imagine the wealth this country could preserve if we were energy independent. The trade deficit would plummet. Wars are or will be fought over oil. If oil does get cheaper somehow, it just means another Chinaman can buy a car, and up goes the price again- yeah peak oil is here. What if we had a booming world economy right now- where would the price of oil be- much higher. So what if we have 100 years of gas or whatever, then what, we go extinct? Cap and trade is a enviromental issue, more to do with coal burning, but encourages renewable energy. If they can do it fairly amoung nations, fine. Discouraging its use may lower price increases, offseting the tax. It is meant to encourage low carbon energy, not cripple economies. Of course, special interests put it down, and wall street profiteering is a concern and am glad that concern has some attention. Got to have energy, the enviromental green thing and USA made would be the bonus.
We have in the past, and we will again in the future. History is rife with societies that cut down the last tree or drained the last drop of freshwater and then simply disappeared.
The book "Square Foot Gardening" asserts that a person can get all their veggies from 16 square feet and not a lot of water! And I believe it's been demonstrated abundantly... the part that is not sustainable is the use of Vermiculite to make the soil. Vermiculite is not in unlimited supply but there has to be other ways to make up the soil.... the best diets from around the globe are 80% vegetable and we can get protein from whey, meat, veggies, etc... humans can easily double and redouble a few times more, there is an awful lot of land still to be inhabited. We'd have to give up the poisoning of the earth to do it though... recently I went carless for five months, lost 30 pounds, walked tens of miles per week, got in shape, got healthier... now somebody loaned me a nice Camry because I'm watching their relative for them sometimes and I've gotten readdicted to the automobile... I was happier without it! All the people I hang with, have lunch with, etc are "going to start exercising" or "going to have to lose a few pounds" and they all drive their cars everywhere and think exercise is walking a few blocks!! I tell them repeatedly that they should just dump their cars and they look at me like I was nuts!! Some are even very pro-green but they won't consider dumping their car(s) and using the excellent bus system we have.. which allows for taking bicycles on the bus and everything even...
The problem is that "free markets" do not price environmental damage properly (if at all). There is a huge economic cost to future generations of spewing enormous amounts of GHGs into the atmosphere, but that is not currently priced in by the market. The current situation is a complete market failure.
I'll agree with those who said previously that, first problem is business as usual. We cannot afford to let things go, as if we'd find means to solve the problems later on through technological breakthrough. We are relying on Chinese to foot the bills, by growing their internal consumption, to avoid stagflation. If the aims are for Chinese and Indians, to consume as much as Americans do, we're going down. Yet, if we wait for costs to rise, to reduce consumption..we risk political crisis that would undermine output growth to a scale we cannot afford, to find sufficient ressources to feed everyone. 2nd of all, state are competing for ressources and this undermine regulations, as producer-shareholders and consumers can cherry-pick until its very late and consequences have ruined our levers. A good middle-ground would be to implement better urban management regulations, while protecting the weakest during the transition at reasonable scale. Also, better political envirronment would ensure we don't get distracted by geopolitical infighting or trade wars. What does it mean? Perhaps, that media ownership have minority state shareholders, to reduce reliance on advertisements. Also, that politicians get money with each voters they get, leaving them less reliant on special interest groups.