Quote from rew:
There are no carbon taxes in the United States, or in most of the other places in the world, particularly where carbon emissions are increasing most rapidly, such as China and India. Europe is putting carbon taxes on airline fuel, and China is fighting it tooth and nail, blocking Airbus orders in retaliation. Cap and trade is in place in some countries but even there it's a joke because big free carbon allotments are always given to the biggest carbon producers. (If you want the most politicized possible approach to reducing greenhouse gasses, support Cap and Trade.)
What small cars? I still see Americans buying giant SUVs and pick up trucks to get their groceries and commute to work. Then they whine about $4 a gallon gas. When I was a child Americans had bigger families and smaller cars.
Solar power and wind power, aside from being uneconomic, produce only a trivial fraction of our electricity. Most still comes from burning coal or natural gas. Some comes from nuclear power, which produces no greenhouse gasses but does from time to time make an area the size of Delaware uninhabitable.
There is ample evidence that human caused global warming is real. There is even more evidence that the costs of preventing this are so high, and the willingness of the public to incur those costs so low, that nothing of significance will be done about it. The conservatives will keep insisting that those evil climate scientists are liars and frauds, no matter how much evidence piles up, and the liberals will continue to fail to own up to the real costs of completely overhauling modern, overwhelmingly fossil fuel dependent, economies.
So the planet is fucked. Only fools are optimists.
