Yet another encroachment on our freedoms

[kandrathe]

In other words, Smoot-Hawley isn't like these other things in any real sense at all, but it makes a neat boogeyman to compare to things you think are bad ideas.

It's not just me. It's also the Congressional Budget Office. But, hey, its the Dems who are lauding Obama as the next FDR, and condemning Bush as the new Hoover. So, Pelosi and Reid must be the new Smoot and Hawley.

However, you're being quite misleading about what Obama has promised. First, the 80% figure refers to carbon emissions, not energy consumption. This means switching to nuclear, solar, wind, and other low-carbon technology, *not* reducing energy consumption to 4/5ths. Second, this target is for 2050. You have forty-one years to get there; for now, the best that can be hoped for, even under the most optimistic plans, is to stabilize carbon emissions levels. I suspect the US (nor any major industrial power) is not going to meet even that target. But to not even try would be environmentally suicidal.

Ok, so lets make sure we have the horse in front of the cart. I don't see a horse yet. Let's focus on getting a horse.

By these types of actions, you would be joining the rest of the modern world in facing the concerns of the future: rising inequality and global climate change. Nobody serious is talking about "environmental nirvana". Just something a little more sane than "drill, baby, drill."

Thats all well and good if *everyone* plays by the same set of self limiting rules. If China, however, decides to burn coal, go nuclear, build wind mills, and drill baby drill they will become the 800 lb gorilla in the world, while the rest of us breath their dirty air and buy their manufactured goods.

Sometimes I seriously wonder how you come up with these things. Live off the land? In the United States? How bad to expect this to get, exactly? Even in the case of a cataclysmic 90% drop in GDP, you could still do better than retreating to the hills to hunt and forage.

I lived through the 70's, and that was not as bad as the current economic crisis might shape out to be. I remember it was a time when the paycheck no longer covered the fuel we needed to run our farm, get my dad to work, and pay for groceries. My mom needed to go out and also earn money to cover expenses, and we spent our summers weeding a 5 acre garden to grow and preserve our own food.

You'd rather not do cap and trade, and do something more rigorous instead? Sounds great to me. You think cap and trade, weak as it is, is already too much? Sounds like the ostrich approach to climate change.

No, I want wind, solar, nuclear, and whatever else to offset the need for petroleum. That would be putting the horse before the cart.