[JR: Are you sure about that?]

Some might argue that carbon taxes are the way to go. I guess that is what is meant when someone writes they are all for ‘internalizing the costs of CO2 in the price of fossil fuels.’ Does that mean you are then going to work to have a carbon tax so we can internalize those costs? I’m guessing probably not. Most only want to win debating points and if you found something that may seem easier than what the other debater advocated, you thought you made your point. But then work towards getting a tax on carbon. Not so easy.

Idealogy and practicality. We can be idealogical in our view of the world, but what is it that will actually solve the problem is what we have to ask ourselves. Doing the things that govenments can do relatively quickly such as renewable energy mandates is something that can do some good. Putting a carbon tax on carbon fuels would do some good to, but it is harder to do. We are at the point of ‘all of the above,’ we need to do most things that we reasonably can do.

Recently former federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan was testifying in Congress and said that this financial crisis changed his view of the world. Some of his philosophy was at least partly libertarian as I have read. He didn’t foresee that bankers would not have enough self interest to do the right thing as far as risk. Well, I could have told him he should just go to an all you can eat food buffet and watch all the overweight people, they also aren’t doing what they should as far as risk.

This global warming problem should change our world view just as Greenspan changed his world view about the financial crisis. This is not where we can become idealogical about what we have to do, we need to be practical and have a more all of the above type attitude to solving this problem. If its a stronger building code for more insulation, do that. If its higher vehicle fuel standards, do that. If it’s spending some money to get batteries and battery vehicles built, do that. If it’s to get renewables built, do that. Can we do to much or the wrong thing and have pushback, certainly, let’s be smart about what we try to do, but we still have to do more than we are doing now.

Solving the global warming problem is the main thing and we need an all of the above, do what works approach.

(Note: Unlike Joe, I do not believe the ‘bailout’ law helped anything. In fact – I suspect that its failure to restore those regulations, its de facto lack of transparency, its failure to require a writing down of the loans, and its failure to seek removal of executives who made decisions that contributed to the crisis – will make it a law that rewards bad decisions, and thus worsens the crisis. It is not an accident that all but one of the finance institutions so far receiving bailout dollars have already spent all or nearly all the money they received on bonuses for the same executives who helped caused the crisis.)

Here I was under the impression that the “Progressive Era” ended laissez faire in the United States, and that the New Deal, again, limited the supposed excesses of laissez faire and saved capitalism from itself. If so, then how can the last 8 years of the Bush administration — which expanded the size of government more than any previous administration in history — be an example of laissez faire in action? How, pray tell, is the doctrine of socializing the risks while privatizing the profits congruous with free market principles? (I’d also point out that the government’s own financial shenanigans — like billions in taxpayer dollars that somehow manage to “vanish”, with zero accountability, every year — would make Enron’s former accountants blush.)

To say the criminals in the White House were ideologically committed to the free market is nonsense, and much too kind to a group of men and women who, in a just world, would be awaiting their trials at the Hague. The gang that brought us the Iraq war has no problem with government intervention in the marketplace so long as it benefits their corporate backers (see: interest rates, Federal Reserve & nuclear subsidies, for starters).

Whether one thinks a laissez-faire free market is the best system or not is beside the point. No doubt the Bush administration has cloaked its actions in the rhetoric of a free market (openly speaking of economic exploitation and the transfer of wealth from middle to the upper-class just isn’t as politically attractive), the Republican Party has always been committed to corporatism — rule by and for the corporate elite — under the auspices of a “market system.”

As for climate change, hasn’t it been the U.S. government burning all those fossil fuels in the Middle East — consuming more energy than any other country or corporation in the world — and subsidizing oil consumption by socializing security and transportation costs? Wasn’t it the government that — with the help of eminent domain — kicked thousands of largely poor households off their land to build the interstate highway system, leading to the atomistic, car-dependent culture the U.S. has today? Hasn’t it been government policy to enforce zoning rules that have discouraged mixed use development, leading to towns where the supermarket is 20 miles away from the residential areas?

And hasn’t the government been subsidizing corn ethanol — while imposing tariffs on the more environmentally friendly Brazilian sugar ethanol — in the name of promoting “energy independence” and fighting climate change for years? What makes you think that the election of Barack Obama will all of a sudden end decades of ill-considered and counterproductive policies? Are we to assume the fossil fuel and nuclear industries — and their legions of high-paid lobbyists — are merely to disappear?

(And before I get the juvenile “denier” or “delayer” label, I’m of the opinion that climate change illustrates the “tragedy of the commons”, and would be all for internalizing the costs of emitting CO2 in the price of fossil fuels.)

I’d suggest examining your own rigid, ideological commitment to the state as the be-all and end-all of human development before drafting another typically condescending post attacking people like Jim Hansen for not sharing your unrelenting faith in the power and majesty of the U.S. government and in the ability of omnipotent technocrats such as yourself to determine how every penny in energy-sector investments should be spent.