...less industry + less construction + smaller economy = less waste, less pollution, less mass consumerism and less GHGs.

That's the bad news...less regulation.

The good news is that the Fed is printing money night and day and they're telling the banks to "spend it" (well lend it, but at today's inflation and interest rates, it's basically the same thing).

So, what Green really needs is massive (private) capital infusion...translation: people (Joe Sixpack) needs to have enough money to buy green stuff like new cars, and solar panels for his deck and all the rest.

We can see with Boucher how those who believe carbon policy is inevitable but want to find a way to slough off the costs of it will cite the economic crisis as an excuse to get free permits to pollute, i.e. a free privatization of the atmosphere. That's what they always wanted to do; the perceived crisis gives them a pretext.

This should be seen as an attempted preemptive carbon bailout, since for the government to forego the auction revenues constitutes a de facto subsidy for the polluters.

(And that's not even getting into where the cap will be set, what the future emissions goals are... I have little doubt they'll also cite the general economic hardship as an excuse for anemic standards, safety valves, everything to ensure they don't actually have to do much.)

I don't know if Boucher himself is confused or nefarious; it's difficult to tell with these yahoos.

But all clear-sighted people know the way to tackle this is not through bailouts and ransom payments, which primarily benefit the malefactors who created the mess.
(Perhaps overwhelmingly benefits them. What's the whole Wall St.- Main St. conceptual dynamic but another version of trickle-down. If you don't bail them out, devastation will spread to you. But if you pay the ransom, the revival will spread.)

[BTW, I'm trying to figure out who in the DC establishment wants to "reduce the deficit" but I'm drawing a blank. Pretty much everyone's now on board with the bailout, which is poised to raise the projected 2009 deficit from $400 billion+ to $750 billion+, which is counting only part of the ransom. It could quickly ballon far higher than that.]

The solution is to "bail out" the energy system, bail out the atmosphere, bail out the money system. Bail out Main St directly. And the way to do this is by using the vast government expenditures which are going to be deployed in any event, to jump-start the big infrastructure and transformational projects we're going to have to undertake anyway, and soon, if we want any significant level of civilizational organization to long continue.

That's why this is disaster capitalism's last big gambit. By trying to misdirect the money, delay, hold out on every front, hunker in the bunker,
and keep the vermin mob chanting "Burn Baby Burn", they're trying to prevent once and for all any transformation to a higher, better, more equitable level of civilization.

Will they succeed? Is Obama the guy to "hurl down executive orders and legislative proposals like thunderbolts" over a new Hundred Days?    

Massive investment in rail, rapid transit and cycling are needed. These are transportation solutions that are green, create jobs and provide people with better, more energy efficient transportation solutions.

Much better than overpriced, resource intensive hybrids which only serve to encourage people to drive even more.

all had huge grassroots movements behind them that were directly challenging the status quo.  In particular, they were threatening to upend the electoral system -- the Populists by trying to take over the Democratic Party, and the same with the Progressives, and in the 1930s, you had Socialists and Communists, as well as a very active labor movement.

In the 1960s, you had massive civil disobedience in the Civil Rights movement, as well as the anti-war movement and then -- the environmental movement!  which wound up defeating many of the "dirty dozen" in Congress, which scared the hell out of that period's Bouchers.  All of these movements made it much easier for the "doers" like FDR and LBJ to do something.

I'm not sure where this grassroots movement will come from.  It looked like something was happening in Seattle 1999, but it's very amorphous right now.