However I'd note that this problem also applies to emissions reductions per se, not just energy intensity goals.

Take a carbon tax. We can reduce emissions with it, but many emission-heavy activities can just move overseas. Of course this is not true of gasoline and not really true of power plants, so it's still a very good policy.

More subtly, even a "carbon-neutral" U.S. economy is not really sustainable if it depends on the ability to trade with emission-heavy foreign economies. If we are dependent on loads of cheap Chinese products that were produced using coal power, we are not carbon neutral.

That's why ultimately we need a global carbon price regime. But for the moment we at least need a U.S. carbon price.

I thought about what you just wrote about.   I think it can be handled with 2 different tax rates.

non import/export carbon tax rate.

 import/export carbon tax rate.

The first carbon tax rate would be for carbon burning that doesn't compete with importing and exporting industries.   This would be like a sales tax, but would be a fossil fuel sales tax.  The second carbon tax rate would have to be something negotiated world wide.   Something like buy the year 2012, tax manufactoring carbon at 40 dollars ton.   2015 carbon tax at 60 dollars a ton world wide, etc..

The first rate could be higher.

But thats all a guess of what would work.  It looks like the most politically possible is cap and trade.    we'll see.  

Another big load of cash for big coal, big aggribizz, and nukers.

With this level of misunderstanding, this meat head has no business even being a senator, much less VP.  Compare this moronic plan with Al Gore's understanding of energy policy.

Obama looks like he is a sentient being, but evidently he is merely an empty shell for lobbyist crap filling.  This was all written by  lobbyists for biofuel, nuclear, and clean coal.  Auto/oil companies had a big part in it too.

Hillary knows all about real energy policy that aims to force reform on business as usual.  will she be able to implement it?  Doubtful with representatives like Obama in the senate and congress.  But at least she is aware of it.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Understand this, fundamental change will happen as it pertains to energy. The paradigm of the present is being changed by global economic and environmental forces that cannot be controlled by the interests of one group over another. That said disruptive technologies are already coming forward like deriving real time hydrogen from a simple catalyst reaction of water. Or the theory that all grid energy for the world could be captured from solar energy captured by satellites and tranmitted to receivers on earth like satellite TV. Or the fact that technology exists to produce clean (natural) methane gas from coal and oil deposits still in the ground real time.

Economies change with fundamental technology, we saw this with the telecom/IT revolution just over the last 25 years. Right now medical science is in the midst of a revolution with the advancement of the genome technology.

As for the politics, things do change. Abraham Lincoln changed the landscape with what resulted in the Civil War and Emancipation. That was a fundamental economic and political change. Theodore Roosevelt funadmentally changed the capitalist system through Trust busting. And FDR fundamentally changed the landscape with American Socialism.

Naysayers will be left surprise but things will change and my evidence is that venture capitalists are flocking to this sector as never before. BTW forget the ethanol world that is about to bust. As GM stated the internal combustion engine is a dead end, so onto the future and progress.