Import less oil and gas.  Export more American ingenuity and innovation.

From the WSJ story: "Now House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is moving to ramp up debates on energy and how to curb so-called greenhouse gases, which most scientists believe are accelerating global warming..."

What is meant by "so-called greenhouse gases"? Does this imply that they don't exist?

And WTF with "most scientists believe", as if there is this huge debate that is not based on science but on "beliefs"?

Benny Big Eye

"Most scientists believe" leads naturally to "brave dissidents fighting to uncover the truth!"

Security is a good reason for limits on greenhouse gases. Cost/benefit is another way to represent the goals and can be persuasive on its own instead of as a subset of security. Impacts on non-human species and ecosystems are yet another reason, maybe less persuasive but still relevant.

Beyond regaining some moral authority, any solution to global climate change requires the participation of the United States. Individual nations and allied blocks of nations are voluntarily taking action, but effective GHG reduction is going to require UN-level engagement, innovation, research sharing, technology distribution, and perhaps most importantly, enforcement.

I don't know that anybody in Washington is serious about greenhouse gas and energy use reduction.

If they were serious, speed limits would be 55. That could have been done yesterday, and would reduce national gasoline use, if I remember this right, by 20%. Taxes on the purchase of fuel efficient cars could already be rebated, and/or taxes raised on purchase of guzzlers. Gasoline itself would have a much higher tax on it. Tax credits for home solar installations and upgrades would be institutionalized. On and on, the relatively painless and proven effective measures that nobody in Congress seems to be pushing for.

I fear that the real action in Washington is over who will control future energy. Big oil, electric and gas utilities all have a huge stake in this, and as the status quo is damn lucrative for them, they are all trying to stop any progress, any change. They particularly fear distributed power solutions, as that strikes at the very heart of their control over future energy.

It's really a struggle for market advantage, and any meaningful measures will be opposed by whichever companies see those measures harming their market advantage.

It's a situation that cries out for an independent energy commission insulated from political and corporate pressure, but I don't see anybody in Washington calling for that either. It looks like nothing will happen until the present system breaks down altogether, and when that happens we'll all be equally screwed.