It is very unlikely that mankind will cut their emissions so fast and drastically that either abrupt climate change or runaway global warming is avoided.  A rapidly growing population and world economy is expected to grow emissions.

Besides, US emissions would have to be cut much more than the Lieberman-Warner bill mandates because Asian countries with very low per capita carbon footprints are expected to rapidly increase their emissions regardless of any future Koyoto protocol.

Furthermore, soon climate change is expected to reduce resources available around the world to honor mandated drastic emission cut goals.

In other words, any money spent trying to rebuild our energy infrastructure will almost certainly be too little too late.

Instead, any feasible planetary rescue plan must include a method of removing some of the excess CO2 in the air.  I suggest the low cost method of biosequestration (see my blog at http://www.myspace.com/dobermanmacleod for more information).  Otherwise, there exists a practical mechancial method of removing CO2 from sea water.

Soon a warming earth will cause carbon sinks to become carbon emitters, increasing natural emissions and overwhelming any feasible cuts we will make.  Unless a method is deployed to remove a significant amount of CO2 from the air, our climate will return to the hothouse state of 55 million years ago when most life died.

Instead, our legislators are trying to mandate unrealistic drastic emission cuts that will waste valuable resources that could be used to engineer and deploy a much less costly strategy that will have a far greater probability of success.