Energy

My favorite amatuer economist spanks Al Bore. Film at 11. By the way, you probably didn't know North American was actually a carbon sink, did you? (Warning: heavy egghead scientist talk at the link-but also some pretty nifty charts and graphs).

Main point -- we do not right now, have an easily storable use-it-later energy source for transportation other than oil and its derivitives. All of our other energy sources (coal, gas, renewables, nuclear) are use-it-now for electrical generation. A technology shift is needed to do that, and if one occurs it will take care of the problem Mr. Bore is so worried about WITHOUT destroying the economy. If we could just store 300 or so vehicle miles in some other way than oil, a lot of our other problems would go away too.

"Technology breakthroughs displace old paradigms; I strongly prefer that to government-mandated tweaks of the old, entrenched paradigms. Remember, just as the Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stones, the oil age won’t end because we ran out of oil."

And such a paradigm shift would assist us in national security, take care of this "carbon problem" and gain us a whole new export industry that we can send to China and India, so they don't produce any "carbon problem". Neato!