Our economy is too weak to be strong enough to change

Weakly Standard:

But although the jobs loss associated with such a cut of billions in output doesn't sound like much to academics with lifetime tenure, it is a nontrivial number to those responsible for maintaining a rapidly growing economy, and who are appropriately suspicious of sophisticated economic modelers of the sort who brought down Long Term Capital and, almost, the U.S. financial system.

Meaning: there's no way we can pursue conservation-oriented policies to address global warming because in a free market we would need to impose higher fuel costs which would make SUVs less popular and hence lead to the laying-off of many auto-workers who manufacture SUVs.

That enabled the U.S. economy to shrug off the high crude oil and gasoline prices that followed Katrina and that, in an earlier time combined with some inept policy reactions, might have produced a severe economic downturn. But the attractiveness of conservation is and will remain largely, although not entirely, a function of energy prices; witness the stocks of unsold SUVs decorating dealers' lots in the aftermath of $3 gasoline.

On the other hand, our economy is strong enough to respond to higher fuel costs and absorb all those laid-off SUVs manufacturers.

I do tend to agree with the argument that we need more "clean coal" plants, but given the fact that one measly plant has been operating profitably for over 10 years and no other plants have been built--something which is even less likely given the recent de-regulatory frenzy--I'm not hopeful to see the realization of the dream scenarios these people keep feeding us. So in lieu of dreamscapes of a carbon-free economy, let's work on some conservation technologies in the meantime. Even though it's said that the "low-hanging fruit" has already been plucked, I look around and see plenty of low-hanging fruit that can still be plucked if only we would spend less time, money and effort coming up with scewed figures as to how little American participation in Kyoto could help and start producing products that are efficient enough for the rest of the world to actually want to buy.

A Prometheus post a few days ago sums things up well:

"The Kyoto Protocol was intended to be a first step rather than an adequate response in coping with climate change.... Some presenters are calling for more adaptation science as well as mitigation science, although specific needs are rarely described. Adaptation may require as much research in social science as in natural science or engineering, as adaptation will require a better understanding of how social systems can be encouraged to adjust to changing climatic conditions. Of course, the same can be said of mitigation, where behavioral change is required to reduce dependence on greenhouse gas emitting energy sources. Better understanding of social, political, and economic realities is required before the world can hope to respond adequately to the challenges of climate change.
Science and technology have always played a critical role in climate change. What is a little scary here in Montreal is the increasing reliance the entire world seems to place on S&T to bail us out of a difficult situation by developing a silver bullet."