[patrickk]

Or start consuming earth's resources in a sustainable manner, e.g:

- heavily taxing gasoline vehicles and subsidising electric vehicles to encourage adoption.

- heavily taxing non-renewable sources of electricity generation, subsidising solar, wind etc.

- Use carbon taxes to fund more research into renewables and maybe Thorium, advanced battery technology etc.

You could have a gradual ramp up of taxes to ease the burden of shifting to renewables.

The biggest problem is getting people and governments to change their old mindsets. Politics, not technology is holding back progress.

[jsmeaton]

We've got some form of carbon tax in Australia and people are up in arms about it. "How DARE they put my power bills up". "Why should we go first if no one else is doing it"? Everyone complains about global warming and wants something done, but not out of their own pocket. Any government instituting these kind of taxes will be booted out, and the opposition will come right along and repeal them.

It's ridiculous.