That's a major assumption, you're *assuming* that technology will solve everything for you. However, technology will also create problems. Just like solar panels may (or may not) become cheaper, coals plants will also become cheaper, and the digital revolution may (or may not) put increasing pressure on the resources of pure silicon, making it more expensive and thus leading to more expensive solar panels.
No, I'm not. Plain old resedential solar panels have increased in efficiency dramatically in just the last 5 years, while also getting smaller. And that's just crappy old residential solar panels, never mind cutting edge solar power sources like Brad has mentioned elsewhere in this thread. You really think that we're going to be on carbon derivative fuels forever? Or is that just a convenient way to increase the immediacy of the supposed threat from AGW. Pretend the solutions aren't around the proverbial corner and suddenly this "catastrophe" requires large scale immediate government action! It's just a coincidence that's the issue is being pressed by people who ALWAYS think the solution to their flavor of the decade problem is large scale government action.
There are also other pressing points, like increasing population, reduction in wealth, increasing poverty. We are pretty rich nowadays, you may not realize it. We could well be at the peak (or just past the peak) of global wealth. An increase in population, coinciding with a depletion of resources, will create new problems that future generations have to solve, IN ADDITION to the problem of CO2.
This is just silly. If we're at "peak wealth", whatever the hell that is, how is the IMF forecast for global economic growth positive next year? And poverty isn't increasing, especially not on a global scale. There are fluctuations year to year, but like you AGW people say it's all about trends. Look at the economic trends. By any measure poverty around the world is shrinking. Here's the $2/day living standard that is commonly used.
http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTPOVERTY/EXTPA/0,,contentMDK:20040961~menuPK:435040~pagePK:148956~piPK:216618~theSitePK:430367~isCURL:Y,00.html
And anyway... it won't have to cost us very much. The necessary changes can be spread over several generations, we don't have to pay everything ourselves. We just need to start and plan ahead and pay our fair share as well as we can.
You and others have already said that you have no idea how much it will cost. That's the whole point. It's a poorly thought out magic bullet. And, like most poorly though out magic bullets, the poor will be the ones who get screwed the most. In this case the poor are the developing economies who suddenly can't use cheap carbon based fuels to develop and can't afford expensive Fat Rich White Western 1st-worlder Approved fuels.
Dear sir, most of the pollution comes from the US, China, Europe and Russia. Those have enough knowledge and wealth that a small sacrifice to make a better world wont hurt.
If you think Russia and China will do anything to combat global warming, you're fooling yourself. They talk nice about AGW because they love to see the US and Europe, their main competitors economically and geopolitically, shoot themselves in the foot and voluntarily make themselves less competitive. Same thing with rest of the BRIC countries. Their is no chance they along with AGW, not really. Not at the fundemental, change your economy level.
So really what you're doing is hamstringing the US and European economies for no real reason, because those other countries' CO2 production will continue to grow and make up for any savings in the US and EU. And then developing 3rd world economies' CO2 use will continue to grow, unless you force them not to use carbon based fuels because when they see the BRIC nations ignoring it, they will too.
We can't stop poor ass completely isolated North Korea from getting nuclear weapons. You think we can enforce economy damaging AGW solutions world-wide? Seriously?
