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Good environmental policy is good economic policy.

If the goal is to lower emissions, that's disconnected to most people. If the goal is to save taxpayers' money, now the public has some interest.

I have advocated an entirely different approach than cap and tax, which would be worldwide in application and which emphasizes technology as a way of reducing total emissions.

All we can hope for is that the thing is going to slowly and imperceptibly shift. All I can say is that 50 years ago there were no such thing as environmental policies.

Climate change might be disastrous, but does that mean we want carbon taxes that raise the price of a gallon of heating oil to $10? And how exactly will those taxes affect economic growth?

Even if every major government were to slap huge taxes on carbon fuels - which is not going to happen - it wouldn't do much to halt climate change any time soon. What it would do is cost us hundreds of billions - if not trillions - of dollars, because alternative energy technologies are not yet ready to take up the slack.

Instead of hazarding our future on the dirty fuels of the past, let's invest in clean power that can drive this country forward. Let's cut energy waste, make our economy the world's most efficient, and give our workers a leg up in the global marketplace.