I'm surprised ... you usually post well researched and/or well informed responses. However, in response to my question of what you would actually DO about climate change, you essentially punt.

We might take a "tiny hit?" In other words, you don't have any idea what the impact would be, but because you’re really smart friend says it’s a problem we need to then “do something??” We do this even if no other major country (China, India, Russia etc), where most of the coal and other hydrocarbon emissions stem from, will do anything except guilt trip gullible leaders like Obama into screwing ourselves economically. How can someone as smart as you possibly take a position like that?? … I mean it’s quite mystifying.

The real economy under Obama, unlike the stock market, is still very depressed. Thus, it makes no sense to me to take an unknown level of risk regarding economic damage to satisfy what sounds more like a religious belief that a bonafide, empirically based threat that has a quantifiable, economic risk reward tradeoff. In addition, the working man will take the hit even more so that well-to-do affluent liberals like yourself. Or, think about the hopeless underclass in places like Baltimore. Their lives are already horrible … so a “tiny hit” may be actually quite large in impact, and probably larger as it usually is.

Your concern is clear but your recommend solution is not in the least persuasive. I don’t really care all that much about environmentalists’ intentions …. I only care about the likely results and impact from their policies on peoples’ lives.