Regardless of whether you believe global warming is real or bullshit, isn't there a geo-political argument to be made that we should simply be using less oil and trying to become more efficient so we don't continue to prop up monarchies and radical theocracies in the Middle East who are wholly funded by their oil businesses?
Many of those regimes are funded directly by US taxpayers in the form of foreign and military aid. It would seem more rational to stop that before using force to interfere in the choices of private individuals.
This is a geo-politically complex situation. Assume this program was wildly successful. All of a sudden Saudi Arabia is destitute; Venezuela is broke; Russia is impoverished; Mexico is crippled; Nigeria is even poorer than it is now. Has the overall geopolitical environment gotten any better? Or do you now just have a bunch of very unstable countries, some of whom have WMDs?
Well, how about we take some of the $700 billion a year that we would suddenly /not/ be sending overseas to Russia, Latin America and the Middle East to build schools, hospitals, libraries in the hardest hit countries? Increasing efficiency _always_ has the potential to leave everyone better off. Econ 101. What you choose to do with the extra money left on the table is up to you, but you should never pass up the chance to do better simply because of inertia.
We don't just punt money into Russia, Saudi Arabia, etc -- we exchange it for oil which we then use productively. By definition, if we didn't want the oil more than the money (or anything else we could get for that money) we wouldn't make the deal. How does it increase the total efficiency to coerce people into spending money on X instead of Y if when they have their druthers they clearly prefer Y?
You can make the argument that we are in a sort of local maximum and that in the long run, tolerating this inefficiency is worthwhile because it would lead to the changing of the surface such that we can find an even better maximum. Could be. All I'm saying is that it's complex and monolithic technocratic solutions are doomed.
Building schools, hospitals, libraries, etc isn't such a great idea. They don't need buildings, they need trained professionals. What they really need are teachers, doctors/nurses, librarians, etc.
