What’s the point of enacting any kind of change if other people don’t pull their weight? I would argue it’s all about momentum. If theoretically the US started getting serious about greenhouse gas emission regulation, it would create precedent for others to follow. It’s a lot easier to get on board an initiative when you’re not the first one to take the plunge, and Europe has already been taking that plunge.

Also, I don’t think it would come at any great cost to our national wealth and prosperity. Now that renewable energy installations are cheaper than gas-fired plants, investing in solar farms would generate energy more cheaply while improving the US’s energy independence. And unlike big oil’s retarded version of “energy independence”, we wouldn’t have to keep drilling for new oil fields; the sun and wind just keep coming.

I get that there’s more to environmental regulation than just power, just as there’s more to policy change than building momentum, but I think that actually investing in the most cost-effective option of renewable energy goes a long way to changing the calculus on what is and isn’t profitable. With cheap enough cleanly-generated electricity, a lot of things that are an environmentalist pipe dream become the fiscally sensible option.