Renewable energy sources on Earth such as ethanol and additional fossil fuel sources such as oil shale are far cheaper than space solar power or importing any other kind of resource from space. They are only about a factor of 2 more expensive than oil. The technology was developed decades ago after the oil crisis but not used because it is not cost effective. It will be if we run out of oil. A lot of research on this was done at the Auburn before and during the time I was there doing graduate work on bioseparations. (Manning who?). Zubrin's company has done related work on bulding basic hydrocarbon feedstocks from CO2 and hydrogen. It is meant to provide resources on Mars but certainly doesn't require space resources to apply on Earth which has many sources for CO2 and hydrogen.

This doesn't deal with the global warming issue, but since most of you around here don't care about that are you more willing to spend a far larger fraction of your money to subsidize anything that has to do with space than you are to invest in protecting the environment with down to Earth options?

Regards,
Mark