The point some hapless politicians were trying to bring up in the article is that the economic numbers don't add up.

It is an article of faith among liberals that somehow we will all get prosperous by shutting down the hydrocarbon industry and seamlessly switching to windmills, solar power, and, well, just not using very much energy any more.

Again, the numbers don't add up. A real transition is going to need nuclear power, patience, good sense, and many more years of using oil. Many people have been making this point. There are serious trade-offs.

Are you aware that in the U.S., alternative energy has been subsidized for decades? And it's still barely making a dent in the load. Flooding tax money into things that don't pay for themselves is not a good way to create economic growth.

You do not create new wealth by taxing the hell out of productive industries and subsidizing politically-favored non-productive ones. This is very common in the U.S., too (and not just in energy). You can make ethanol producers rich this way, but that's not the same thing.

I'm glad Europeans are so smug about emissions, particularly considering their lack of results from things like Kyoto.

It's also a lot easier to be smug about transportation and energy when your whole country is the size of Bill Gates' back yard.

And please, don't blame us for your economic problems. If your financiers (supposedly regulated by far more enlightened governments than ours) hadn't been doing the same stupid stuff, they would have done all right, same as the banks in our country that weren't doing stupid stuff are doing all right.