The rain forest reference was just pointing out the absurdity of expanding farm lands, while committing land to growing fuel.

And why exactly would taxing consumption be any better? Hydrocarbons once out of the ground become a diverse array of things. Who would determine the carbon content of each product on the market? Sounds like a massive massive program that is open to all kinds of politicking. When I buy a car, would every plastic item and lubricant be tallied and carefully counted?

And if the cracking process releases a bunch of that pesky carbon, does it just go unaccounted for? I really don't understand the desire for consumption taxes when taxing a wellhead is more straightforward and harder to cheat.

But this all goes to my point - the farther you get from taxing what comes out of the ground directly and applying it to alternatives, the more it just looks like shady politics.

I certainly expect so. Carbon is life friendly - oxygen is the caustic crap plants put out as waste that later lifeforms adapted to use as fuel. Really the earth is always self-balancing, the only question is whether or not it is hostile to humans. The Earth could take us or leave us, life really has no opinion on what should survive.

Anyone claiming to be sure either way is basically full of crap. Both sides are mostly opinion and world view driven. What the alarmists need to understand about deniers is that we mostly have no problems with reducing usage of oil. Most people are all for that.

The problem is that most of what is being offered up as a solution looks more like efforts to create massive world government and to legislate life itself.

There is only ONE source of carbon that is of concern, and that is oil/coal. All other carbon, be it burning trees or cow farts, is part of a self balancing biosphere.

If the concern really is just about carbon, then the solutions would be as simple as taxing well heads and coal mines, then distributing that cash back to the consuming countries to be spent on alternatives.

Tearing up rainforests to plant corn, and then burn that in our cars is not sane. It is talk of taxing animals, food, babies, and other such crap that makes people like myself cringe and eye the whole movement suspiciously.

I think that as Americans we get conditioned to sign everything and rarely think about not doing it. Every time I refuse, I get weird looks, but I've never once been denied service.

Last year I wouldn't give a dentist my SS# prior to a cleaning, and was denied service. One of the most absurd thing I have seen in ages. They wanted my SS number more than they wanted my $100 I guess.

...Though it has been hinted too, but this essentially gives machines the same footprint on the earth as living creatures. Rather than being fueled by goo that comes out of the ground, our airplanes cars and houses will becomes consumers of food. I would like to know how much a jet 'grazes' each day to operate and how much food supply it is going to consume.