People keep passing this idea of trading CO2 credits but that means there's still pollution being pumped out which will take 50 to 100 years to cycle out of the air. Coming up with a Cap and Trade system only means it's going to take centuries to get pollution out of the air if at all. The right idea would be to have a zero pollution at some point in the future to return the earth back to normal. As far as global warming goes, people with the cap and trade ideas want to live with pollution and deal with the problems of higher sea level, less water, flooding, bigger storms. Telling people that have had their cities removed from earth because of super cell tornados because it wasn't economical to change our ways is going to be a little hard to do but elected official will do it, just like fabrications of the facts for going to war in Iraq. Some elected officials oppose anything to do with correcting global warming just because the other side is suggesting it and they didn't come up with it because it's going to effect the bottom line of the companies they have invested in or they are in their constituency. There's been more tornados since the first of the year then there has been in the past three years. Yet people don't get it. I saw a sheriff say, "The weather is changing and I don't know why," he live in a flat land red state in tornado allay and most likely was a republican. Ask him why he votes that way he'll tell you, "I don't know, my parents were republican and their parents were republican, so I don't know."
I've heard people suggest that we have something like "The Manhattan Project" to solve the problem through technology. I remember in the sixties when the "Army Corps of Engineers" wanted to drill a tunnel through the San Gabriel Mountains and place large fans in them to solve the smog problem in Los Angeles.
The idea of leaving it up to the energy companies to do something will take as long as there's still oil and coal. Until they run out it's going to be the same thing with higher prices and record breaking financial quarters like what Exxon is having right now. Part of the problem is they want to drill in wild life refuge in Alaska and off the east and west coasts and in the gulf. Maybe this would be okay if they could be fined at rates that they would really be careful about any oil spills. Maybe a million dollars a barrel as a fine plus the affected people must be compensated for the loss of wages due to a spill and until the area is returned back to the way it was before the spill. Also if they want to drill in Alaska they have to pay of the law suit before they even start talking about it in congress. They have been fighting that law suit it seems forever and still are fighting it saying that the fines are still too high. There will have to be a no exceptions to the fines and penalties before they start drilling. From what OPEC has said that there's enough oil just that the market has driven up the price, maybe to get there way in drilling like they did in the seventies when they wanted the Alaskan Pipeline. Soon as congress gave the okay to build the pipeline the price dropped over night. All the sudden there was more oil and no more lines and the pipeline wasn't even built yet. Was that a manipulation of the market, of course it was. So much pressure was put on congress to increases the amount of oil output that congress caved in.
What truly would be good to do is put solar on everyone's home and flat surface out there. If it's build it has solar on it. Have government project to increase the output of solar cells. Put them on thee poorest peoples houses first. There still will be energy companies but with the amount of solar cells on roofs it would cut the cost of energy for the people. The rich can afford to pay for their own solar cells so have cut off of some dollar value based on income and how the economy is going. Of course the energy companies will be against it and come up with all sorts of reasons why it won't work, only because their bottom line will be cut. Also you could put batteries in each home so you could have power at night or cloudy days, something the new solar systems aren't doing but are selling power to the grid but then people are buying energy back at night. This could be eliminated with batteries.
Having electric plug in cars would be the way to go as far as transportation goes, since people don't drive that far for work or going to stores. Besides most of the oil doesn't go for fuel anyway's but most of the fuel goes to making chemicals for making plastics, most of which aren't recycled. Having all plastics recycled and not put in land fills oils consumption would also drop.