Random Thoughts of Chris Tilley

Environmental Defense has a wonderful article Global Warming Myths and facts. One of the myths that they bust is:

MYTH

Even if global warming is a problem, addressing it will hurt American industry and workers.

FACT

A well designed trading program will harness American ingenuity to decrease heat-trapping pollution cost-effectively, jump starting a new carbon economy.

That to me is the most damaging myth. The reason I believe that is that while we are ignoring global warming other countries are recognizing the problems, coming up with solutions and making the money.

Lets look at solar panels. According to this article Japanese companies make 50% of all solar panels and that other key makers are Europe and China. Another telling stat can be found at this site . The data is a little out of date (2001) but Japan has 7 times more Watts installed per capita than the USA. Germany and Switzerland 4 times as much. There are a number of US companies with some great ideas out there that are growing. Its that kind of innovation that we need.

Lets look a cars. First lets compare stock prices 5 years ago compared to today.

Company	5 Years ago	Today
Toyota	$60	$133
Ford	$15	$8
GM	$60	$30
Honda	$20	$36

If you search for most popular cars you will get a number of site most are pretty much the same dependent on how they are measuring popularity. This site doesn't have a American car on the list. Comparing gas milage I found the www.fueleconomy.gov. Interesting to see whats most efficient in each class Asia dominates in the small to midsize particularly Toyota and Honda. In the large cars and trucks the US is back in the game. All the companies have plans for more fuel efficient cars.

In closing I do not believe that solving global warming will hurt the US economy and more importantly I believe that not taking action now and developing the solutions will hurt the US Economy.