20 predictions for 2007 Check out #4, and #5. #4 An amount of money sufficient to reduce U.S. demand for fossil fuels by at least 25% will be spent on the Iraq war. Instead of the enormous returns the former investment would bring in health and economic vitality, we will reap higher deficits, international resentment, dead Iraqis, dead U.S. soldiers, and a spiral of violence and escalation in the Middle East. #5 CAFE standards will not be raised. #7 Toyota will become the world's biggest automaker and the Prius will remain the best-selling hybrid; GM will continue to sink under legacy healthcare costs and crappy cars. The taxpayer bailout won't come until 2009. #14 The number of cities involved in the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement will top 450; the number of states involved in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative -- or some extended variant thereof -- will top 12, including California. By the end of 2007, a de facto U.S. global warming policy will have taken shape entirely without federal involvement. That will either be an amazing expression of democracy or an historical failure, depending on your perspective. While it is a blog, I'll bet at year's end, in reviewing this list he is frighteningly spot on. Except for #20 "Somewhere out in the rural hinterlands, the very last surviving climate "skeptic" will finally, mercifully STFU. " Unfortunately, that will not happen for several years. Decades maybe.
Top 10 Green Stories. At #10: "In October, venerable economist and senior U.K. government adviser Sir Nicholas Stern released a major report on global warming. Its claims were explosive. On the grim side, global warming stands to shave up to 20 percent off the world's annual GDP by the end of the century. On the bright side, it will only cost 1 percent of the world's annual GDP to avoid the damage, if we act now. That's perhaps history's largest "if." Whether or not Stern's numbers are ultimately accepted, he smashed once and for all the myth that our choice is between spending money fighting global warming and saving money doing nothing. It turns out doing nothing will cost far more."
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Godiva @ Jan 1 2007, 01:29 AM) [snapback]369203[/snapback]</div> I would be surprised if CAFE standards are not raised by the Democratic congress. They do have a fair amount of opposition to it from the manufacturing types in Detroit, but energy independence is one of the things they ran on. I wonder where Sen. Obama stands on it? He is a bit soft when it comes to the rust belt union jobs ... he favors the GM bailout, for instance.
