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Have you heard the Tom Friedman podcast: Hot, Flat and Crowded? - Search in Oct 2008 on this page: http://tinyurl.com/23tzpu

After a year of watching adults engage in devastating recklessness in the financial markets and depressing fecklessness in the global climate talks, it's refreshing to know that the world keeps minting idealistic young people who are not waiting for governments to act, but are starting their own projects and driving innovation. "Why did this tour happen?" asked Ringwald. "Why this mad, insane plan to travel across India in a caravan of solar electric cars and jatropha trucks with solar music, art, dance and a potent message for climate solutions? Well ... the world needs crazy ideas to change things, because the conventional way of thinking is not working anymore."

It's true, Mother Nature doesn't tell us with one simple number how she's feeling. But if you follow climate science, what has been striking is how insistently some of the world's best scientists have been warning - in just the past few months - that climate change is happening faster and will bring bigger changes quicker than we anticipated just a few years ago. Indeed, if Mother Nature had a Dow, you could say that it, too, has been breaking into new (scientific) lows.

"So those are our choices, folks - an escalating 'More Tax' forever, premised on immediate gratification and short-term thinking, or a 'Carbon Tax Cut' forever, which is exactly what you'll get from establishing a carbon price signal that shapes the market in favor of American interests and not those of our adversaries and competitors. If you're with me, write your member of Congress and senator today."

The Obama administration's carbon tax spokesman - the one who should sell this to the country - should be the president's national security adviser, Gen. James Jones, not the environmentalists. The imposing former head of the Marine Corps could make a powerful case that a carbon tax is vitally necessary to stimulate investments in the clean technologies that would enable the U.S. to dominate E.T., while also shifting consumers to buy these new, more efficient and cleaner power systems, homes and cars. He could make the case that the country with the most powerful clean-technology industry in the 21st century will have the most energy security, national security, economic security, healthy environment, innovative companies and global respect. That country must be America.