I think Romm is correctly arguing the consequences, but gets the remedy partially wrong because of class bias.

Who buys expensive hybrids? Wealthy people with money to spend 30,000 on a new car. But is that car more environmentally correct? Perhaps compared to an SUV, but what was the environmental cost of earning the money to buy either the SUV or the hybrid? Meanwhile, some of the cheapest cars get the best mpg, and don't have heavy metal batteries either.

I've had these same arguments with wealthy environmentalists on biodiesel. I pointed out that there wasn't enough waste cooking oil to fuel everyone's car (and in fact now theives are stealing it from restaurants due to short supply). Inevitably, running your biodiesel car takes cooking oil of some poor person's table. Technology fixes that exclude class-conscious economics are counterproductive to the environment because they undermine political support.

We need rationing. But you can't ration equitably without cap and trade. I'm not saying that all cap and trade systems are equitable (the sulfur scheme is not), but these trade systems CAN be equitable. Distribute the credits to the EVERYONE. Romm wants to let rich people, who consume the most, off the hook, plus have the government spend big bucks designing cars for them. That's class bias and is counterproductive to solving the very real climate crisis.

Similarly, carbon taxes MIGHT help the poor IF the government spends the money on reducing their burden.

Romm has it muddled: economically rewarding conservation will bring about conservation technologies OR reduced use. Simply creating more technologies is a tried and failed approach to environmental problems.

I would leave transportation out of the cap and trade system. Why legislate what is inevitable anyway? The price of petroleum, gasoline, diesel fuel and jet fuel are going to soar in the coming years because we haven't had intelligent energy policy for decades. Let our previous stupidity and myopia drive the price higher for the foreseeable future.

While we should not interfere with the rising price of oil, we should cap total oil consumption and disperse oil-buying credits equitably to the population at large. People should be able to sell the credits on the market as a reward for conservation.

The alternative, to simply expose rich and poor alike to soaring fuel prices, condemns the poor who have the least margin to cut in fuel consumption. The poor have always been the best conservationists and should be rewarded for that conservation. The wealthy wasters should have to buy credits FROM the poor to fuel their evil Hummers.

You know we Democrats don't have unity or our minders wouldn't be preaching unity to us so vehemently.

But if you think we're bad, stick an angst-o-meter under the tongue of that elephant. Republicans are a lot better at self-righteousness than guilt, so they are in a conflicted state of denial and finger-pointing about the past horrendous years. The winner-take-all primary system hides an enormous amount of turmoil.

Here's the media's story line right now: Obama has tons of money and will win in a walk. He's moved to the center and that's ever so smart. Plus, the Repubs are saddled with the Bush legacy.

I don't buy it. Obama's move to the "center" was all grand ideological and constitutional, and not about pragmatic policy shifts. Obama is reducing the differences between himself and McCain, a strategy that has failed for Dems in election after election. Second, the issue-oriented center itself is moving left as the environment, energy policy, health care, even food costs, become mainstream politicized concerns for middle America. Obama was already centered nicely. His capitulation on ideological issues makes people profoundly uneasy in his leadership, and has greatly dispirited his supporters on the ground. He can't win this one with ads alone. His message to the young, the less affluent, the newly involved? Fuck you very much, folks.

Democrats never seem to learn that the American voter doesn't care so much what a leader believes, but rather that s/he be sincere and forceful in that belief. Obama is completely mistaken as well, that Americans would not warm to a leader speaking of his love for the American Constitution and the freedoms it provides--including from government intrusion. That's a crossover talking point if there ever was one. By ignoring issues and narrowing ideological differences, Obama may think he is sidestepping slander and focusing the contest on personality and youthful vigor. More likely racism will fill the vacuum.

But, then there is McCain's message. WHich is what, exactly? McCain is running the crappiest campaign imaginable, even considering the rotten material he has to work with. McCain has got to stop running on foreign doom and offer some sort of positive domestic platform, even if it pisses off the right. He has to abandon Bush completely.

Basically now, we have two crappy, hollow campaigns from the major parties at the same time, and a lot of dissatisfaction from rank and file, and voters, who are about to be utterly clobbered by a whole lot of slick advertising. The disconnect from the high hopes of the Democratic primary season and this dismal general could not be more disappointing, and could not be more out of step from the kind of "change we can believe in" that people actually want.

I see a fracturing and a mosaic of voting patterns that will be hard to predict. It could be a good year for a third party candidate, and Barr may actually be Obama's ticket to victory.

The worst outcome would be that Obama's stumbles will slow the increase of (true) Democrats elected to Congress.