Does the U.S. position on global warming make economic sense

This weekend I wrote an article, Syriana, Kyoto and Hybrid Cars in which I questioned the Bush Administration and its stance on Kyoto as well as its actions at the Montreal Climate Conference. While I don't necessarily care that the U.S. might be isolated for disagreeing with the consensus at Montreal, I do have to question Bush's vision.

In a nutshell, Bush is against Kyoto because he fears it could damage the economy, thus he is looking to technology to solve the problem of pollution and global warming, and I can understand this premise. My problem with Bush is that he isn't taking nearly enough action.

In my Syriana article, I wrote that the government should offer more tax incentives to American automakers to enable technologies like hybrid vehicles to dominate the market place immediately. We simply cannot make fuel efficiency a part of the U.S. conscience and marketplace fast enough.

But is this just about foreign oil dependency and global warming?

No, its actually just pure economics.

For example, Portugal is seeking to elevate its share of electricity produced by renewable energy from 30 to 39 percent, 39 percent. That is an amazing number that really should embarrass the U.S.

Why? Because the U.S. isn't the greenest country in the world?

No. Because we aren't the world's leading technological innovator and producer of the world's future technologies.

Whether the U.S. wants to believe in global warming or not is really irrelevant - the rest of the world does. This means that the products of the future and the technologies of the future are going to require environmental friendliness. Yet, when it comes to the leading suppliers of alternative energy products, the U.S. is not the world's leader.

Ultimately, the U.S. should be striving for renewable energy technological dominance not just to end foreign oil dependency, nor to fight pollution or global warming - which are good enough reasons - but to create the jobs and economy that will dominate the future.

Of course ending foreign oil dependency while fighting pollution and global warming along the way doesn't hurt either.