From Forbes:
The Carbon Curtain - Forbes.com
"In developing countries the political survival of the people at the top depends on providing affordable fuel for kitchens, farms, fertilizer plants, steel mills, highways and power plants. Oil and coal are the only practical fuels at hand.
Not by coincidence, the carbon curtain tracks a schism between stagnation and growth. The lethargy side includes the American Northeast and upper Midwest, the European Union, Japan and eastern Canada. The high-growth states, provinces and nations are the ones embracing the development of domestic fuels, the construction of power plants and transmission lines, the import of fuels and technologies needed for enterprise and economic growth and the export of fuels and technologies to like-minded partners. They have nothing against energy efficiency and renewables; they just don't focus on them much.
Uranium is the only carbon-free fuel liked by fast-growing nations. Some 439 nuclear power plants are currently operating in 31 countries. China plans to build another 100 for itself in the next 20 years. By 2020 or so a new reactor will be starting up somewhere in the world every five to six days, compared with one every 17 days in the 1980s. China is building coal and nuclear plants in Pakistan, and Russia in Iran, Bulgaria and India."
******** I'm less concerned with the Carbon issue than many, and more concerned with the value of the dollar and our own economy, but why would we put ourselves at a competitive disadvantage vs. our chief global competition? ********