Geo-Greenism vs. Drill Baby Drill

It sure would be tragic if the next time I took a photo of a fisherman on the Atlantic there appeared a major refinery floating in the distance.

"Green is the new red, white and blue," says three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times, Thomas Friedman. "We're on the eve of an energy technology revolution," he writes.

Friedman has been stumping across media outlets like Letterman, NPR, CNN and PBS this week talking about his latest book, "Hot, Flat and Crowded." I've been a loyal reader of his for years so it was no surprise that I polished up half the book today.

The chapters on Scandinavian and Asian countries leading the innovation on energy efficiency was most compelling.

Years ago, the Denmark government put a huge tax on gasoline and CO2 tax on electric bills. They used incentives to boost the economy by investing in companies that support wind, solar and ethanol energy. The net result was an unemployment rate of only 1.6% in Denmark with a leading company employing thousands that make 1 out of every 3 wind turbines for the global market today.

The irony is some of these brilliant technologies were originally invented, researched and subsidized by American companies. But when Reagan pulled the plug on subsidies for these new energy technologies in the 1980's those companies and their brilliant ideas went under. Rather, corporate leaders in Denmark seized the opportunity to support their vision and turned their inventions into mega success.

Today, Denmark is thriving without the need for big oil or having to finance terrorist countries.

Like Freidman says, "If visions are without resources, it's hallucination." He goes on to say "If Global Warming is a hoax than it's the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people. It could make us prepared, respected, competitive and entrepreneurial."