Stirling:

To green the American economy means starting at the other end: to change the things that people can buy, and the ways that they achieve happiness. This means that many shibboleths of the past must fall. It does no good to "cut taxes" if people will just go back to buying what they did before. In fact, the reality is that taxes must be dramatically increased, because the government is already bleeding money, and does not command a sufficiently large share of the national effort. If we wait for a World War II to do this, then it will come with the price tag of millions of dead. If we allow people to believe that they can go back to burning oil to make hamburgers, and then sell paper backed by the idea that a century from now they will still be eating hamburgers, then the only result will be a war for the dwindling sources of oil, and then facing the catastrophic effects of global warming.

It must be this that will be the direct project, not "alternative energy," but a new happiness and new goal for economic activity itself. We must remember that money exists in the real world. Money means what we say it means, and it exists because of its utility, not it's God given certainty.

Go read the whole thing. Then read it again.

I believe that Stirling is absolutely right.