A draft report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggests that the failure of states to limit carbon emissions is producing a situation in which efforts to keep the planet livable are likely to require mitigation efforts that will be enormously expensive. The choice the report presents is between accepting significant economic costs now to move away from fossil fuels or face staggering economic costs in the future to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and store them underground. One point that argues strongly for changing energy policies now is this: At present, the world is spending far more to subsidize fossil fuel use than to develop alternative energy sources.
For more, see the stories in the New York Times and the Guardian.