Europe's knee jerk response to problems, such as climate change, is to hector businesses and individuals to "behave better". This is because their societies are stagnant, do not innovate and have no churn, no competition that allows newcomers entry, advancement and even dominance, however temporary. But in America . . .

The open frontier view was captured by a Silicon Valley representative in the room. He stood up to announce that "clean tech" would be to this decade what high-tech was to the 1990s. The companies that would revolutionize our energy usage, he claimed, were now being funded by venture capitalists, and the Ciscos, Microsofts and Googles of the next decade would be the companies that solved the energy puzzle. We hadn't heard of any of them now, he insisted, but they would be huge. Is he right? Maybe. Who cares? It's his money, and the money of his colleagues in the Valley. The point is, if there's a conspiracy to keep revolutionary clean technology down, he didn't get the memo. The notion that this is simply a trans-Atlantic divide can easily be overstated. There are statist Americans and entrepreneurial Europeans. But the divide between the open-frontier camp and the closed-frontier camp is very real, and of the utmost importance to the global warming debate.

Perhaps, but it is of little importance to physical reality. The European approach won't do squat about the climate. It is too little, too late, and too corrupt. Time passes, regulations are gamed or flaunted, and emissions rise, though perhaps at a faster rate in a distant nation. The valley boy's approach, though uncertain, at least could work.