Should We Be Bullish on Solar?

Megan McCardle has an interesting and worthwhile piece on the likelihood of solar energy costs falling below those of conventional energies any time soon. But she finishes it with a pretty silly question...

I'd close by restating Tyler's question in a slightly different way: if the price of solar is really likely to keep falling until it's cheaper than coal, why don't we see this revealed in the behavior of global warming activists? Where are Greens saying "We've decided to move on to more pressing issues, because clearly, the carbon emissions problem is just about solved."

For some people, maybe even most, the concern is, in fact, carbon emissions. For many of the activists, however, all of the evidence suggests that the concern is not carbon emissions as much as it is concern about the consumption and lifestyle of the US population. For my entire lifetime, the people in the vanguard of this movement have responded to any proposed crisis with the same set of policy prescriptions - more central control, more rationing, less freedom for individual movement, less individual autonomy. In short, for the most dedicated of the global warming activists, carbon emission control is simply a pretext for the actual goal - socialism.