Time for a Utopian Moment

The iPhone definitely looks cool. This, if it works, would be even cooler: "His goal is to make cells that might take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and produce methane, used as a feedstock for other fuels. Such an achievement might reduce dependency on fossil fuels and strike a blow at global warming."

I was going to turn this into a post about techno-utopians who think there's no need for serious action against global warming because they just assume these magical genetically engineered bacteria will solve all our problems. Reflecting, though, the point is that there's sigificant synergy between utopian dreams and standard-issue regulatory impulses. Any rigorous effort to curb global warming, especially a cap-and-trade system, would dramatically increase the monetary value of the sort of thing this guy is trying to create and make it much more likely that novel technologies along these lines secure invest dollars and get brought to market.