I really see an opportunity for this country in "green" industries...that's going to be what pulls us out of this. It sure isn't going to be us relying on our endemic manufacturing that's for sure.
I too have some big hope for the enviornmental solutions industry, one that's been waiting for decades to take off. The biggest problem though is that nearly all the companies that are already good at green tech, green power, aren't American companies.
Another thing you can blame Regan for was he killed off any subsidies towards developing cleaner technology (Carter put solar panels on the roof of the white house, Regan threw them away). Now the countries that have been developing solar and wind and everything else are in Europe and Japan. By the sheer force of our (now rapidly dwindling) market we can create some big opportunities here in America for green industries, but there's no way we can lead the world, and there's no way that it can happen at all soon enough to soften the current crises. Its gonna take years before we've got our shit together enough to make a substantial difference in America's economy.
That's not to say we shouldn't do it, we should be going after green industry at full speed. But we've lost many valuable years not building the foundations for it and I fear our first serious attempts at bringing this country into a more sustainable era are going to fall flat just because we're going to be making up lots of expensive policy as we go along.
