I think the fatal flaw in what we've done here is that we set a target that had no basis in any kind of analysis or reality. And I really enjoyed Mr. Villeneuve's insights. His point about the export issue versus domestic issue is a very good example of how we didn't deal very well with this issue.
Basically, as everybody knows, we set a target to look better than the United States--and with no one else's. Since then, we've been trying to build a system to deal with that target. It has resulted in basically ten years of wasted effort. If we had started from figuring out what our economy is like, how we're producing greenhouse gases, what we can do in terms of technology...saying, let's encourage capital investment turnover, let's get consumers involved--because consumers are a big part of this, even though the initial plan back at ratification, as Mr. Mills would know from his hours in the House, totally ignored consumers. It basically said, “It's not your problem. You don't have to worry about it.”
So starting from the very beginning, this process had a problem. We started with a target that did not make any sense for our country and had no link to action. Repeating that in this bill is not going to help.