I don't think it's really fair to say that Al Gore popularized it. People were certainly widely talking about global warming (though usually under the name "the

I don't think it's really fair to say that Al Gore popularized it. People were certainly widely talking about global warming (though usually under the name "the greenhouse effect") as long ago as I can remember, which is about 1990. Gore didn't hitch onto the bandwagon until sixteen years later. The real reason for the left-right divide is that the most widely proposed solutions always seem to involve more taxes and more government intervention. They are also, in my opinion, not the most effective way to spend that money on CO2 emissions reduction. Ultimately it's a technological problem and demands technological solutions -- we need to find ways to cheaply and efficiently produce the same amount of energy without burning fossil fuels. The solution is therefore throwing more money at R&D, not attempting to coerce people into using less energy. The "cash for clunkers" program, for instance, cost $3 billion. The budget of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, which is doing some really good work, is about $130 million a year.