If CO2 is a problem, American inventers will solve it. The market’s demand for a cleaner planet will force us to find ways to remove CO2. Meanwhile, we’ll move past the internal combustion engine and find a fuel that burns cleaner.

It’s worth noting that our country could reduce its energy use right away -- but the government stands in the way.

In the May edition of The Atlantic, Lisa Margonelli noted that “A 2005 report by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that U.S. industry could profitably recycle enough waste energy -- including steam, furnace gases, heat, and pressure -- to reduce the country’s fossil-fuel use (and greenhouse-gas emissions) by nearly a fifth.”

Why don’t we? Overregulation is a big reason. “The Clean Air Act has succeeded spectacularly in reducing some forms of air pollution,” Margonelli writes, “but perversely, it has chilled efforts to reuse energy: because many of these efforts involve tinkering with industrial exhaust systems, they can trigger a federal or local review of the plant, opening a can of worms some plant managers would rather keep closed.”

Of course, the scope of the Clean Air Act pales in comparison to that of the Climate Security Act. Imagine the government attempting to manage the output from every manufacturing and power plant, under the guise of reducing global warming. It’s a disaster in the making.

Around 1900, many forward thinkers worried about the future. How, they wondered, would the United States deal with all the horses its urbanizing culture would require in the 20th century? They couldn’t foresee that the automobile would completely replace the horse and solve that problem.

Today, in a country with more cars than drivers, we can’t imagine an economy that doesn’t depend on oil. But we’ll develop one.

Washington should encourage that, perhaps by setting up some sort of prize for the person who invents an effective hydrogen engine. But mostly by staying out of the way and letting the market work.