Burgers, fries, onion rings and milkshakes are popular because don't have to wait long to satisfy your hunger, they taste darn good and they don't cost a fortune. You can't live on them for long, though. Just ask Morgan "Super Size Me" Spurlock. Indeed, fast food is at the heart of one of the modern society's most pressing health challenges: rising obesity rates. And you can't make a McDonald's menu healthy just by adding a salad option. There are more calories in a Premium Southwest Salad with Crispy Chicken than a double cheesebuger (450 vs 440), and that's without the 100-170 extra calories that come with the dressing.

The reality is, if you want to lose wait and reduce your chances of a heart attack, you can't make McDonald's or any of its competitors, a central part of your diet. And so it is with McCain's approach to the climate crisis. While he recognizes the need for actions that "only Congress can enact and the president can sign," beneath all that talk of embracing clean energy is a faith in the free market. And even though McCain recognizes that "the profit motive basically led in one direction — toward machines, methods, and industries that used oil and gas," he continues to insist that profits will supply the way out of the trap they created in the first place.

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The common theme is the inability of free market forces to do what's in the long-term interest of civilization as a whole, even with the collective talents of industrial researchers and engineers at our (their) disposal. So when you hear McCain proclaim that "the federal government can't just summon those talents by command — only the free market can draw them out," it's probably a good idea to remember that it wasn't the free market that won the last couple of world wars. Or put humans on the moon. Or got rid of small pox. Or laid the foundation of the internet, for that matter. It was all government.

Even if you're not in denial counting on the market to correct itself early is crazy.