President Barack Obama wants to develop a process for burning coal without releasing carbon into the atmosphere. He calls this "clean coal." He says that a nation that put a man on the moon, surely should be able to develop clean coal.

It's interesting to me that he makes that comparison. Putting a man on the moon was a very expensive government boondoggle. The moon program was conceived primarily as a response to the Soviets having beaten us into space with the first orbiting satellite, Sputnik. After about ten years and billions of dollars, Neil Armstrong walked on the moon on 20 July 1969. The last astronauts to walk on the moon did so in 1972. They left a plaque with this message: "Here man completed his first explorations of the Moon, December 1972." In over 36 years we haven't been back.

In other words, there was no real point in putting a man on the moon; we just wanted to show that we could do it.

Actually, I suspect that Obama's comparison is more apt than he would like to admit. I have no doubt that given enough money and time we can develop a clean coal burning process. But once we've done it we will probably realize that it is too expensive to use for any practical purpose.