See, this is a straw man argument. No one, and I mean no responsible person in government has argued for no action at all in my lifetime. We've had environmental regulations since people were afraid of Global Cooling. This has always been a question of degree not one of "action vs. non-action"
question of degree not one of "action vs. non-action"
Not just of degree but of kind. Assuming anthropogenic global warming really _is_ a problem of nonzero severity, there's a vast array of actions that can be taken on a governmental level. These include:
carbon taxes
build more nuclear power plants
more funding for alternative energy research
cap and trade
giant mirrors in orbit to reflect sunlight
more funding for clean coal research
kill half the population
ban electricity
build artificial trees for carbon sequestration
and so forth. They all have risks and rewards, costs and payoffs. We should not be entirely surprised that our elected leaders tend to prefer the ones (carbon taxes, cap and trade) which involve our elected leaders getting more money and more power.
Should I infer that you are in favor of one or more of those courses? My guess from your tone is that you oppose all of them. So how is it not correct to characterize your advocacy as being for "inaction?".
If you really want to know, then I'd say funding alternative energy research, clean coal research, and probably building more nuclear plants are a good idea. Giant mirrors are worth consideration, just in case -- remember, we're talking about risk minimization here. We shouldn't launch them just yet, but we should figure out how to make them just in case the planet ever does get sufficiently warm to cause serious problems (in which case it won't matter whether it's anthropogenic or heliogenic anyway).
Carbon taxes might be an alright idea provided that they're offset by cuts to other taxes. Cap and trade seems to me like a much worse idea for various reasons (potential for corruption, weird economic distortion, potential of very high long-term economic costs, doesn't actually do all that much anyway).
The remaining solutions (kill half the population and ban electricity) aren't much good either.
