It means that your electric and natural gas bills will go up at least 40%. You will look back fondly on the days of gasoline at merely $2.50 per gallon. The cost of everything which requires energy to produce (which is everything) will go up. Manufacturing plants in the U.S. will shut down, and those products will be produced in other countries (still on the same "globe" however). Actual entrepreneurial and productive jobs will be lost. There will be hoards of new bureaucracies (those famous new "green jobs") to harrass and stifle growth. The central government will become ever more powerful and omnipresent.
You will still be allowed to breathe, which will allow you to continue to live. You are needed in order to send to D.C. what little money you will have left.
All in the name of a massive hoax.
All in the name of a massive hoax. Engineered to some degree, rumor has it, to give a depressed Al Gore something to do, and to make him feel better about himself.