The questions above are probably not the most important questions we could be answering right now, even in politics (I'd guess that the economy is more important).

I would say that the economy has a theoretical potential for higher utility payoffs, but I have much less confidence in the government's ability to implement one of the better responses out of the vast possible response space.

It would be much better to develop a new, abundant clean energy source than to come up with some slightly more efficient recycling scheme, but if you had to assign one or the other as a project for a bunch of high schoolers, you'd be better off choosing the second, because they'd stand a chance of actually accomplishing it.