Clear Act

Compromised and unrecognizable at its time of death, the bill was a hideous deformation of its former self. Perhaps sifting through the autopsy report will save the life of the next climate bill.

Now that the BP oil gusher in the Gulf is finally capped, it is time for America to examine and repair the broken system of drilling and fossil fuel dependence that landed us in this mess in the first place.

Interestingly, there is a short, 39-page bill before the Senate that would allow us to save nature and get paid substantially for doing it. It is the CLEAR bill. It's simple, it works, and it pays you.

Senator Kerry and Senator Lieberman are telling everybody who has a microphone that their climate bill isn't dead. But their aggressive reassurances are misplaced energy.

I've worked for almost 20 years to stop global warming and yet I felt joy when the Senate global warming bill began to unravel. How did we get here?

Public outrage at the tragedy in the Gulf may finally break the fossil fuel industry's special interest stranglehold on Washington.

All of this talk of offsets needlessly complicates the basics of a carbon permit system. Polluters pay, and people get the money. That's the way you do it.

The Kerry-Lieberman climate bill was finally introduced last week as the "American Power Act." For the previous 10 months, it was the unicorn of climate bills.

The key to success for a new climate boss will be in finding common ground for both low-emitting and high-emitting countries, and the key to that is an equity framework such as Cap & Share or Cap & Dividend.

Capping carbon won't be a tax on middle-class families. On the contrary, it will pay them dividends. In a time of economic uncertainty, what could be more reassuring and politically appealing than that?

A proposed anti-global warming bill would help the U.S. make a fair, affordable transition to a clean-energy, low-carbon economy, and avoid the pitfalls of other climate bills that pander to the coal-burning utilities.

With a rare optimistic bent, here are my top 10 reasons for positive thinking on climate change in 2010.