sapote

1. There is a policy that is simple to explain and has some bipartisan appeal: Fee and Dividend (also known as the Clean Energy Dividend). It puts an increasing price on carbon per ton at the source (e.g., oil well, port of entry, etc.) and distributes 100% of the proceeds to the people. That's it. No tricks, no back-door subsidies. And because it is redistributed it's also not a tax in the usual sense, which helps win over those who are open to climate policy but anti-tax.

2. Things are indeed more dire than even most climate aware folks realize. Watch climate scientist Kevin Anderson break down the numbers -- it's sobering how disconnected our climate discourse is from reality:

> And this is one of the great tasks of leadership for us, as individuals and citizens this year. But even if we act to erase material poverty, there is another greater task, it is to confront the poverty of satisfaction - purpose and dignity - that afflicts us all. Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product - if we judge the United States of America by that - that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.