Climate change will be much worse, much sooner than most people think.  The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN IPCC) 2007 report, while rather dire, is actually a best-case analysis.  The IPCC’s report did not include the effects of “amplifying feedbacks” such as melting permafrost releasing methane -- a powerful greenhouse gas -- which causes more warming, which melts more permafrost, and on and on.  Including such effects leads to much more dire results than the UN presented.

The near-term (next few decades) impacts of climate change will be very unpleasant and costly.  The impacts and costs after mid-century will be totally unacceptable - a bust.  There is a simple and effective way to address the problem: put a price on carbon. 

While the proposed “Cap and Trade” scheme was complex, there are much simpler and fairer ways to price carbon.  With the “Clean Energy Dividend” approach, an escalating fee is put on CO2 at the wellhead, mine, or port of entry.  The fee eventually rises enough to increase gasoline prices by $1 or so a gallon.  100% of all the money collected under this scheme is returned monthly to every citizen on a per-capita basis (with 1/2 shares for up to 2 kids).  Since the “80/20” rule generally applies to CO2 usage (20% of the people use 80% of the CO2), most citizens will make money on the scheme!  CO2 emissions will drop and low-carbon alternatives will flourish - creating an economic boom.  Since the government gets no revenues and does not pick winners or losers, even conservatives can get behind this approach.  In fact, in conservative Alaska, they have a similar system that provides a share of oil revenues to every citizen.