On Climate, Obama Must Hurry

President-elect Barack Obama recently unveiled a massive infrastructure spending package that includes new federal investments in energy efficiency. This will help the United States begin to address climate change, but it is only a small part of a much larger climate-change strategy that needs to be implemented in Obama's first term.

With Obama in the White House, the U.S. has a historic opportunity to enact climate-change legislation that will reduce emissions of heat-trapping pollutants, create jobs, and spur renewable energy innovation.

Obama has promises to keep. In his election-night victory speech, he pointed to our "planet in peril" as one of the three central challenges of his presidency, together with the financial crisis and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As a candidate, Obama said unequivocally that he favors a federal, economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions trading system. He set a goal of reducing U.S. emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. He pledged to ensure that 25 percent of our electricity comes from renewable sources by 2025. And he committed to invest $15 billion per year over the coming decade in clean energy technologies and fuel-efficient vehicles.

VOTERS responded enthusiastically. In the transformed post-election political landscape, we can finally see climate change progress on the horizon.

Last June, major legislation establishing a cap-and-trade system for emissions allowances failed to advance in the Senate by 12 votes. But now, Democratic gains in Congress make passage more likely. In fact, Virginia Rep. Rick Boucher, who serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has pegged a cap-and-trade bill's chance of success at 80 percent in the next two years and 100 percent in the next four years.

The climate has also changed dramatically at the White House. President-elect Obama firmly believes that climate change threatens our nation and our planet. In line with the overwhelming scientific consensus, Obama declared in August that "human activities are influencing the global climate and we must react quickly and effectively."

What steps should Obama and the new Congress take?

First, Obama must continue conveying that tackling climate change is consistent with his first priority: curing our nation's economic ills. A cap-and-trade system, which will put a price on carbon-based energy production, will simultaneously spur development of a new generation of clean-energy technologies. Such legislation could put Americans to work by building a new renewable energy infrastructure and by expanding venture capital investments in green technologies.

SECOND, OBAMA and Congress should use the fiscal stimulus package and tax legislation that will be introduced in 2009 to advance climate change goals. They should permanently extend the renewable-energy production tax credit (which has in the past been allowed to expire) to attract long-term investment in wind and solar energy; eliminate wasteful tax breaks and subsidies for the oil industry; include investments in energy efficiency in any new aid to states and municipalities; and fund infrastructure projects like public transit and smart-grid technologies to promote energy efficiency.

Third, cap-and-trade legislation should be the centerpiece of the U.S. climate strategy. This approach provides both certainty in overall emissions reductions and market-based flexibility for individual companies.

A cap-and-trade system for sulfur dioxide, enacted in the U.S. in 1990, helped alleviate the acid rain problem at one quarter the cost of initial government estimates. And the European Union is demonstrating that a cap-and-trade system can work, on a continental scale, to achieve year-by-year reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

THESE THREE steps should be taken early in the new administration. When more than 170 nations gather in Copenhagen in December 2009 to chart a new global treaty on climate change, the United States must be at the table, as a leader rather than a laggard.

Can bold initiatives on climate change really be enacted during a financial crisis? We think they can. Energy prices have come down. The political landscape has changed. President Obama can make a compelling case that action on climate change will not damage the economy and will instead create jobs, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and protect the environment.

Great presidencies are forged in crisis, and 2009 is the year to address the climate crisis. If we don't act, we're committing ourselves to a long-term toxic mortgage -- on the future of the planet.