A year ago, the American public, government regulators, and Gulf of Mexico families had been lulled into a false sense of security over the safety of offshore drilling and the ability of the oil industry to respond in the event of a severe spill.

After years of systemic complacency and mismanagement by the U.S. government and the oil companies, weeks of poor decision-making on the part of BP and its partners in the ill-fated Macondo oil well, and a few moments of deadly horror one year ago on the Deepwater Horizon, everything known about deepwater drilling changed utterly.

On the first anniversary of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, even after countless hearings in Congress, and an investigation by the bipartisan National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, legislation to improve the safety of deepwater drilling has not been put on President Obama’s desk.

Chris Jones, the brother of Gordon Jones, one of the 11 workers killed the night of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, delivered some of the most powerful and touching testimony I have seen in my 36 years in Congress:

We owe it to the Jones family and others like them to make the oil and gas industry as safe as possible. The BP Oil Spill Commission found that it is four times more deadly to work on an offshore rig in the United States than it is in Europe.

Another spill could happen again. Not from a lack of study, but from an oil industry that still needs massive reform, and from a persistent hubris on the part of fossil fuel boosters.

Safety concerns persist

While the Department of Interior has begun necessary reform of its drilling regulatory agency, and issued new standards for well design and blowout preventer inspections, and some standards for response plans, there are still major aspects of offshore drilling that still need reform:

• Blowout preventers (BOPs): The recent report on the BP BOP by Det Norske Veritas raises questions about design flaws inherent to the machines. I have called for a safety review of all BOPs used in U.S. waters.
• Response plans and technologies: While oil companies are currently required to certify that they can respond to a spill and provide a worst-case scenario analysis to drill new areas, old response plans are still being accepted for up to two years until they must be fully updated. Additionally, while the ad hoc capping stack technology deployed by BP last year eventually worked, the oil industry is now offering that as the main safety device, which could signal an unwillingness to further the design and manufacture of more robust response technologies and plans.
• Expanded drilling, reduced safety: Oil companies and their allies in Congress are pushing to open our East and West Coasts and Alaska to expanded drilling, while reducing safety review.

This follows a year where Republicans blocked any spill safety legislation, including a bill I offered that would have implemented the recommendations of the independent spill commission.

We now know BOPs don’t always work, even when they’re used correctly. We know the oil companies still don’t have full response capabilities, even if they’ve given their top hat a new coat of paint. And we know that the recommendations of the bipartisan spill commission haven’t been put in place.

Yet Republicans in Congress and the oil companies are still pushing for more drilling with less safety. This is the sort of willful ignorance and speed-over-safety mentality that led to the BP spill in the first place.

Moving on their “Oil Above All” agenda, Republicans passed a trio of bills in the Natural Resources Committee last week, and they are expected to head to the House floor for a vote in just a few weeks. Those bills would reduce safety review, say drilling permits are deemed as “approved” after 60 days, regardless of concerns, and open up vast new areas to drilling and use old, shoddy, cookie-cutter environmental review as justification for the new exploration activities.

BP still fighting spill size, fines

After suffering an incredible economic blow, the families living and working in the Gulf deserve better. BP continues to fight the size of the spill, which would affect the fines levied against the company.

In court papers filed earlier this month, BP claimed it should be fined by the day, not by the barrel, for the oil it spilled into the Gulf. By claiming that it was not negligent for the 4.1 million barrels of oil spilled into the Gulf (a figure BP is also challenging), and by using a different method to calculate fines, BP could reduce their fines under the Clean Water Act from up to $20 billion down to as little as $2.8 million. Republicans have also blocked my legislation that would dedicate fines directly to restoring the Gulf region.

I have a deal for BP. They can use whatever number of days they wish to calculate the fines, as long as the rest of us can add on the proper number of zeros to the end of the amount they pay in fines.

Instead of litigating away their culpability under the law, BP should be mitigating the damage to the people and environment of the Gulf, which continues to be under siege from their spill.

One year later, health concerns in the Gulf remain. We have a moral obligation to continue scientific monitoring and environmental recovery efforts to aid the families in the Gulf and all Americans who enjoy our coasts, our seafood, and our natural heritage.

The proposed tax deal would kill 20,000 potential wind energy jobs.Photo: Graham

In its current form, the deal would allow the only effective federal support mechanism for renewable electricity to expire, killing the 20,000 wind energy jobs and 11,200 jobs in geothermal that would be created in 2011 and the 65,000 jobs in solar over the next two years.

In addition, without an extension of the Renewable Energy Grant Program, the domestic wind industry will lay off upwards of 25 percent of its workforce — 20,000 people — on the first of January.

This is not acceptable.

In order to create new jobs, we must create brand new industries. Renewable energy — like wind, solar, and geothermal — is a natural resource that can be harvested domestically with equipment and technology made in America.

Unfortunately, Republicans in Congress don’t see it that way. They are determined to keep America tethered to the dirty, pollution-heavy energy industries of the past. This Congress, Republicans have fought to keep some $36 billion in subsidies for the biggest industry in the mix — oil and gas.

That would be the same oil industry that has dictated a failed U.S. energy policy for decades. It is one that runs on foreign oil, siphoning half a billion dollars a day out of the U.S. economy and directing it to OPEC and nations in the Middle East that support terrorist activity. Foreign oil alone represents nearly half our trade deficit.

This is not acceptable.

We need an oil change. That is why Democrats in Congress are fighting to extend the Renewable Energy Grant Program for two years. This program was created under the Recovery Act as a patch for the production tax credit and the investment tax credit programs.

In the wake of the Republican Recession that destroyed 8 million jobs and dismantled financial markets in 2008, new clean energy entrepreneurs and small businesses could not get access to credit — meaning the existing production tax credit and the investment tax programs no longer worked.

Democrats acted in an emergency situation to save these jobs and ensure that the American clean energy sector — which has the potential to become the most important global economic driver for the next century — did not meet an untimely end.

And the results are clear. The Renewable Energy Grant Program created 55,000 jobs and directly led to the deployment of 4,250 megawatts of renewable energy in 2009.

Harvesting this clean, safe renewable energy has also created an opportunity to breathe new life into America’s factories. The Recovery Act also included the Clean Energy Manufacturing Program allocating $2.3 billion in tax credits for building and expanding manufacturing facilities.

That provided a 30 percent tax credit for investments in 183 manufacturing facilities for clean energy products across 43 states to support 41,000 jobs. Demand for this program exceeded expectations — $7.7 billion worth of applications poured in — and it helped get Americans out of unemployment lines and back onto assembly lines building wind turbines and solar panels.

Democrats in the House spent the past two years fighting to forge a real, long term plan for American energy independence, a plan that ensures the United States doesn’t take second place to China in the race for clean energy jobs and technology.

Our plan included a renewable electricity standard, electric vehicle incentives, and efficiency measures. Our plan protected consumers from price spikes, like $4 gas, and gave small business and entrepreneurs the chance to compete with Big Oil.

Unfortunately, other than the Recovery Act, Republicans in the Senate killed every attempt to move forward on clean energy. As a result, the private investment community is now looking to move trillions of dollars away from the U.S. That money may now be spent on jobs in China, South Korea, Europe, and elsewhere.

This is not acceptable.

That is why, at a minimum, THIS Congress and the president must immediately move to protect and extend both the Renewable Energy Grant Program and the Clean Energy Manufacturing Program.

While Republican leaders may hope to push clean energy off the agenda in the 112th Congress, the reality is the threat of foreign oil, rising gas prices, and jobs competition from China will keep these problems front and center.

The great American experiment still has battles left to fight, freedoms we must achieve. The call of this generation is to finally achieve freedom from oil by moving to a clean energy future.

Oil giant BP has created a gaping wound in the Gulf of Mexico, dumping 3.3 million barrels of oil into America’s ocean.  This is now the largest oil spill and environmental catastrophe in our nation’s history.

Meanwhile, in the Persian Gulf, American consumers send billions of dollars a week to pay for foreign oil, strengthening our enemies’ hand. This unsustainable transfer of wealth to OPEC and Big Oil companies threatens our economic and national security.

Please watch this short video featuring the powerful testimony of a veteran who testified before my committee regarding the dangers our troops face due to our addiction to oil:

Last year, the House of Representatives came together and said enough is enough, passing historic clean-energy legislation (the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy & Security Act) that invests $190 billion in clean energy like wind, solar, geothermal, and other advanced technology, plus another $20 billion in advanced fuel-efficient vehicles like plug-in hybrids and all-electric cars and trucks.

When Waxman-Markey is combined with the fuel-economy and renewable-fuel standards Democrats successfully put in place, America will save more than 5 million barrels of oil a day, more than we already import from the Middle East and Venezuela combined.

We need a declaration of independence from foreign oil. It’s time to encourage a new generation of minutemen and -women to deploy solar, wind, and geothermal power, stamping this renewable revolution with the words “made in the USA.”

57 days ago, in the dead of night, the worst environmental nightmare in U.S. history began.

The spill cam, requested by Congress, has brought the horror into homes across the country, as we watch tens of thousands of barrels of oil billowing into the Gulf every day.

For years, the oil industry swore this could never happen. We were told that technology had advanced, that offshore drilling was safe.

BP said they didn’t think the rig would sink. It did.

They said they could handle an Exxon Valdez-sized spill every day. They couldn’t.

BP said the spill was 1,000 barrels per day. It wasn’t. And they knew it.

Now the other big oil companies, testifying in Congress today, contend that this was an isolated incident. They say a similar disaster could never happen to them.

And yet it is this kind of Blind Faith — which is ironically the name of an actual rig in the Gulf — that has led to this kind of disaster.

In preparation for this hearing, Congress reviewed the oil spill safety response plans for all the top five oil companies.

What we found was that Exxon, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Shell, and BP have response plans that are virtually identical. The plans cite identical response capabilities and tout identical ineffective equipment. In some cases, they use the exact same words and made the exact same assurances.

The covers of the five response plans are different colors, but the content is 90 percent identical.

Like BP, three other companies include references to protecting walruses, which have not called the Gulf of Mexico home for 3 million years.

Two other plans are such dead ringers for BP’s that they list a phone number for the same expert — a man who has been dead since 2005.

The American people deserve oil safety plans that are ironclad and not boilerplate.

We now know the oil industry, and the government agency tasked with regulating them, determined that there was a zero chance that this kind of undersea disaster could ever happen.

When you believe that there is zero chance of a disaster happening, you do zero disaster planning. And the oil industry has invested nearly zero time and money into developing safety and response efforts.

The oil companies amassed nearly $289 billion dollars in profits over the last three years. They spent $39 billion to explore for new oil and gas.

Yet the average investment in research and development for safety, accident prevention, and spill response was a paltry $20 million per year, less than one-tenth of one percent of their profits.

The oil companies may think its fine to produce carbon copies of their safety plans, but the American people expect and deserve more. It is time to expect more from the oil industry. And that needs to start today.

First, Congress must ensure that there is unlimited liability for oil spills by oil companies. While we try to cap this well, we must lift the cap on oil industry liability.

Second, Congress must also enact wide-ranging safety reforms for offshore drilling. If oil companies are going to pursue ultra-deep drilling, we must ensure that it is ultra-safe and that companies can respond ultra-fast.

Third, the free ride is over. Oil companies need to pay their fair share to drill on public land. Right now every single one of the companies here today and dozens of others are drilling for free in the Gulf of Mexico on leases that will cost American taxpayers more than $50 billion dollars in lost royalties.

Fourth, we must ensure that new technologies are developed for capping wells, boosting safety and cleaning up spills. I will soon introduce the Oil SOS Act to go along with the SURF fund to ensure that we have 21st century technologies in place for 21st century drilling risks.

And finally, America must move to a safer clean energy future so that we don’t have to rely as much on oil to power our cars and our economy. The House has acted, passing the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy & Security Act. Every day we delay action, China moves ahead in wind technology. The Germans create more solar jobs. Worst of all, American consumers send half a billion dollars a day to OPEC and countries that wish us harm.

In overwhelming numbers, the American people are ready to start working our way to a clean energy future. They want to wake up from BP’s oil spill nightmare to a future powered by clean, safe energy solutions.

By making smart investments in clean energy technology and cutting taxes for 95 percent of Americans, the Recovery Act kept America on track to double our renewable energy output. It also funded critical efficiency and weatherization projects that save families and small businesses money on their electricity bills.

Manufacturing an End to Foreign Oil

Admiring the VoltPrior to the Recovery Act, countries like China and South Korea controlled the market for advanced battery technology that will power fuel efficient cars of tomorrow. In fact, 98 percent of the world’s advanced battery production is being done in Asian countries. The Recovery Act looked to America’s manufacturing muscle and our technology prowess to jumpstart battery production jobs here in America. Thus far, $2.4 billion in grants have been awarded to companies and educational institutions in over 20 states to fund 48 new advanced battery and electric auto projects — creating an entire new domestic industry and supercharging our market share from less than 2 percent to as much as 20 percent.

An additional $300 million in grants have been awarded to 25 cost-share projects to expand the nation’s fleet of alternative fuel vehicles. This will put 9,000 alternative fuel and energy efficient vehicles on the road further reducing our reliance on foreign oil.

Renewable Energy = Renewable Savings

Beating Wall Street’s recession-based projections, the wind industry grew its capacity nearly 40 percent in 2009, blowing past expectations that existed prior to the passage of the Recovery Act. Investing in solar projects at schools and government buildings helped lower energy costs on local community budgets and taxpayers. The $10 billion efficiency investment in federal buildings alone will save taxpayers $2 billion a year – creating renewable savings based on renewable energy.

Families Warm to Savings

The impact of the Recovery Act can truly be felt at home. Improving the energy efficiency of millions of U.S. homes will save working families an average of $350 on their energy bills per year, cutting their costs by nearly one third. Thus far, the Weatherization Assistance Program has created over 8,500 jobs for local contractors, plumbers and electricians.

Smart Grid + Smart Growth = Smart Future

Building a smart energy grid will empower consumers with information and tools to control their energy bills while providing a platform for wind, solar and geothermal energy to reach more families. $3.4 billion in grants have been awarded to small businesses, utilities, manufacturers and towns to fund smart energy grid projects that will support tens of thousands of jobs and benefit consumers in 49 states.

The Recovery Act not only invests in our communities, it reshapes how we travel between them. Investing $16 billion in high speed rail and mass transit projects will not only create jobs, it will reduce the amount of oil we import and minimize traffic congestion by taking cars off the highway.

A Change in Direction

For years, America has been governed by an energy policy that invested in foreign oil and fossil fuels without looking to new technology solutions and alternatives that reduce carbon pollution.

via the Environmental Law Institute

When the Recovery Act was passed our nation faced the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the nation was bleeding jobs at an alarming rate and foreign competitors were capitalizing on decades of inaction from the United States in the clean energy industry. History will remember the Recovery Act as an emergency response, but the future still has a lot riding on its success.

The public tours the international U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon, featuring energy-efficient, solar-powered houses built by 20 university teams from North American and Europe, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 13.Photo: Stefano Paltera/U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon

The Solar Decathlon, a competition sponsored by the Department of Energy, brought together 20 teams of students from around the world who designed, engineered, and built solar-powered homes showcased in Washington, D.C.

To see these energy-saving homes, and to hear from the students themselves, please watch this video put together by my Select Committee:

Much like this competition, the United States is currently in a race with China, Spain, and other nations for clean energy jobs and technology. In June, the House passed the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act which includes green building provisions along with renewable electricity and efficiency measures that would help move the ideas displayed on the Mall into neighborhoods across Massachusetts and across the nation. Helping families save money on energy bills while putting more contractors, electricians, and builders to work is smart policy.

Today, it is my pleasure to welcome Dr. James Hansen back to Capitol Hill on this 23rd of June 2008. It was twenty years ago today in 1988 that Dr. Hansen first came to Congress to deliver his message about global warming. He stated: “The greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now.”

Dr. Hansen, who currently serves as the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and a professor of the Earth and Environmental Sciences Department at Columbia University, is a pioneer in modeling research and showed rising greenhouse gas levels would cause “temperature changes sufficiently large to have major impacts on people and other parts of the biosphere.”

Dr. Hansen has been more than just a leader within the global warming research community. He has served as a spokesperson communicating the global warming science to the public. Dr. Hansen has stood up to pressure to change the tone of his scientific research for political reasons in order to ensure that the pubic receives the most accurate information possible about climate change.

Over the past twenty years, the body of evidence Dr. Hansen and his colleagues began has only continued to grow. It recently resulted in the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report showing how rising concentrations of man made pollutants are changing the climate of our planet. The debate is over. Global warming is here. Dr. Hansen was right.

Last year, in his testimony before the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, Dr. Hansen discussed future global warming projections, and how we can begin to avert dangerous climate change. Dr. Hansen’s message was clear. Inaction has consequences.

However, this is also a time of amazing opportunity. Climate change is a call to action. We have the opportunity to transform and grow our economy, and move into an era of energy independence. New green-collar jobs are ready to be unleashed, and we must direct our investment in the new low carbon economy.

This is why I have introduced the Investment in Climate Action and Protection Act, iCAP. It sets up a “cap and invest” system that is science-based, reducing emissions by 85 percent by 2050. The consumer-focused iCAP reinvests over half the proceeds in American families through tax credits and rebates. Eighty percent of Americans would receive benefits and two-thirds of U.S. households would be fully compensated for any cost increases from the bill. Finally, iCAP is technology-driven and invests trillions of dollars in efficiency and clean energy technologies that will be essential to protect our planet from the climate threat Dr. Hansen warned us of twenty years ago.

Just last week, I heard from the people of Greensburg, Kansas. Last year, a tornado destroyed 95 percent of their community. They have seized this opportunity, and are building a low-carbon community, incorporating smart growth, energy-efficient designs and harnessing the power of wind as their energy source. This small community faced this challenge and turned it into an opportunity to build with the future in mind. I hope that Greensburg, Kan., serves as an example to us all of what is possible in the United States. Global warming is the greatest opportunity of our time to revolutionize our economy and improve the quality of life for all Americans.

So on the twentieth anniversary of Dr. Hansen’s first call to action, we are grateful for his perseverance and dedication which has carried Congress, and the public, a great distance in their understanding of global warming. Dr. Hansen saw the future indeed; now it’s time for Congress to heed his call and take the action needed to save our planet.

Here is my attempt to inject a little reality into the old Bush rhetoric rolled out in the State of the Union:

Bush claim: "To build a future of energy security, we must trust in thecreative genius of American researchers and entrepreneurs andempower them to pioneer a new generation of clean energy technology. Our security, our prosperity, and our environment allrequire reducing our dependence on oil."

Reality: President Bush threatened a veto on the tax portion of the recently-passed energy bill, which included major incentives for a new generation of clean energy — incentives that would have heralded a new era in green technology development. The Bush veto threat also killed the Renewable Electricity Standard which would have required that up to 15 percent of our electricity be generated from renewable sources such as wind and solar by 2020. He also opposes any mandatory cap-and-trade bill that would unleash the technology to meet the climate challenge by setting a price on carbon emissions.

Bush claim: "The President will reaffirm the United States’ commitment to work with major economies and through the UN to complete an international agreement that will slow, stop, and eventually reverse the growth of greenhouse gases. This agreement will be effective only if it includes commitments by every major economy and gives none a free ride."

Reality: Although the Bush administration now appears to have abandoned its outright denial of the global warming crisis, it is rightly viewed worldwide as one of the major obstacles to an effective international agreement to combat global warming. The United States is still the largest emitter of global warming pollution, yet the Bush administration has steadfastly opposed any meaningful domestic caps on carbon emissions. If the President really wants to show his commitment to reaching a global climate agreement, he can start by announcing his support for a domestic economy-wide cap and trade program that will reduce U.S. global warming pollution. Only when the United States shows leadership on the home front will other countries will have an reason to join in a meaningful global agreement.

Bush claim: "In December, the United States joined the global consensus at the UN Climate Conference in Bali to launch a comprehensive ‘roadmap’ for global climate negotiations.The Bali Action Plan is a critical first step in moving the UN negotiation process forward toward a comprehensive and effective post-2012 arrangement by 2009. The United States looks forward to participating in the negotiations envisioned in the Bali Action Plan, including through the Major Economies Process and other appropriate channels to achieve an effective outcome."

Reality: In the face of an historic international diplomatic push, the Bush administration was forced to agree to the Bali Action Plan, but not until after substantially weakening this agreement by refusing to include the goal of stopping the growth in global emissions of heat-trapping gases in the next 10-15 years.

The pundits were quick to paint this State of the Union as a lame duck effort, devoid of any new policy goals. But the truth is President Bush will spend many nights over the next year reflecting on his legacy. Perhaps he will think of his political hero Ronald Reagan, the man who came to Washington with hawkish vigor for nuclear proliferation, yet left office respected for his face-to-face meeting with Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik, which led to the two superpowers agreeing to reduce nuclear weapons.

If the hawk could learn to fly like a dove, can the oil man from Texas truly come clean on the environment? Only if Congress forces that choice on the President Bush, by presenting him with a strong climate bill this year. A cap-auction-and-trade bill is the vehicle that can present Bush with his Reykjavik moment — a legacy-defining choice to transition our nation to a true green economy and protect the future of this beautiful planet for generations to come.

NOTE: This blog post is part of the Blog for the Union, a joint effort by several Democratic Members of Congress to expand the dialog on the State of the Union.

There’s a useful test to use whenever the challenges of fossil fuel dependence and global warming come up: We must reduce the threat of global warming without worsening our dependence on foreign oil; and we must reduce the threat of oil dependence without worsening global warming.

When it comes to coal, it’s that second part of the equation that brings up some sticky issues.

Coal has been a big part of our energy mix, providing the majority of our electricity since the invention of the electric light. It has been a principal source of energy since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution — a revolution that provided the basis for our economic prosperity, but also produced exponential pollution growth that was the genesis of the global warming issues we face today.

Now is the time for a new Green Revolution. We must combine the economic reforms of a new industrial revolution based on clean energy development with the moral imperative to protect the planet.

But where does that leave coal? Can our reliance on these carbon-packed nuggets of energy survive while we try to ensure the planet survives as well?

There are two main issues at play here: "coal-to-electricity" and "coal-to-liquids." Capturing carbon pollution from coal and sequestering it deep underground would make it possible to continue to use coal as a major electricity source; turning coal into liquid to replace gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel would, according to the EPA, make global warming worse.

The process of turning coal into liquid transportation fuels is not new. It was first adopted on a large industrial scale by the oil-isolated Nazi Germans in World War II, and later by an embargoed apartheid South Africa.

Without carbon capture and storage, liquid coal fuel contributes more than double the total heat-trapping pollution produced by a simply burning conventional petroleum-based fuels. But even when carbon capture systems are added, it is still worse for the environment than regular gasoline. When scientists tell us we need to be making massive, not minuscule, cuts in global warming emissions, it’s clear that liquid coal would carry us in the wrong direction.

Liquid coal is also incredibly expensive and resource-intensive to create, with small returns compared to the amount of energy and the immense number of new industrial plants needed to create it. Even setting aside the environmental impacts of coal mining, the water resources needed for this sort of undertaking would be staggering: 4.6 billion gallons per year of liquid fuels from coal would require between 21 and 60 billion gallons of water per year. To give some perspective, 60 billion gallons could fill 90,850 Olympic sized swimming pools.

This is why China has reportedly backed off of liquid coal fuels. Instead, they are relying on strong fuel economy standards. Certainly our own country would benefit from much stronger fuel economy standards as well, which is why I have proposed bipartisan legislation — the Markey-Platts bill — to mandate a fuel economy increase to 35 mpg by 2018, and 4 percent a year after that. This legislation would reduce America’s oil dependence by 10 percent. And, unlike liquid coal fuels, that’s without having to build a single new industrial plant.

And compared with the potential of cellulosic ethanol, made not just from crops grown by farmers, but also grasses that grow wild on the American plains and garbage that piles high in America’s cities, liquid coal just doesn’t stack up. Cellulosic ethanol’s total heat-trapping emissions can be as low as a quarter of those from conventional gasoline — even further below those from liquid coal.

The other important emerging coal technology is carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), a process that will allow the heat-trapping pollution from burning coal for electricity to be captured and stored underground. We should never build a power plant we don’t need, and both renewable energy and improved efficiency will continue to allow us to avoid many new expensive, polluting power facilities. But we have a huge stake in solving the CCS problem, because without it we are unlikely to convince China and India that they can grow while still controlling global warming pollution.

In the end, we need to enact real policies to create the market for cleaner fuels instead of dirty ones, and for advanced technology like carbon capture and storage. That means a robust market-based system for capping heat-trapping emissions and giving businesses flexibility to meet those targets — often referred to as a "cap-and-trade" system — is needed. But to really push carbon capture and storage, we’ll also need new standards to ensure coal-fired plants are using this new technology.

Coal is one of the toughest aspects of any energy and climate legislative packages. If Congress is going to spend scarce tax dollars to burn coal cleanly, let’s not waste them on "coal-to-liquids" — a global warming loser — when the world is waiting for American ingenuity to demonstrate one of the most critical global warming winners — carbon capture and storage. Because if we do not solve this challenge, our fight to protect the planet from global warming will be lost before it even started.