It's time to move beyond the false premise that climate policy necessarily means sacrifices by the present generation.

An effective climate policy for the United States must be sustainable politically as well as environmentally. The environmental requirement–to limit emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases so as to prevent massive destabilization of the Earth's climate–is often translated into the policy target of cutting emissions by at least 80 per cent against their 1990 level by the year 2050. Finding a comparable formula for political sustainability has proven more elusive.

Establishing an effective policy is not just a matter of crafting a bill that can pass Congress. The policy must also win public support wide and deep enough to enable it to endure over the decades needed to complete America's transition to a clean energy economy. In other words, the policy must secure support among voters of all partisan persuasions, comparable to that enjoyed by Social Security and Medicare.

To achieve this goal, we must move beyond past strategies that have tried–and failed–to forge a winning political coalition for the clean energy transition. These strategies started from a flawed but widely accepted premise: the assumption that effective climate policy necessarily requires the present generation to make economic sacrifices in order to safeguard the climate for future generations. This framing of the problem has been echoed by environmentalists and fossil fuel firms alike. By ignoring possibilities to design clean energy policies that can benefit the present generation at home–and not only future generations worldwide–this ‘eat your broccoli’ message fatally undermines political support for effective climate policy.

Benefits Here and Now

Clean energy policy can bring tangible benefits here and now by three avenues: