The Supreme Court has ruled that if Congress does not address CO2 emissions, the EPA must regulate. On January 21, 2013, Barack Obama was sworn in for his second term as President of the United States. He declared that the nation would "respond to climate change" and said we could not afford to cede the clean energy future to other nations. Here, we explore, in brief, a legislative alternative that both progressives and conservatives support.

The first thing to understand about the observable and accelerating destabilization of global climate patterns is that the costs associated with that destabilization constitute the single most significant market failure in world history. The markets that set the price of carbon-based fuels do not tell the whole truth; instead, they impose increasingly unmanageable hidden costs on all of us.

If we do not find a way to correct the unreal market price of carbon-based fuels, massive and increasing hidden costs will so burden our economy that a major collapse will impose the correction. We can intelligently bring about a more honest market environment, with direct benefits for consumers, businesses and families, with the right policy.

The right policy for pricing carbon-based fuels and the hidden costs of their emissions needs to favor the expansion of a resilient, adaptable, educated enterprise-capable middle class. If polluters pay the costs associated with the emissions their fuels put into the atmosphere, the middle class and small businesses can be freed to lead the transition to smarter fuels.

The Department of Energy found in 1991 that just three states—Texas, Kansas and North Dakota—had enough active wind energy to supply 100% of US electricity demand. By 2004, new technology meant those same three states could meet 100% of all US energy demand. Solar radiation striking the US on any given day is many thousands of times total demand.

Organic solar concentrating windows can retrofit any building; solar "glitter" can produce the same energy with 100 times less material than conventional solar cells. Solar Roadways is building highways that double as solar PV power plants. Molten-salt solar-thermal plants in Spain can now produce round-the-clock solar power. Solar-thermal updraft towers can produce electricity more cheaply than natural gas, and the "artificial leaf" can produce clean hydrogen fuel on the fly, with just sunlight as an energy source and water vapor as exhaust.

The effort to pass carbon pricing legislation—to prevent a forced correction, restore costs to businesses that profit from the sale and distribution of carbon-emitting fuels, and spark a transition to clean energy resources that favor the middle class, small businesses and innovation—is being led by a rapidly expanding network of citizen volunteers, not by industry.

The plan is short, simple, scalable and will sunset on its own, without any further action required by Congress: assess a steadily escalating fee against the volume of carbon-dioxide emissions from any carbon-based fuels, at the source—the point where they enter our economy. Those who profit by imposing hidden costs on the rest of us pay the fee.

And they pay the fee to you and your family. 100% of all revenues collected from the fee would be returned to every household in the US, in the form of a monthly dividend or "bonus" check. This allows the pricing solution to span the entire marketplace, and liberates households and small businesses (whose added costs consumers can meet) from the passed-along fee.

The fee is not punitive. By providing households with a cushion against the rising fee, and allowing them to use their dividend for any and all expenses, the cost falls on those enterprises that fail to innovate. Only those who choose to continue using outdated combustion-based energy technologies will continue to pay the fee, while everyone else innovates.

The dividend escalates as the fee does, giving clarity to investors and to the marketplace. While clean energy technologies become cheaper, consumers will be freed to choose the cheap, clean option, to save money and to have fun improving their quality of life. The clean energy economy decentralizes market influence and favors a more prosperous and resilient middle class.

Building a clean energy economy requires construction, installation, engineering and entrepreneurial work, across all sectors. Clean energy infrastructure favors distributed production, and long-term localized employment. A generational transformation in consumer behavior will drive hundreds of billions of dollars into new enterprise and new job creation.

The United States Congress can implement this plan for a Carbon Correction Fee, with 100% Household Return (also known as Carbon Fee and Dividend), without shifting even one dollar to new bureaucracy or to appropriations or pet projects. By enacting a revenue-neutral carbon fee with 100% dividend, the Congress can vote for an open future of clean energy, innovation and robust, generalized prosperity.

The non-partisan, non-profit organization Citizens Climate Lobby brings together citizen volunteers from across North America to work in local groups to build political will for substantive legislative action to confront the mounting crisis in global climate destabilization. They help ordinary citizens connect with elected officials, so Congress can be led by the people.

"Most impressive is the work of Citizens Climate Lobby, a relatively new, fastgrowing, nonpartisan, nonprofit group with [148] chapters across the United States [, Canada, Sweden and Bangladesh]. If you want to join the fight to save the planet, to save creation for your grandchildren, there is no more effective step you could take than becoming an active member of this group."
—Dr. James Hansen, head of Goddard Institute for Space Studies, NASA

Learn more at the website CitizensClimateLobby.org