Sierra Club has leg folks.  So where is your perfect bill?  Draft it and get it introduced.

The bill you describe would get less than 20 votes in the Senate.  If I am wrong, tell me who your votes are.  If I am right, tell me your plan for electing 40 more progressive Senators in the next two years.

All you achieve by preening before the Green faithful is to convince moderates that there is percentage in addressing climate change.  No matter what the pol does, the pol will be sure to get it in the neck from both the Right and the Left.  No one accepts the idea of a good-faith compromise.

And what is your argument?  Better if the Clean Air Act was never enacted?  Better if not enacted until Reagan took power?

Nothing in L-W is similar to grandfather clause in CAA.  And nothing in CAA aggressively pushed a new way of doing things like the subsidy for alternative energy.

Our system is a little screwy because environment and energy are viewed as being two very different things - good point in the previous post by CE.  

With CO2 we have a situation that when talking of carbon-based fuels, environment IS energy, since stack emissions are directly related to carbon content of the fuel (coal, natural gas, refined crude oil products).  So to properly do things right, we need an orchestrated plan for enabling bills and appropriations for EPA and DOE at the same time ... otherwise we will have failed.  -sam

Onward through the fog

"We are being urged to compromise -- to put a system in place quickly, even if it is the wrong system. Given that we only have one chance to get this right before it's too late, our top priority must be to make sure that we do not settle prematurely and sign a weak bill into law in the name of doing something about global warming. With momentum for strong action and a friendlier Congress and White House building every day, it's no coincidence that some wish to settle their accounts now."

Uh, Carl?  Who does this sound like?  Sierra Club, perhaps?  Stampeding towards total desert ecosystem annihilation, while frantically greenwashing your trail by calling a bunch of groundwater-sucking, natural gas fired "solar" killing fields "renewable?"

How are the millions of acres you are selling out planning on "renewing" themselves?  How are hundreds of thousands of miles of high-tension buzzing power lines bisecting migration corridors on dwindling Federal wilderness "green" again?

You said it best - We are being urged to compromise -- to put a system in place quickly, even if it is the wrong system.  But it's YOU who is urging us to put the WRONG SYSTEM in place, instead of pushing hard for LOCAL, DECENTRALIZED, RENEWABLE generation only on PREVIOUSLY DEVELOPED LAND.

For shame.  What a difference 37 years makes.  I bet the 25-year old idealist never would have sold out wilderness for utility company profits, and greenwashed the massacre of this country's open spaces.  

the greenest energy is that which you needn't ever produce.

I guess Stopgreenpath must be referring to plans to build massive concentrating solar thermal plants in the desert--I don't know why I'm surprised to find there is a downside to this and local opposition. There is local opposition to the building of wind farms in the mountains of eastern West Virginia, the only part of the state with sufficient wind--despite the fact that the slight harm looks invisible in comparison to the horrifying devastation of mountaintop removal in the southern part of the state. How much natural gas and water is used by these plants?
I agree with Pope's basic assertions in this piece--chances are actually pretty good that we will get a better Conress a year from now, and rushing a bill forward that works to enable, perpetuate, and pay off pollution will not help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and will delay a real solution. I also would note that grandfathering of polluting power plants under the Clean Air Act "because they will be shut down soon," caused them to have an economic advantage that has kept them going all these years--they're STILL getting away with polluting our air at levels illegal for new plants for the past 35 years.
There is great urgency to finally deal with climate change, to enact legislation that should have been enacted ten years ago. But signing a heavily compromised bill that will do little or nothing to reduce emissions will retard progress.