Who is Jim Rogers? For starters, he's the head of one of the country's biggest coal-burning entities, Duke Energy. But how many coal barons lunch with the likes of James Lovelock, originator of the Gaia theory, and James Hansen, one of the first scientists to publicly warn about global warming? He may represent the dirtiest of dirty energy, but if someone's got to do it, we should be glad it's him.

The New York Times Magazine ran a feature on Rogers yesterday, painting a picture of a man who is somehow both an energy C.E.O. and an environmentalist -- though neither term sums him up completely. He's more of a pragmatist than anything else, obsessed with dreaming up ways to slash his company's carbon emissions, but always with a firm grasp of the volatility of price increases on consumers.

His holistic understanding of the energy playing field in this country has led him to rescind his support for the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act. This recently defunct bill would have set up a cap and trade system for carbon dioxide emissions and limit the amount of carbon that energy utilities can emit. Though Rogers threw himself full force into the past iteration of cap-and-trade in this country, as a solution to acid rain, he doesn't think it can work this time around.

The crux of the problem lies in the enormous price differential between clean and dirty energy. Lieberman-Warner passes off the hard work of innovation to the free market, and hordes the revenue generated from carbon auction for government programs like deficit reduction. The bill would create the biggest new source of government cash in years, with carbon allowances generating nearly $100 billion in the first year alone. This spells financial disaster for carbon intensive utilities like Duke, which Rogers predicts would have to spend at least $2 billion in the first year alone in compliance, translating into a 40 percent rate increase for consumers.

Meanwhile, California senator Barbara Boxer gets to look like a hero, Rogers complains, for making the "evil corporation" pay. Regional politics give Boxer the luxury to ignore the price burden for Americans in heartland states, since her own California constituents would hardly be affected:

The Democratic deal makers who promised to deliver the votes for the bill were a "left-center coalition" of senators, most of whom came from urban and coastal states that do not rely heavily on coal. (Boxer, for example, hails from California, which gets only a small percentage of its energy from coal.)

But even if some Americans steer clear of higher energy prices in the short term, we're all going to be paying for our outdated energy systems in the long term. Rogers is pushing for industry evolution, but his 40-year plan to decarbonize Duke relies heavily on government support:

Duke is planning to build an experimental plant in Edwardsport, Ind., that will "gasify" coal, a tentative first step to capturing carbon. But Duke embarked on this venture only after securing a government subsidy of $460 million.

And,

No low-carbon sources are currently big or cheap enough -- and it's not clear when they will be. For example, Rogers calculates that Duke needs two new 2,200-megawatt nuclear plants. (One of them is currently under development in South Carolina.) But these plants are hellishly difficult to construct. They're so expensive -- many billions apiece -- that historically they have required government guarantees, because Wall Street is loath to invest so much in such politically fraught projects.

Rogers understands better than anyone that Big Coal isn't going to make a great leap forward if it has nowhere to land. But a massive, long-term federal investment in developing clean energy alternatives would send the message loud and clear that this country is headed for a new, clean energy future. Otherwise, we're just patting ourselves on the back for legislation that makes senators look good, corporations look bad, and drops the bill on the American public.