Over the next two years, the U.S. Congress will take up legislation on global warming. What matters most about this legislation is that it generate no less than $30 billion per year for major investments into clean energy. The goal of these investments? Bring the real price of clean energy down as quickly as possible. As importantly, the clean energy investment fund must be protected from pork-barreled politics. If the legislation only limits pollution, it won't bring us anywhere near the goal of 80 percent emissions reductions by 2050.

Here are some key documents in the case for a $30 billion annual clean energy investment:

"Fast Clean Cheap: Cutting Global Warming's Gordian Knot" :: Harvard Law and Policy Review, January 2008

What's required in the case of global warming is that we free energy consumption from greenhouse gas emissions, and thus from fossil fuels. Environmentalists have so focused on making dirty energy expensive to make clean energy cheaper, that they overlook that there is a strategy to cut the Gordian Knot by making clean energy cheaper more directly: major investments in technology innovation.

"The Investment Consensus"

A review of more than two-dozen comprehensive, peer-reviewed academic studies on energy and climate policy reveals a strong expert consensus that stabilizing the climate will require governments to establish a price for carbon, implement new regulations to encourage technology innovation, and make large, long-term investments into clean energy technology innovation. "The Investment Consensus" report summarizes these findings in the words of the energy experts themselves.

"Second Life," September 27, 2007 article in the New Republic.

In terms of birthing a new energy economy, regulation is important -- it's just not the most important thing. The highest objective of anyone concerned about global warming must be to bring down the real price of clean energy below the price of dirty energy as quickly as possible -- most importantly, in places like China. And, for that to happen, we'll need a new paradigm centered on technological innovation and economic opportunity, not on nature preservation and ecological limits.

"Environmentalism's Existential Moment," article in Grist.org

This pollution regulation framework offered by environmentalists for dealing with global warming is, for many, a reassuring one. For 15 years it has provided policymakers, the media, and the public with a mental model for understanding how such a massive problem like climate change could be solved in an organic way by the market, perhaps the most powerful institution ever created by human beings.

There's just one problem: it won't work.

Poll: Energy Anxiety Stronger Than Fear of Global Warming
A new poll shows that the public more strongly favors a strategy of clean energy investment and innovation than any other strategy to deal with global warming.

"Energy Attitudes," report on public opinion on energy and global warming by Jeff Navin, American Environics. The report finds that the public is more concerned about rising energy prices than about global warming. However, support for energy independence and clean energy open support for a large investment agenda.

A new agenda should speak to core American values and a vision of the future -- not technical policies and "issues."
 
Most Americans are bored by politics because it doesn't speak to what really matters in their lives: how they work and how they live.
 
Over the past several years, the Breakthrough Institute, often in partnership with others, has developed a set of Strategic Initiatives that emerge from core American values and speak to a positive future. A Strategic Initiative should create new alliances that go beyond the traditional left-right divide and change the way people think about "the issues."
 

The Healthy Generation initiative would restore physical education to every grade in every school and improve the nutritional quality of the school lunch program. It would ban junk food advertising to children and instead create a national advertising campaign to help parents and children learn good eating habits, reduce TV watching, and be more physically active. To make sure every child gets the basic health care and preventive care they need to stay healthy, existing health insurance programs would be expanded to cover all American children who currently lack health coverage.
 

After the Civil War we created the railroads to expand the western frontier. During the Great Depression we put millions to work creating core infrastructure. And after World War II we created the interstate highway system, guaranteed the market for microchips, and invented what became the Internet. In the process, America went from being an agricultural to an industrial to a knowledge-based economy and society.
 
Today America is getting left behind because we have chronically underinvested in the fastest growing markets in the world: clean energy What America needs now is a new Apollo project to invest $30 billion a year into solar, wind, biofuels, and other new technologies to free ourselves from oil, create millions of new jobs, and take decisive action against global warming. In 2003 Breakthrough co-founded the Apollo Alliance, and Rep. Jay Inslee in Congress has introduced new Apollo project legislation in Congress.

This antiquated system of energy generation makes us vulnerable to blackouts and natural disasters. The good news is that the millions of Americans who own their own homes can make, and store, their own electricity. Solar today in many parts of the country is competitive with natural gas at peak hours - the daylight hours when electricity is most in demand. The problem is that the utilities are blocking the American people's right to make their own electricity and sell it on a free market.
 
The grid doesn't belong to the utilities - it belongs to the American people. It was built by our parents and grandparents. Energy utilities must no longer be allowed to stifle entrepreneurialism by blocking Americans from selling their home-generated solar energy onto the grid. We need a Homeowners Power Act that allows home power generators to finance the cost of buying and installing solar panels by borrowing against future earnings from selling home-produced energy, and requires utilities to let homeowners sell the energy they produce onto the grid.
 

Ten years later it has become clear that the law had worked in motivating former welfare recipients to go back to work. What it didn't do was create the conditions for former welfare recipients to climb out of poverty. What's needed is new legislation that helps the poorest Americans get a fresh start. Americans who work should not be denied health care, day care, or retirement security simply for lack of money. Fresh Start legislation would establish a new social contract and achieve the goal of welfare reform: to truly reward work.
 

Whatever you think about its causes or its solutions, one thing we can all agree on is that we had better prepare for it. We know that Greenland's glaciers are melting. We know that the north Atlantic Gulf Stream that brings warm water to the northern hemisphere has slowed by 30 percent since 1992. We know that surface ocean temperatures are getting warmer, and we know warmer oceans more severe hurricanes. More ominously, a recent Pentagon "future scenarios" report concluded that global warming could trigger and exacerbate wars over water. There's no more time for twisting our hands and having political arguments. What's needed is a national Global Warming Preparedness Act that requires every federal and state agency to report on and prepare for global warming disasters. The Act should also require global warming disclosure so that investors can properly evaluate risk.
 

The first two years of life are critical to brain development. Early-childhood education is crucial to helping children to achieve their full potential - and stay on the right track as teenagers. We need a Motherhood Tax Credit - available to all American parents. The annual credit would be enough subsidize either parent to stay home with their child for up to two years. This initiative has the potential to bring together conservative and liberal Americans around supporting families.