Climate Solutions

A Citizen's Guide

Peter Barnes

What Works, What Doesn't, and Why

Millions of Americans are demanding that all levels of government—local, state, and federal—take immediate and effective action to fight climate change. But there’s a big problem. Hundreds of policy ideas are floating about, and many of them aren’t very good. It’s quite possible that bad climate policy will result, and that many years will then be lost before real emission reductions occur.

We can’t afford to let that happen. That’s why this citizen’s guide is so important. It explains in clear and simple language what different climate policies will do—and what they won’t do. It tells you who’s behind the policies, who’d pay for them, and who’d profit. It strips away the spin and tells you the key facts you need to know.

In a very real sense, this guide ushers in the next stage of the global-warming debate. In the first stage, we discussed the problem. In the next stage, we must choose solutions. Should we adopt a carbon tax? A carbon cap? A trading system that allows companies to “offset” their emissions by paying others to plant trees?

This guide examines these proposals and many others. It’s essential reading for anyone who wants to stop climate change before it’s too late.

"This citizen's guide demystifies climate policy so that you can play an active role in forming it. We can't wait any longer, and we can't get it wrong."
Bill McKibben, from the Foreword

"Peter Barnes is right. The best and most efficient way to reduce global warming isn't a cap-and-trade system that gives historic polluters free rights to pollute in the future, and it's not a carbon tax that hits poor and middle-income Americans especially hard. It's a cap-and-auction with dividends to all Americans. Read this useful guide and see why."
Robert B. Reich
Professor of Public Policy, University of California at Berkeley,
and former U.S. Secretary of Labor

About the Author

Peter Barnes is an entrepreneur and writer who has founded and led several successful companies. At present he is a senior fellow at the Tomales Bay Institute in Point Reyes Station, CA. In 1976 he co-founded a worker-owned solar energy company in San Francisco, and in 1983 he co-founded Working Assets Money Fund. He subsequently served as president of Working Assets Long Distance. In 1995 he was named Socially Responsible Entrepreneur of the Year for Northern California. His previous books include Who Owns the Sky? Our Common Assets and the Future of Capitalism and Capitalism 3.0. His articles have appeared in The Economist, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Christian Science Monitor, The American Prospect, the Utne Reader, Yes!, Resurgence and elsewhere.