This is major. In some areas Mr. Obama said he would proceed cautiously, and he is. In some areas he said he'd move quickly, and just so. He's doing what he said he'd do, what we hired him for. No equivocating to appease on climate - rolling up sleeves. No excuses. He's acting like a clear-headed man with young children who will be directly affected by inaction.

No spin, no triangulation. That alone makes him one of the best presidents we've had in decades. Bravo.

Thanks to Mr. Leonard for being the first on Salon to report this. Your postings are some of the fairest and most cogent on this site. Given the implications Climate Change can have for peace, plenty and cultural transformation, this item should be on every column on Salon. But I expect it most from you. You're the best.

Oh boy, this could be very bad.

Environment first, people second.

It depends on how you look at it.

There are those (and I agree with them) in the scientific world who see our planet's current state like a house on fire. There is no question of letting it burn longer because it would cost too much to put out. We have to put out the fire in this house before it burns down the whole neighborhood, or the whole city in the process.

The people's safety is certainly of first importance. But they don't get to run into a burning building to save their flatscreen TV or their SUV or even their photo of Great Aunt Ida. The house is on fire. Get out.

Yes the economy stinks. But the state of the planet is even more dire, and we've been doing nothing at all for far too long, with far too many excuses why "not now" is a good idea. It isn't. It can't be any more.

Such fantasy. Sure, lower emissions in the US is a desirable goal, but all we are doing is creating yet another incentive to encourage manufacturing to relocate to mexico, china, or wherever. If the EPA could put an emissions tax on chinese coal plants, then we will have a solution.

"civil rights and the rule of law" in your description of topics on which we're free to say what we like. I have some things I say about those topics and Obama, unfortunately.

Rocker,

No, we obviously can't put a tax on Chinese coal plants. But we can put an indirect tax on the items produced by them. And believe me, the average kilowatt of electricity produced in China includes significantly more greenhouse gas emissions than one generated in the US because we have a greater proportion hydro and nuclear generation than they do.

It seems to me that the proper way to handle this is with the energy equivalent of a value added tax. No item should be produced in or imported to the US without a full energy audit, and in the case of imports the importing entity would be levied the eVAT for all the accumulated steps that occurred overseas when the item is imported. Then of course the item would enter the normal US system by which each step of transportation and distribution would also be eVAT taxed.

Such a tax would not be a duty forbidden by the WTO because it would also be levied on domestic products.

The taxes raised by such a system should be allocated one half to zero-emissions energy production and distribution system development, one quarter to low-emissions transportation capital investment (hybrid regenerative buses and electrically powered rail systems) and one quarter as declining rebates to low income people.

You may point out that this would be a bookkeeping nightmare, and it would be for a few years while all of the zillions of distribution activities were audited. But once the process was completed the accounting for the eVAT could be a simple part of ERP systems.

Doing this would avoid the problem of the US applying a carbon tax on itself and driving production abroad.

However, to really attack greenhouse gases, we also need to raise the taxes on personal transportation fuels in order to incentivize people to carpool and/or use public transportation to get to work. That revenue should be split 25% for high capacity transit capital investment, 25% for bus purchases and operating subsidies, and 25% to catch up the shortfall in road maintenance and again 25% for refundable credits.

We MUST have the operating subsidies to ensure that sprawling American cities could support large "express network" service linking park and ride lots all over the urban region directly to most activity centers.

Such systems would give a level of service roughly equivalent to that of driving, because with a steep increase in fuel taxes there would be fewer people driving, so the buses would move much more quickly.

Doing these things would ensure that there will be fuels for the personal driving vacation and Sunday drives for a few hundred years until renewables and fusion are able to provide sufficient electricity even for those uses.

We do need to figure out how to make sure the cost of imported stuff from Mexico, China, or wherever doesn't continue to externalize the cost of polluting our environment (and the environment is inclusive of, not separate from, human people with their economic constructs). We can't really begin to ask other countries to do that unless we take responsibility for our direct contribution to the problem.

Actually, China has essentially said that we should take responsibility for our contribution of greenhouse gases resulting from their manufacturing of products we buy. I have to wonder if they really mean it, because a lot of manufacturing could come back home if the cost from their coal-fired emissions and from shipping were taken into account.

Why couldn't the U.S. identify the appropriate tax and impose it--sure, the exporting countries might try to call it a tariff or something, but if we use the same basis for a tax on imports as on domestic goods, could there be a solid argument against it? (I'm sure someone will tell me here, and I thank you.)