U.S. Leadership Needed to Fight Climate Change

As it becomes more apparent that climate change is a true worldwide emergency, there's a mounting need for a big policy push to curb greenhouse emissions. But that leaves the question of which policy steps would be most effective.

Despite having high per-capita emissions, the U.S. is actually responsible for only about a seventh of the global total carbon output. U.S. emissions from power-generation are falling as the country transitions away from coal, even as China adds more coal-fired plants. Meanwhile, poor countries are eager to begin or accelerate their own industrialization. For the U.S. to help fix this global problem, it will need to employ solutions that have a worldwide impact -- researching and disseminating new technologies, subsidizing companies to scale up these technologies and make them cost-effective, paying other countries to use renewable energy and taxing the products of those nations that increase their use of dirty fuels.