The Climate Change bill passed yesterday in the House of Representatives, 219 to 212:
At the heart of the legislation is a cap-and-trade system that sets a limit on overall emissions of heat-trapping gases while allowing utilities, manufacturers and other emitters to trade pollution permits, or allowances, among themselves. The cap would grow tighter over the years, pushing up the price of emissions and presumably driving industry to find cleaner ways of making energy.
It might not be a perfect bill, but it is an important starting point, as Matt Steinglass notes:
This is the bill we have. The question is whether it will go through or not. That’s the only question. If the bill fails, it will mean victory has gone to those forces who are quite literally working to destroy Planet Earth. That is all that is happening here. There is no room here for skeptics and doubters and cavillers and doomsday-morning quarterbacks. This is it. The bill is on the table. You pass it or you don’t. And if it’s not tough enough to save the world, you come back again next year and the year after and the year after that and fight to make it tougher.