I would feel great about a 300% increase in my electric rates — if I got a check back each year representing my share of the revenue generated by the carbon permit auction revenues.

The kind of policy Senator Obama is talking about would increase energy prices – but for 60% of American households, the dividend check would more than offset the increased costs, INCREASING net household income.

The people who would end up paying more each year are those who use excessive amounts of electricity. Right now, we (all inhabitants of the planet) are paying for their pollution in the form of reduced air quality, increasing global temperature which will lead to reduced food production, a reduction in water supply, and possible all out chaos.

How would you like to have more money in your pocket at the end of the year, and not see the planet go to hell?

I live in Oregon, where we get almost none of our electricity from coal. My house and my workplace, in fact, get 100% of their electricity from renewable sources – wind, hydro, and low emissions biomass. I take a bus to work, which runs on a bio-diesel blend. My computer, cell phone, lights, and everything else I use that consumes electricity is powered without coal. True, the manufacture of all the products I use required using coal-produced electricity. I never claimed we could have gotten to where we are today without coal.

The fact that we get 50% of our electricity from coal is no excuse to build more coal-burning power plants.

Science is hard to argue with. If you believe the physics that enables us to burn coal to make electricity, you have to believe the physics that says carbon emissions are heating the planet at a catastrophic rate. Not a single peer-reviewed scientific journal has published anything to the contrary.

Cutting coal completely out of the picture immediately is impractical, and maybe impossible. That said, it is critical for the survival of human civilization that we phase out our use of coal-fired plants that do not sequester their carbon emissions.

If you don’t believe in global warming, that’s your prerogative. However, it is not your right to destroy my future and the future of all generations to come. The only thing that makes me more mad than the fact that the old guard in power now is keeping us from stopping global warming is that you probably won’t be alive when the worst consequences are felt, so I won’t have the chance to say “I told you so.”