With all the excitement of bringing your own bags to the grocery story, buying organic cotton clothing and carrying your own water bottle, it is easy to forget that the United States government does not have a plan in place for dealing with the main cause of climate change: carbon. After all the efforts we continue to put for in order to make out personal lives more green, how do we get companies to follow suit?

Establishing an effective and long-term plan for government sanctioned carbon reduction is the main subject of Peter Barnes’ book, Climate Solutions: A Citizen’s Guide - What Works, What Doesn’t, and Why. Released at the beginning of 2008, Climate Solutions is a quick 93-page read (I finished it in a few hours). No punches are pulled as Barnes gives us the straight facts about the current state of our environment and the carbon reduction plans major corporations are rooting for. “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,” says Bill McKibben in the book’s forward.

“On the surface, global warming appears to be an environmental problem. But deeper down, it’s a result of two economic and political failures,” says Barnes in the first chapter. Four different government tools are discussed in detail: taxes, caps, regulations and investments. After over 30 years in the green energy business, Barnes gets right to the point on each method’s benefits and drawbacks. “In the end, we’ll need a mix [of all four tools], but before we make our brew we need to know the virtues and flaws of each,” says Barnes.

After the overview, Barnes jumps headlong into an explanation of why a carbon cap-and-dividend plan is the best bet for the planet and its inhabitants. “From a political perspective, a carbon cap with monthly dividends would be the most popular federal program since Social Security,” says Barnes. Just like the other three tools, carbon capping can easily be corrupted, just as it was in Europe. Unfortunately, all of the plans currently in the House and Senate are set to repeat those same European mistakes. Now is the time for us citizens to make our voices heard before the business of carbon reduction is over before it starts.

“We need to limit and pay for atmospheric pollution, and we need to shift subsidies from dirty fuels to clean ones. If we don’t do both of those things, we won’t stop climate change.” Whether you live in the United States or not, Climate Solutions: A Citizen’s Guide - What Works, What Doesn’t, and Why is a valuable no-bullshit guide on making government regulations a successful method for reducing carbon pollution. As a registered voter, I feel much more informed after reading this book and plan to make the move to supporting a carbon cap-and-dividend plan with much more fervor.