Rabbi Arthur Waskow and the Shalom Center recently announced their support of the CLEAR Act. Here’s a piece he recently wrote about the legislation:

Even if Senators Kerry and Lieberman can put Humpty-Dumpty back together again after losing Senator Graham’s support for what used to be the KGL (Kugel) bill for climate control, far better is the CLEAR bill introduced by Senators Maria Cantwell (Democrat) of Washington State and Susan Collins (Republican) of Maine. It is often named “cap and dividend” because it prevents any Wall Street trades in carbon credits, and returns 75% of the money gathered from auctioning rights to emit CO2 to the American people: dividends of about $1,000 a year to every legal resident of the US. The other 25% will go to research on renewable energy sources.

It is now the only climate bill with bipartisan support, and could attract grassroots support because it gives most of the money to the people, not big corporations or the government.

Those dividends to the people will offset the cost of higher fuel prices for the poor and the middle class, and will build a Main Street rather than Wall Street political constituency for CO2 controls. CLEAR