Thank you for your excellent editorial (Our View, Feb. 12), which describes the need for the Green New Deal and places it in its historical context of FDR’s New Deal.

It is a bold set of ideas that are at a scale to start meeting the multiple challenges that climate change poses for all of us. However, it is not the “only proposal on the table” in the U.S. House. Indeed, as you point out, it’s a resolution, not a policy.

In fact, the only policy proposal now on the table in the U.S. House that addresses climate change is the Energy Innovation and Climate Dividend Act (HR 763). It would achieve two of the Green New Deal’s main goals: deep de-carbonization of the U.S. economy at a rate to meet and exceed our Paris goals and the creation of more than 2 million jobs within 10 years, derived from the transition to the clean energy economy.

Under this carbon-fee-and-dividend bill, the ExxonMobils and Murray Coals of this country would finally be paying for the earth-altering pollution that they cause. And, from those pollution payments, we Americans would be getting monthly Climate Security checks. The echo of FDR’s Social Security checks couldn’t be more appropriate.

A big (and needed) plus for the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend bill is that it has bipartisan support. A national climate policy must be party-proof because it must endure. Climate change is too big to become partisan.

We need a big-tent, all-of-the-above approach to addressing climate change. And, we are beginning to approach that.

Chellie Pingree has shown the way. She’s both a sponsor of the Green New Deal and a supporter of carbon fee and dividend. Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King have shown interest in carbon pricing with dividends.

We need leadership on this now.

Peter Monro

Portland

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