This past week, on the heels of “Climate Week” and attendant Copenhagen preliminaries in New York, Elizabeth Kolbert wrote a nice article in the New Yorker in which she mused over what it would actually take for the US to show real leadership on climate change.

None of the suggestions Kolbert offered at all resembled the Senate climate bill Senators Barbara Boxer and John Kerry unveiled Wednesday. While an improvement over the Waxman Markey bill, overall the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act falls far short of the high bar of climate leadership the US needs to clear and reminds us that the question we should be asking right now is not what US leadership should really look like. I think we already know the answer to that. No, the question we really have to address is, what is holding US leadership back, and how do we overcome it.

In a word, I think the answer is capital. Oil and coal have deep pockets and they use them well to finance the crippling of federal climate efforts. They’ve been outspending us in the climate fight. And the truth is the only way we’re going to win is by beating them at their own game. Simply put, if we want a stronger climate bill, we’ve got to “buy” it.

And we can do it. We the American people have far deeper pockets than all of the big oil and coal companies combined. While most of us fail to realize it, each one of us, by right of being a democratic citizen, has access to inexhaustible stores of a currency far more potent than the dollar. This currency is one which our leaders ultimately depend upon to hold office, run the country, and pass laws that truly reflect the public interest