Climate change continues to wreak its destruction around the world. The United States is without effective legislation to reduce greenhouse gasses or to provide a reliable flow of alternative energy as fossil fuels are reduced. The Congress has been so corrupted by the fossil fuel corporations that it cannot create the legislation needed to get us into the safety zone that lies below 350 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere. Most Congress members are trained in law, business and education. They cannot be expected to suddenly develop the varied expertise necessary to legislate the intricate policies necessary to control the climate, stimulate alternatives and create a smooth transition.

The climate change is not in the distant future. The National Climatic Data Center tracks those climate disasters that destroy over a billion dollars in property. From 2001 to 2010 climate disasters have cost the U.S. over $354 billion and 2,840 lives. The frequency and intensity of fires, floods, violent storms and tornadoes have increased as the CO2 in the atmosphere has increased. The fires, floods and tornadoes of 2011 are breaking records. Our people are made homeless and dying from climate chaos and we are doing almost nothing about it nationally.

Scientists tell us that climate change threatens civilization as we know it, and that the sooner we act, the better chance we have of preventing worst disasters. We must not pass on to our children a world of violent storms, destructive floods, advancing deserts, and life-threatening shortages of food and water. While the U.S. may be better able to withstand these threats than some less-developed nations, scientists say that recent climate disasters are only an introduction to what lies ahead, if we do not act.

This is an emergency and the President must declare it so. As a nation, we and all the creatures of the Earth are under attack by climate change and its chaos. We are living through a climate Pearl Harbor. We urgently need an effective response to this attack and we need it now. To protect our common future, we need a long-term,  apolitical agency with the knowledge and authority to effectively reduce our greenhouse gasses and replace their energy with clean alternatives in a smooth, continuous process.

The Livable Climate Agency (LCA) is similar in concept  to the War Production Board of  W.W.II, which was created by executive order of President Roosevelt to mobilize American industry a month after Pearl Harbor. It converted peacetime industries to war production, allocated scarce materials, established priorities and prohibited nonessential production. Under its outstanding supervision the production of tanks, ships, planes and other military materials exceeded all expectations, and is generally considered to have made possible the Allied victory in W.W.II. At the same time, war production ended the long depression of the 1930s.

The Livable Climate Agency must have the best scientists to plan what is needed and the best economists to minimize the effects on our economy. It must develop step by step plans to reduce our greenhouse gasses, while replacing fossil fuel energy with a steadily increasing supply of alternative energy, and, at the same time, create the transmission infrastructure and job training to deliver that energy to our cities and industrial centers. To achieve this historic transition as smoothly and quickly as possible, will require constant monitoring of the results in the atmosphere and across the nation, and the adjustment of incentives and regulations.

Protecting the Economy. To maintain a livable economy during this critical transition, will require retraining of people for jobs in new industries and a strong public relations campaign to help the everyone to understand the restrictions or rationing that may be necessary. The smooth changeover from fossil fuels to alternative energies is a huge task. It will take decades of controlled reductions of greenhouse gasses to a minor level and their replacement with other clean, sustainable energy sources. It will mean modernizing our infrastructure, and investment in new industries, which in turn will create new jobs  and new products. Taken together, the effectiveness of this effort and the development of alternative energy industries will determine the future of the United States. We must not leave it to the shifting whims of partisan politicians, nor can we allow it to be misdirected by the influence of coal and oil corporations and their lobbyists.

The Livable Climate Agency can provide us with a balanced, scientifically correct and economically viable plan, and monitor the many steps of the changeover from fossil fuels to alternatives. Gradually it will reduce the greenhouse gasses that intensify our storms and floods. It will help those thousands of species that are now threatened by climate chaos to survive, thus preserving a more beautiful and varied living environment for future generations.

Most of all, the LCA can protect our children from the worst disasters of climate change and in the process will develop the technology to help other nations face their energy problems. Only by confronting and dealing with this basic threat to  life on Earth can we maintain the vitality and protect the future of the United States.