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Barack Obama has created a top-notch team to guide his transition into the White House. Next, he should create a team to guide America’s transition to a new energy economy.

I’m not talking about the prestigious group of economic advisers Obama already has assembled to help him identify solutions to the economic meltdown.

I’m talking about a team that includes experts in sustainable energy technologies, climate mitigation and adaptation, capital investment, state and local government, business, industry and labor.

To lead America into a post-carbon economy, President Obama and the 111th Congress will have to revolutionize the biggest and most heavily lobbied of the government’s programs. That means taking on the armies of the status quo, who have money and inertia on their side.

It’s a battle that must be fought and won. Today, our public policy is riddled with crisis-inducing, self-defeating contradictions. The next Congress will have to resolve some tough questions that past Congresses avoided. For example:

1.) What action will Congress take to prove to the world that the United States is serious about addressing climate action?

There is no lack of ideas for what President Obama and the 111th Congress should do to address three of the most pressing issues they will face when they take office in January -- global climate change, the energy crisis and economic transformation. It may be winter in Washington, D.C., but it’s springtime in national politics. Policy agendas are blooming like cherry blossoms.

For example, last week alone, Washington D.C. was introduced to three comprehensive plans to address economy, energy and climate. Two were issued by the Center for American Progress, headed by John Podesta, co-chair of President-elect Obama’s transition team, including an excellent strategy for green recovery by Bracken Hendricks and Benjamin Goldstein.

The other was the Presidential Climate Action Plan (PCAP) released during a standing-room only briefing on Capitol Hill, after two years of gestation at the University of Colorado. PCAP contains more than 180 proposals for President Obama and the next Congress, across 18 topics, ranging from natural resource stewardship to public health and from farm policy to zero-carbon buildings and transportation systems.

This hasn’t been the coal industry’s month.

First, Barack Obama, who is expected to push hard for federal carbon regulation, was elected president. And now, in a landmark decision with far-reaching implications, the EPA Environmental Appeals Board (EAB) has rejected a federal air permit for a proposed new coal plant in Utah over climate change pollution concerns.

When scientists or economists or activists show graphs of future greenhouse gas emissions, they label the line that rises most steeply and most quickly as "BAU" or "business-as-usual." It is the certain path to temperature rises of 5 degrees or more and to climate catastrophe. There is no argument that to halt the progress of global warming, what is required is an end to business-as-usual.

If you are concerned about global warming, "business -as-usual" is a four-letter phrase. It's abbreviated as "BAU" and that's a four-letter acronym. No matter the form it takes, it's a dirty word that succinctly and precisely names the enemy.

So what is worth talking about -- since nobody else appears to be -- is that the current global economic crisis has put a temporary halt to business-as-usual. The two great carbon-spewing economies of the globe -- the US and China -- are now spewing a lot less greenhouse gas. Together, they account for half of the world's emissions.

It's probably safe to wager that the economic downturn will be doing more to reduce global GHG emissions than all the real effort and well-intentioned rhetoric of the last two decades. It would be useful and illuminating if someone with the requisite expertise would redraw the trajectory of BAU on a graph, taking into account the financial meltdown, so we can see by just how much.