Obama on Cap on Emissions

Obama supports a market-based cap-and-trade system to reduce carbon emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. It will include a 100 percent auction of pollution credits, which will make the polluters pay for every ton of emissions they release. That's a big move and in contrast to other proposals that would give these emission rights away for free to coal and oil companies.

He co-sponsored the Boxer-Sanders Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act, the most stringent climate bill in Congress. But as Grist points out, a few months later he also signed on to the much less aggressive (and more nuke-friendly) McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act.