A Conversation With Barack Obama : Rolling Stone

Here's my point: Whenever you transition to a new technology or a new way of thinking about structuring our economy, the old is going to resist the new. The key is to make the new profitable, job-generating and appealing enough that more and more people embrace the new and let go of the old. That's where government can play a role. If we institute a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions, that's going to generate billions of dollars. Now, that's also going to mean higher electricity prices for consumers, so a huge chunk of that has to go back to consumers in the form of rebates, so they don't feel the pinch as badly. That's point number one.

Point number two is we'll put $15 billion a year into alternative energy. We want to give encouragement to existing utilities, existing energy companies, to invest in solar and wind and biodiesel.

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