Will America do anything significant to slow climate change? Cap-and-trade died in 2010. Clean-energy subsidies are expensive and inadequate to address the sprawling issue of global warming. The Environmental Protection Agency’s new carbon regulations have the same drawbacks.

President Obama’s fuel efficiency standards will help, but they affect only the transportation sector. The GOP presidential primary race, meanwhile, gave no hope for serious policy to cut carbon emissions.

The optimistic can point to one bill in the Senate, from Energy Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.). The proposal would require that utilities derive a defined portion of their electricity from technologies that emit fewer greenhouse emissions than coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel. Critically, any electricity technology — wind, solar, natural gas, nuclear or something entirely new — can get credit, scaled in accordance to the improvement it offers. This clean electricity mandate would ramp up over time, requiring that 54 percent of electricity in 2025 come from such sources and 84 percent in 2035. If this sounds familiar, it’s because many states have similar policies in place, though many — including Maryland’s — aren’t as well thought out. — Excerpts from the Washington Post editorial