THE BIG BILL STRATEGY ON CLIMATE CHANGE.

The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 -- otherwise known as the Waxman-Markey climate change bill -- is not a cap and trade bill. Nor is it energy legislation. It's not about modernizing the grid or promoting efficiency or encouraging renewables. Instead, it's everything. Call it the Big Bill Strategy. And Waxman and Markey are perfectly explicit about this. (The word "titles," in this context, essentially means "parts.")

The legislation has four titles: (1) a “clean energy” title that promotes renewable sources of energy and carbon capture and sequestration technologies, low-carbon transportation fuels, clean electric vehicles, and the smart grid and electricity transmission; (2) an “energy efficiency” title that increases energy efficiency across all sectors of the economy, including buildings, appliances, transportation, and industry; (3) a “global warming” title that places limits on the emissions of heat-trapping pollutants; and (4) a “transitioning” title that protects U.S. consumers and industry and promotes green jobs during the transition to a clean energy economy.

The fact is, doing these pieces separately would mean three, four, possibly five bruising legislative battles, culminating in a battle over cap-and-trade that, in my estimation, simply can't be won on its own in this Senate. No one in D.C. has the appetite for that, not this year.

So they've decided, uncharacteristically for Democrats, to double down. They are piling all this stuff into one big-ticket, high-profile, must-pass bill. Just as there will be "a healthcare bill" -- and not four disparate, complicated healthcare bills only wonks can understand -- there will now be a green economy bill. For it or against it.

The downside to this strategy is similarly clear: If you lose, you lose everything. Senators who vote against cap and trade will also be dooming grid modernization and efficiency incentives. And crafting a bill this large ensures that there will be plenty to vote against. Roberts says that politicians will either be for or against "the green economy bill," but that's going to be a vague accomplishment as opposed to being for or against the worst provision of the green economy bill.

This sort of Big Bill strategy, however, is particularly well-suited to the climate change problem. More so than most policy problems, you either pass legislation strong enough to stop climate change -- defined, generally, as reducing the atmosphere's carbon load to 550 parts per million -- or you don't. Making it better isn't a particularly viable option: The trapped carbon will engage sufficient feedback loops that the problem will worsen on its own. That's different from a policy like health reform, where you could at least imagine improving coverage without, say, reforming the delivery system.