A failure can sometimes lead to a greater success later on. A case in point is the failure of the Climate Security Act to survive a threatened Republican filibuster. The issue now will wait until next year, with an opportunity to improve the bill and consider better alternatives.

The global warming bill was introduced by Sens. John Warner, R-Va., and Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, and supported by both presumed presidential candidates as well as both Maine senators. It would have set in motion a complex “cap and trade” system to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions by nearly two-thirds by 2050. It mustered 48 votes, 12 short of the 60 needed to head off death by extended debate. Six more senators said they would have voted for the bill, but only if it were amended to help affected industries and their workers.

The bill had flaws, aside from being too harsh for some critics and too weak for some advocates. It opened the way for profiteering and cheating and horse trading over the emission permits to be sold to the polluters. No one knew its likely cost or economic impact. No one knew what would happen to the huge sums raised by auctioning the permits, estimated at $7 trillion by 2050. Finally, cap and trade may not be the best way to deal with climate change. Emissions actually have increased in Europe, where cap and trade has been started under the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

A direct carbon tax, as advocated for by a growing number of industry leaders, may be more effective. But both parties are skittish about anything called a tax after years of being told that all taxes are bad.

About a quarter of American greenhouse emissions come from coal-fired power plants. Utilities will burn more and more coal as demand for electricity increases and as prices of other fuels rise, spurring some of them to try to devise power plants that would capture their emissions and perhaps bury them in the ground.

In the long run, to end our dependence on foreign oil and even get along without oil altogether, one can picture a future with plug-in electric cars and electrically heated homes and office buildings – all with electricity supplied by nonpolluting methods such as nuclear reactors, tidal power, windmills, thermal power or a combination of them.

For complete oil independence, however, we will have to find a substitute for the petroleum-based plastics that now supply so much of our fabrics, furniture, auto bodies, house siding, soft-drink and water bottles, fences, diapers, and almost anything else you can think of.

To address energy and climate change concerns, we will need broad new thinking when we have a new Congress and a new president.