What can United States do against climate change?

Is it really enough that United States just agrees to the new climate deal under which U.S. should significantly cut greenhouse gas emissions so world would have a decent chance to fight against climate change? There is no doubt that this is the important first step that United States has to do, but one step is very rarely enough to reach the final goal, and U.S. will have to make at least few more steps before reaching the finish line in the race to make country's economy greener.

These days going green is very popular trend among Americans as many hope that going green idea would not only help our planet but would also bring millions of new jobs, now that the recession is finally behind us. Most of these green jobs are somehow connected to certain renewable energy sector, mostly with wind or solar power. Also, many energy experts agree that renewable energy sector is the only real chance to halt further greenhouse gas emissions rise, not only in the United States, but in the rest of the world too.

Sadly, renewable energy sector is anything but ready to compete with dominant fossil fuels industry, and despite obvious progress in some renewable energy sectors like wind and solar energy United States is still at least couple of decades away from satisfying significant share of its energy demand from renewable energy.

Oil, natural gas, and coal still rule the U.S. energy policy while renewable energy sector still hasn't set the appropriate pace to ease the country's dependence on fossil fuels. U.S. is currently not making the right steps in developing renewable energy sector, and many energy experts feel that U.S. is slowly but surely falling more and more behind in clean energy race.

What will happen if U.S. signs new climate deal, and obliges to significant cuts in greenhouse gas emissions? How exactly will the country satisfy huge demand for energy, and in the same time decrease the level of CO2 emissions without the strong renewable energy sector remains a true mystery for me. EU is making huge steps in developing renewable energy sector, heck even the world's biggest polluter China is becoming one of the leaders in clean energy race with strong development of solar and wind energy sector, while in the United States everything moves so irritatingly slow.

Either we have to wait for Congress to finally make the decision, or we have to wait for industry to recover, or we have to wait for politics to solve some other political issues like health care, in any case new green energy policy and ecology are always down on the waiting list.

Therefore even if U.S. does sign a new climate deal don't hope for miracles, especially regarding the short-term CO2 targets. The "going green journey" has only started, and U.S. politics obviously do not feel the need to speed up things.