The wreckage from the U.S. Supreme Court's June 30 decision limiting the EPA’s ability to regulate carbon emissions is the latest evidence that our nation needs a carbon fee.

More than 3,600 economists, including 28 Nobel laureates, have said that such a fee “offers the most cost-effective lever to reduce carbon emissions at the scale and speed that is necessary. By correcting a well-known market failure, a carbon tax will send a powerful price signal that harnesses the invisible hand of the marketplace to steer economic actors towards a low-carbon future.”

Trying to achieve significant reductions in power plant emissions via federal regulations, while worthy, is proving exceedingly difficult. The coal industry and attorneys general from GOP-led states proved that June 30 when they derailed EPA’s efforts to do so. How many more years will it take for EPA to overcome such hurdles? We can’t wait.

“The Court appoints itself—instead of Congress or the expert agency—the decision maker on climate policy,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her dissent, joined by Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor.

Richard Lazarus, a Harvard environmental law professor, said that the Supreme Court was insisting on a clear statement from what it knows is an “effectively dysfunctional” body. “The Court threatens to upend the national government’s ability to safeguard the public health and welfare at the very moment when the United States, and all nations, are facing our greatest environmental challenge of all: climate change,” Lazarus wrote in an email.

In response to today's ruling, Politico reported, 24 governors reaffirmed their commitments to wring carbon from the power sector. We applaud their determination, but we need strong action at the federal level.

U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) has led the effort on Capitol Hill to put a price on carbon. With Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) and other colleagues, he is sponsoring the American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act (S. 1128). It is now clearer than ever that this is the real solution to the climate change challenge..