On January 22, 2007, the United States Climate Action Partnership—a partnership of diverse organizations ranging from Duke Energy and General Electric, to the Natural Resources Defense Council and Pew Center on Global Climate Change—became public and issued a press release and report calling on the federal government to “lay out a blueprint for a mandatory economy-wide, market-driven approach to climate protection.”

Last week on the health care front, sixteen highly diverse organizations ranging from AARP and Pfizer to Families USA and the American Medical Association released a proposal that laid out a plan for expanding SCHIP—our nation’s most important program for providing health insurance to low income children—that would cover all of the nearly nine million uninsured children across the nation.

We all can learn from the efforts of these coalitions. Both climate change and our health care system affect us all, and for that that reason we all have the obligation to work together, combining our individual interests to achieve progress and innovation. Although press releases, reports, and proposals are by no means the end product, the fact that these groups, who traditionally disagree on many facets of their respective debates, sat together at a table and developed a plan shows the urgency of fixing our health care system and the need to heal our planet.