If the presidential debate on climate change and energy has seemed a little thin on substance and heavy on political posturing this summer, a refreshing tonic is coming out of the University of Colorado (CU) School of Public Affairs: a to-do list for the first 100 days of the next White House.

The No. 1 priority, according to The Presidential Climate Action Project, should be checked off in the next president’s first 100 minutes. Whether it’s John McCain or Barack Obama, he must use his inaugural address to challenge Congress to come up with a “clean, elegant” plan to cap carbon emissions and provide a way for them to be traded.

Bill Becker, executive director of the project, gave a thumbnail version of the plan to the environmental blog Grist.com at the Democratic National Convention  this week in Denver. In the seven-minute video interview, Becker says the 44th president should move boldly, launching the country in a new direction his first 100 minutes in office, and not let up. “[In] the inaugural address, the president has got to take leadership and send a signal there’s a new sheriff in town,” Becker said.

The CU project gathered representatives from a wide range of fields and agencies to consider climate change and all its implications for the nation’s society, economy and environment. On its Web site, the group frames the issue fairly simply as a confluence of business and environment: “Climate action is a powerful engine for new industries and jobs, and the next challenge for America’s genius.”

Becker told Grist the second-highest priority is to “pull back the curtain” on the billions of dollars in federal subsidies for the fossil-fuel industry. While it’s up to Congress whether to maintain, reduce or eliminate such subsidies, he said the president should make it clear to the public that “we’re paying one another to emit carbon….”

While the project has developed a draft list including 300 recommendations for the president, they range from wonkish to outright visionary. The No. 3 priority, Becker said, is to use his administrative authority to declare the atmosphere as a public commons and to put federal government officials on notice that “they have a fiduciary responsibility to protect that commons on behalf of all of us.”

Energy and the economy have eclipsed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as the prime concerns of the voting public, and that action on climate change is farther down the list. But Becker said the next president and Congress have the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. “If we solve the energy problem” by reducing the demand on fossil fuels and moving toward renewable energy sources, he said, “we’ll go a long way toward solving the climate problem.”

The project’s draft plan is out now. A revised, final plan will be published in September, the group says.