Introduction

With officials from around the world descending on Montreal, Canada, November 26 through December 9 for a new round of climate change negotiations, the United States has once again taken a position on the sidelines. The Bush administration, which pulled the United States out of the Kyoto Protocol on Global Warming, has signaled that it will remain a holdout rather than make a greater commitment to future negotiations in hopes of addressing legitimate U.S. concerns about the agreement's shortcomings.

Nonetheless, on the home front, political momentum seems to be building for action to bring U.S. greenhouse gas emissions under control. Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma blew a fresh sense of urgency into the climate change debate, since researchers have established a clear link between rising sea surface temperatures due to global warming and the increasing violence of tropical storms.

Meanwhile, even before hurricane season, cracks were beginning to appear in the Republican Party's unified opposition to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Ironically, the most dramatic convert was President Bush himself. After years of obfuscation on the subject, he finally crossed the Rubicon at a G-8 summit meeting in Gleneagles, Scotland, last summer, saying: "I recognize that the surface of the Earth is warmer, and that an increase in greenhouse gases caused by humans is contributing to the problem."

The president's belated concession on the science of global warming followed statements from scientific academies in 10 nations -- including the U.S. National Academy of Sciences -- that concluded the Earth is getting warmer and humans are part of the cause. And while the Senate again rejected a measure during this summer's energy debate that would have established a mandatory cap on green-house gas emissions, it did pass a resolution calling on Congress to enact an "effective national program of mandatory, market-based limits and incentives on emissions of greenhouse gases." Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.), chair of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, later opened a series of hearings on legislative options to combat climate change. He vowed to work with this home-state colleague Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), the ranking minority member on the committee, to build consensus on a policy to address the problem "through market-based limits and incentives that don't harm our economy."

In short, there seems to be growing bipartisan support for serious action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. What is needed now is a legislative vehicle that can attract enough support from both parties to break the partisan gridlock that has so far stymied progress against climate change.