by Michael DeRamo

 I remember what environmentalism meant years ago, when I bought a certificate entitling me to one acre of rainforest, thereby protecting it from deforestation or conversion into grazing land. I remember learning that through the small contributions of everyday people, we could affect the future even of something as massive as the Amazon, something as precious as the planet Earth. In those days, it seemed that the countries directly in control of the most fragile ecosystems didn’t know how to manage them properly, and that the United States needed to urge them to adopt new and greener policies. I worried that Brazil would realize too late that the “lungs of the world” were more valuable than the simple sum of their lumber and acreage.

Fast-forward fifteen years, and the picture has turned upside-down. Brazil has taken the lead in greening its economy, successfully scrapping petroleum-based fuels in favor of a cleaner, home-grown ethanol derived from sugarcane. For our part, the United States has fallen behind the international environmental movement of Kyoto and beyond. Now it seems that the rest of the world is looking to Washington to adopt greener policies and reclaim the lead in scientific and industrial innovation.

The bill currently before the United States Senate may be our next great chance to return to the forefront of the green revolution. The Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act proposes a sweeping cap-and-trade system designed to lower greenhouse-gas emissions gradually over the next four decades. Like most legislation, the bill is certainly imperfect: Senator Kerry, a strong environmental champion, himself admitted weaknesses he hoped to address in the coming days. But, as Senator Warner said today on the floor, “the value of this debate is to have some exchange between us.” Many in the press are already describing the bill as doomed. Yet even if it does not pass, the Senate and the nation will be better-off for having deliberated one possible solution to climate change.

If only the G.O.P. were willing to take advantage of the opportunity for discussion. Watching today’s floor debate, one can’t help but notice the picture of disarray painted by the fumbled talking points of the Republican members. Senator Inhofe indicted the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as “the ones who started this,” and disparagingly referred to “that science-fiction movie” better known to the world as former Vice President Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. Senator Barrasso lambasted the bill for not containing a definitive guarantee that every Wyoming coal worker would be awarded a new job in the renewable energy industry, never mind that the bill actually does contain provisions for training green-collar workers. (I wonder whether he truly would support a piece of legislation that mandated which American citizens were to work for which companies.)

And how about when the same Senator Barrasso predicted that without the burgeoning coal industry, the entirety of rural America would be without electricity? Even a fellow Republican caught the sheer absurdity of that claim: within minutes, Senator Grassley was speaking on the floor about the fantastic wind-energy sector thriving in his rural domain of Iowa.

Senator Lieberman made the point early in the afternoon that the name of the Climate Security Act is apt because it “is not only an environmental protection bill, not only an economic growth bill: this is a national security bill.” Climate change threatens the stability of our food supply, the survival of our coastal cities, and so much more. Why does it seem like Senate Republicans are so unwilling to have a productive discussion about change?