Last Thursday, the Senate voted down 55-43 a bill to decrease carbon dioxide emissions in factories and large industrial plants.
It was the first time in six years that the global warming issue came across the Senate floor. The last occasion was in conjunction with the international climate change Kyoto protocol in 1997, which was defeated unanimously 95-0.
So as the ocean rises, so does political awareness and concern about an issue that already has wielded dramatic damage on the ecosystem. And the nearly split vote shows a rising tide of concern among policy-makers and the public.
In a The New York Times poll, two-thirds of adults were aware of global warming, and 80 percent supported higher mileage standards on cars to help curb emissions pollution.
The United States, which accounts for less than 5 percent of the world's human population, is responsible for a quarter of the world's CO2 emissions, the main culprit in the greenhouse effect, which has caused glacial ice caps to melt, sea levels to rise 4 to 8 inches in the last 100 years, and the mean temperature of the globe to increase.
We at The State Press support hometown Sen. John McCain in his dogged fight for implementing federal environmental regulations on carbon dioxide emissions.
McCain co-sponsored the global warming bill with presidential candidate and Sen. Joseph Leiberman, D-Conn. The bill would have required utilities, industries and fuel refineries to reduce CO2 emissions to 2000 levels, with an option purchase "pollution credits" from smaller industrial players. The bill, anticipating staunch opposition from the auto industry, did not include emissions restrictions for cars.
The restrictions in this bill would be mandatory - that is what is needed.
The Bush administration's environmental efforts - which have been notoriously lenient on industrial polluters by asking them to reduce pollutants through voluntary measure and self-regulation - have been laughable, were it not for the deleterious global impact of such neglect.
Though the independent Environmental Protection Agency has extensive evidence of the deleterious effects of CO2 emissions and the presence of global warming, the administration has censored the EPA's report on global warming twice in the last year. So the strong vote in favor of the regulations, which included six Senate Republicans, demonstrates that environmental damage cannot continue to be censored or ignored.
However, the road to enact meaningful environmental policy of greenhouse gases is a long and arduous one. Even if the Senate had supported the McCain-Leiberman measure, it would have most certainly been defeated in the House.
McCain and Leiberman know that another six years is too long. Carbon dioxide emissions are causing our atmosphere to deteriorate gradually but steadily.
For the sake of the environment, it must.
"I want to assure my colleagues we will be back," McCain said at the end of Thursday's vote.
And we'll be there to back him.
