Editorial: Leading on global warming

Sunday, Aug. 12, 2007 | 7:40 a.m.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, long a leading advocate in Congress for global warming solutions, last week took his views to China, the world's second-largest producer of greenhouse gases behind the United States.

The Connecticut senator, formerly a Democrat and now an independent, met with many top Chinese officials, including Minister of Science and Technology Wan Gang. A former automotive engineer with the German Audi Corp., Gang returned to China several years ago and headed a national electric car project before being named to his current position.

Capturing the attention of such officials is important if Lieberman is to succeed in his biggest global warming challenge yet - paving the way for an agreement between China and the United States to drastically reduce carbon emissions.

We believe Lieberman is showing the kind of leadership on global warming that President Bush should be showing. The senator is right - the United States should be a partner in the fight against global warming.

Unfortunately, the shortsighted Bush announced in 2001 his administration's opposition to the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 international agreement on emissions. Lieberman, in contrast, had attended the conference in Kyoto, Japan, and had lobbied vigorously on behalf of the agreement.

In the Senate, Lieberman and Sen. John Warner, R-Va., are sponsoring a bill that would cut greenhouse gas emissions 70 percent by 2050. The bill is crucial. A team of U.K. climate scientists just last week released a report anticipating weather patterns in the years 2009 through 2014. According to Bloomberg News, the scientists concluded that each of those years has at least a 50 percent chance of being warmer than 1998, the hottest year on record.

We hope the Lieberman-Warner bill passes in even stronger form. Many scientists, for example, say we need to cut emissions at least 80 percent by 2050.

We also hope Lieberman is successful in filling the void left by Bush, that of clearing the way for an agreement with China that could make for a much healthier world in the decades to come.