Internal Rifts Cloud Democrats' Opportunity on Warming

"It's a briar patch," said one industry lobbyist. "I can understand why Pelosi wants to hold hearings to show the Democrats care, but I can't believe she really wants to try to legislate."

But Pelosi and her leadership team believe action will be good politics as well as policy, branding climate as a Democratic issue while showing the caucus that recalcitrant chairmen are no longer free to freelance. Pelosi had already warned Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) not to use the Judiciary Committee to try to impeach Bush, and she denied her rival Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) the gavel of the Intelligence Committee. Less than two hours after the mutinous Energy and Commerce meeting, she stood up to Dingell as well, holding a news conference to declare her select committee a done deal.

"It says to the American people, we are about the future," she said.

Act Fast vs. Go Slow

Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) is worried about the future on a hotter planet, and the posters in his office show why. There's Glacier National Park, where Inslee believes "there will be no glaciers in 50 years." There's Mount Rainier, where alpine meadows are retreating as higher temperatures push the tree line higher. There's a photo of his 28-year-old son, Connor, skiing down Washington's Stevens Pass; two years ago, there was so little snow on the mountain that Connor could only work on the ski patrol for a few days.

For the first decade of Inslee's congressional career, Republicans controlled Congress, and emissions-reduction rules were about as likely as new gun restrictions or same-sex marriage rights. But now Inslee and many of his colleagues speak with a fervor reminiscent of the GOP revolutionaries who seized the House in 1995 and immediately wanted to shake things up.

"The flat-Earth society has been removed from power," Inslee said. "This opens the door to meaningful change."

Inslee is just a back-bencher on Energy and Commerce, but he is already trying to hash out details of climate change legislation. Last week, he spent an hour on the phone with Duke Energy chief executive Jim Rogers, who has endorsed a limit on carbon emissions. They delved into the details of how a limit could work, how to promote cleaner technologies, how it is easier to sequester carbon in the soil in Indiana than in North Carolina.

Inslee has no patience for the go-slow crowd that thinks Democrats would be smarter to grandstand the climate issue in 2008, then work with an eco-friendlier president in 2009. He wants to get to work.

"This should not be a planning year," he said. "This should not be a debating year. This should be an action year."

Dingell represents the other side of the debate, the side that is quick to point out that overzealous restrictions on emissions could decimate the U.S. economy. He wants to hold extensive hearings on climate change, to investigate the problem, if in fact it is a problem, and what it might cost to try to address it. That is the way he has dealt with issues since he came to Congress during the first Eisenhower administration. He says global warming will be a priority for his committee, but clearly not the only priority.

"We've got Medicaid, Medicare, health insurance, prescription drugs," Dingell said. "We've got leaky underground storage tanks."

Leaky underground storage tanks? When Glacier National Park is melting?