The two-term senator from South Carolina drew the ire of conservative activists last week after he joined Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., in outlining the framework of a bipartisan plan for combating climate change that would tie greenhouse gas reductions with new nuclear power nationwide and expanded offshore drilling.

Environmentalists labeled the move a “game changer” that could propel controversial climate change legislation through the Senate, past dubious Democrats worried about the impact on home-state industries such as mining and manufacturing, and Republicans who consider it a damaging “energy tax.”

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who worries about the effects of a rising global temperature on the ice pack and permafrost in her home state, said the Graham-Kerry partnership could “mark a shift in the climate debate.”

“It's hard to overstate the significance of this,” said Dan Lashof, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “It ensures that the Senate bill will be bipartisan” and “demonstrates that there is a pathway to 60 votes to overcome a filibuster” and win Senate passage.

A long battle

Climate change legislation is notoriously difficult to manage on Capitol Hill. Although the Senate has debated the issue three times in the past eight years, supporters of new emissions caps have never been able to secure more than 48 votes to advance such mandates in the 100-member chamber.

This year, the House narrowly passed climate change legislation that would impose a 17 percent reduction of 2005 levels of carbon dioxide emissions by 2020. In the Senate, Kerry and Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., have introduced a similar bill with a more ambitious 20 percent target for 2020, but their measure has been stymied by the time-consuming health care debate and some Democratic opposition.

The climate change bills would set up a cap-and-trade plan so that refineries, manufacturers and other businesses could meet ever-tightening emissions limits by either cutting pollution or buying and trading allowances to spew heat-trapping gases.

In an op-ed published in the New York Times on Oct. 10, Graham and Kerry backed the broad outlines for an energy bill with a cap-and-trade plan. It also would include:

• • Limits on the cost of emissions allowances that would effectively set the minimum and maximum prices of pollution-emission permits.

• • Programs to encourage the development of carbon capture and storage technology that could make coal-fired power plants cleaner.

• • The opening of some coastal regions for new oil and gas drilling leases.

• • Incentives to encourage the construction of new nuclear power plants.

• • A new border tax on products from countries that do not impose similar emissions limits, aimed at helping U.S. manufacturers avoid a competitive disadvantage.

Bipartisan hope

The Graham-Kerry alliance is a potent force for climate change bill supporters, who can push a cap-and-trade plan through the Senate only if they win over enough Republicans to make up for the handful of Democrats expected to vote against the legislation.

“There's a way to grow Republican support, but it is a give and take,” Graham told reporters. “Republicans have to give in the area of recognizing that climate change is real, and a cap-and-trade system is part of the solution.”

Democrats, meanwhile, must “give on the idea that you can't be serious about climate change solutions if you include nuclear power and energy independence,” Graham said.

But Graham's Republican colleagues on Capitol Hill aren't sold on his bipartisan pitch.

Doubters

For instance, Graham's longtime friend and frequent ally Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said he can't back the plan unless it includes robust support for nuclear power — perhaps going beyond what the pair outlined to include not just incentives for new construction but also a solution to the confounding problem of how to safely and securely store nuclear waste.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said that even expanding drilling off the U.S. coast can't make up for “new energy taxes” that a cap-and-trade plan in effect would yield.

“I'm not for any new energy taxes, which seem to be the focus of most of the cap-and-trade (proposals),” Cornyn said. “What I'm suggesting is we can deal with our clean energy needs and energy security without imposing a bunch of new energy taxes on consumers.”