Kerry, McCain drift apart on climate change

Both Kerry and McCain have championed the issue of global warming for years, including when they served as their party’s presidential nominees in 2004 and 2008, respectively. But, for the moment, McCain, a Republican from Arizona, is barely engaged in the issue beyond criticizing the climate bill the House passed, while Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, has emerged as one of the chamber’s leading dealmakers.

The fact that the two no longer appear to be on the same side underscores the challenge Democrats face in enacting the first national cap on greenhouse gas emissions.

“This is a tough lift, in every respect,’’ said Kerry, who has held 40 one-on-one meetings with 25 fellow Democrats over the past couple of months and plans to meet with half a dozen Republicans in the next week or so. “My hope is that common sense and the facts will prevail, but that doesn’t always happen around here.’’

With health care dominating the Senate’s agenda, climate change largely receded from public view this summer. Now Democratic leaders want to make enough progress to provide United Nations negotiators meeting in December in Copenhagen with a clear sense of the US position on global warming, but many centrist Democrats and most Republicans remain deeply skeptical of whether the Senate can pass legislation by then.

Kerry aims to unveil the bill that he has been working on with Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California and chairwoman of the environment committee, by the end of the month. He said he and others have been trying to gauge what compromises are needed to pass a bill that would cap the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions and allow companies to buy and sell pollution credits. “It’s more important to get started than being rigid about your starting point,’’ he said.

But several key senators, including McCain, have questioned whether the bill will be conservative enough to muster the needed votes. Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, who wrote the Senate’s first cap-and-trade measure in 2003 along with McCain, has conferred with Kerry and Boxer but plans to amend whatever they produce in order to garner additional support.

“I’m willing to bend, and I’m asking people to bend,’’ said Lieberman, who is working on issues such as additional subsidies for nuclear and coal power as well as money to ease the economic crunch for utilities and consumers. “I’m willing to meet people in the middle of the bridge because this problem is so urgent.’’

But neither Lieberman’s name nor McCain’s will be on the main Senate climate bill. McCain has spent much of the past several weeks criticizing the cap-and-trade bill passed in the House, saying on Twitter that it “appears to be a cap & tax bill that I won’t support’’ and telling ABC’s “This Week’’ last month that it had “a lot of special deals for a lot of special interests.’’

Brooke Buchanan, McCain spokeswoman, said the senator still has substantive reservations about the emerging proposal in the Senate - that it lacks sufficient nuclear power subsidies, that the money needs to go to clean-energy research and development rather than general revenue - as well as procedural ones.

“We have yet to see bipartisan talk on any issue, let alone energy,’’ Buchanan said.

Carol M. Browner, who directs the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, said the administration has “done dozens and dozens of meetings up on the Hill’’ and is confident it can enlist the support of McCain and some of his GOP colleagues.

“My sense is there is a bipartisan opportunity here, without a doubt,’’ said Browner, who has met with McCain. “We would welcome his engagement and would hope to work together on this.’’

Although both sides in the climate debate see McCain as essential to bringing along a few needed Republicans, some environmental groups have begun to lose patience with him.

“What I suspect is happening is he’s stepped into the shadow of partisan politics,’’ said Lexi Shultz, deputy director of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ climate program. “He still plays a critical role, and that’s because he’s one of the few Republicans who knows we can’t afford to do nothing. If other Republicans see him sitting on the sidelines, it gives them much more of a pass than they otherwise would have.’’

McCain continues to confer with Lieberman behind the scenes, and late last month he traveled with Senator Mark Udall, Democrat of Colorado, to see the bark beetle infestation that has plagued Colorado’s forests as temperatures have risen there.