Three powerful Senators poised to take over the helm of key Senate committees have united in an appeal to President Bush to heed the election results and join them in aggressively pushing measures to limit US global warming pollution.

Senator Barbara Boxer (incoming Chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee), Senator Jeff Bingaman (incoming Chair of the Energy and Natural Resource Committee) and Senator Joseph Lieberman (incoming Chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee) wrote to President Bush seeking his “commitment to work with the new Congress to pass meaningful climate change legislation in 2007.

The US must move quickly to adopt economy-wide constraints on domestic greenhouse gas emissions and then work with the international community to forge an effective and equitable global agreement.” Fortunately, the Senators are not going to wait for permission from the White House to get started. “When the 110th Congress begins in January,” they wrote, “we pledge to work to pass an effective system of mandatory limits on greenhouse gases.”

Citing a bipartisan 53-44 Senate vote in 2005 supporting mandatory US limits on greenhouse gases, the Senators observed that the ranks of supporters for action had grown in the recent election. Four Senators who voted against mandatory limits lost their seats earlier this month.

Meanwhile, the US delegation, apparently misplacing their speeches for yesterday’s ministerial meetings and press briefings, fortunately uncovered a copy of the speeches they gave at Montreal last year. Since the US has taken no new action in the past year, and the Bush Administration has apparently turned a deaf ear to the mid-term election results and the progress being made by other nations, the oversight was easily masked. Few could tell the difference.