The rapidly spreading swine flu is prompting calls for the U.S. to close its border with Mexico, where the outbreak originated, but some fear the disease is being exploited for political purposes by immigration foes.

A growing chorus of border-control advocates, including some members of Congress, is calling for the federal government to close U.S.-Mexico border crossings to prevent swine flu from further spreading into the U.S.

Civil rights groups and immigrant advocates, however, say that fanning anti-immigrant sentiment could make immigrants reluctant to seek medical attention.

“The risk of demonizing and stigmatizing a group of people is you risk alienating them and making them afraid to seek health services and that can continue the outbreak,” said Liany Arroyo, director of the Institute for Hispanic Health at the National Council of La Raza, a Washington, D.C., advocacy group.

Mexico has been the epicenter of the swine-flu outbreak. The only flu-related death in the U.S. is a 23-month-old Mexico City boy who died Monday after traveling to Texas.

U.S. Rep. Eric Massa, a Democrat from New York and House Homeland Security Committee member, wants “an immediate and complete closure” of the Mexico border until swine flu is contained.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said the Department of Homeland Security should consider all options, “including closing the border if it would prevent further transmission of this deadly virus.”

It was unclear whether McCain was responding to political pressure. Last week, Chris Simcox, founder of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, announced he will challenge McCain in the 2010 Republican primary.

Since the swine-flu outbreak, Simcox has intensified his call for the immediate deployment of National Guard troops.

President Barack Obama said Wednesday during a televised news conference that health officials see no reason to close the border.

“From their perspective it would be akin to closing the barn door after the horses are out because we already have cases here in the United States,” he said.

Brian Levin, a spokesman for Customs and Border Protection, said agents at border crossings are trained to watch for possible contagious diseases. He said they have increased surveillance since the swine-flu alert; inspectors in Arizona have not quarantined or detained a single traveler because of flulike symptoms.

Alfredo Gutierrez, who hosts a Spanish-language talk show, said exploiting fear about the swine flu and its prevalence in Mexico is counterproductive.

“The logic that if you can get rid of Mexicans, (swine flu) will all go away” is simplistic logic that will play well to people’s fears, he said. “People are going to say it’s the Mexicans’ fault. The virus has no nationality.”

Carlos Flores Vizcarra, the consul general of Mexico in Phoenix, said that while a few are trying to link the virus with illegal immigration, most realize that swine flu is a public health issue, not an immigration one.

Contributing: Arizona Republic reporters Dennis Wagner and Dan Nowicki

By Daniel Gonzalez, Yvonne Wingett

The Conservation Stewardship Program, created in 2002 to reward farmers for improved environmental practices, now enrolls just 15 million of the more than 900 million acres of farmland nationwide.

The new farm bill puts more money into conserving soil and water on working lands, rather than taking cropland out of production.

That’s a fitting move, given that the world needs the United States to produce more food, not less.

The Conservation Stewardship Program, formerly the Conservation Security Program, is one of the biggest winners in this shift.

The program, created in 2002 to reward farmers for improved environmental practices, now enrolls just 15 million of the more than 900 million acres of farmland nationwide.

The new farm bill will add nearly 13 million acres to the program annually over the next five years.

The question now is how much impact the program will actually have on water and soil quality and other environmental needs. That will depend on some new rules for how the money is distributed, say experts.

Under the farm bill, CSP acreage will now be allocated to states primarily based on their share of the nation’s agricultural acreage, including rangeland.

That assures that Plains and Mountain states, including such agricultural powerhouses as Wyoming, will get significant shares of the money. Texas and Montana alone have about 190,000 acres of farmland between the two of them, or about 20 percent of the agricultural acreage nationwide.

That’s more farmland than there is combined in Iowa, Illinois and the other seven states that contribute most of the agricultural runoff that causes the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico.

“It makes one wonder how dispersed the program is going to end up being, rather than focused on those states and those regions of the country where the environmental and natural resource problems are really the most severe,” said Craig Cox, Midwest vice president of the Environmental Working Group, a research and advocacy organization.

Under the old farm bill, more than one-third of total CSP spending has gone to just four states: Oregon, Missouri, Iowa and Arkansas, in that order.

Lawmakers probably had no choice other than to set some formula for dividing the money. Up to now, the program has been seen in Washington as a pet project of Sen. Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat who wrote CSP into the 2002 farm bill.

Aides to the Senate Agriculture Committee, which Harkin chairs, said it was important to broaden support. That means ensuring the money is available nationwide, including states such as Texas, which ranks 23rd in CSP spending.

“You can target it (CSP funding) much more tightly. Then the Upper Midwest gets most of the money and you get a huge political problem,” said Ferd Hoefner, who follows conservation policy for the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

The farm bill contains provisions that, depending on how USDA implements them, are intended to ensure that the program does what it was supposed to: improve soil, air and water quality, enhance wildlife habitat and conserve water and energy.

For example, the program requires USDA to set priorities, such as improving water quality, which the CSP contracts should address in each state.

And farmer applications for the program will have to be ranked according to the environmental benefits the producers will provide. The highest-ranked proposals get first crack at the money.

Farmers also are required to make further improvements during the life of their five-year CSP contract. Under the old farm bill, the payments were largely based on practices, such as reducing tillage to conserve soil, which farmers were already following when they applied for the program.

Payments are expected to range from $10 to $30 an acre under the program. Individual farms can receive as much as $40,000 a year. The overhaul of the program comes at a critical time for U.S. agriculture, said Cox.

“Lord knows we need to ramp up stewardship now more than ever with the intensification of production,” he said.

Philip Brasher is a reporter for The Des Moines Register. E-mail: pbrasher@dmreg.com

Requiring polluters to buy "allowances" by auction would raise much-needed state funds to be invested in clean energy technologies, help seniors and low-income residents pay their energy bills, and help workers take advantage of new job opportunities in our transition to a clean energy economy.

Welcome to global warming, Arizona! All the usual environmental issues – habitat loss, invasive species, unchecked development, water shortages, poor air quality, etc. – are much more damaging when coupled with global warming.

If we aren’t proactive, these conditions and more will develop and worsen unchecked.

Record-breaking heat waves will be common. Deserts will expand, and wildfires will become even more frequent and intense. For all who love wildlife and the outdoors, this is terrible news.

There are ways to reduce or mitigate the worst effects of global warming and help our natural resources adapt to a changing climate.

That’s why, as a lifelong conservationist and a resident for more than 50 years, I’m pleased with our governor’s leadership in joining the Western Climate Initiative, working on Western solutions to this problem.

Gov. Janet Napolitano, with six other governors and premiers of four Canadian provinces, known as the WCI Partners, released a draft plan to reduce global warming in the West.

This is a vital and historic step for protecting Arizona’s natural resources, recreational economy and wildlife.

The WCI Partners courageously included emissions from cars and trucks, and from oil and gas drilling, in their draft plan. It will be difficult to cut these emissions, but it must be done to make any real difference.

Serious flaws in this plan remain. The WCI Partners haven’t determined whether to make polluters pay.

The plan doesn’t specify if utilities, oil and gas companies and other polluters will need to purchase “allowances” or will get them for free.

“Allowances” have real monetary value, so the WCI Partners shouldn’t give polluters a free ride.

Requiring polluters to buy “allowances” by auction would raise much-needed state funds to be invested in clean energy technologies, help seniors and low-income residents pay their energy bills, and help workers take advantage of new job opportunities in our transition to a clean energy economy.

Funding to invest in wildlife and natural resources is critical to help them survive the effects of global warming.

Scientists are actively developing techniques and guidelines to help wildlife adapt, but these efforts are costly.

Investing in our natural resources could help Arizona’s land and wildlife managers protect state lands and waters so native animals and plants remain healthy – the lifeblood of more than $2 billion in wildlife-related recreational spending each year.

Currently, the draft WCI plan doesn’t mention dedicated funding for natural resource protection. We must ask Gov. Napolitano to ensure that such funding is in the final plan.

Doing anything less would be a disservice to what makes Arizona special.

Last year, when Napolitano signed up for the Western Climate Initiative, she proved she is serious about fighting global warming.

Sportsmen and conservationists across the state applauded that action and now seek a strong commitment to follow through.

This is Gov. Napolitano’s opportunity to call on her fellow governors to create a strong system that puts the West at the forefront of protecting our wildlife and natural resources from global warming. I urge her to do just that.

Ryna Rock is president of the Arizona Wildlife Federation. E-mail rynaken@ swiftaz.net

Until now, we've had little incentive to cut back on a one-person, one-car lifestyle that's polluting, wasteful, congests traffic and spawns the growth of highways and parking garages.

DES MOINES – I probably should have satisfied the urge to make a westward road trip 20 years ago, when a gallon of gas cost a fraction of the $4.40 we shelled out last weekend.

But with plenty of time to reflect in the 20 hours to and from Denver, I thought about some possible positive spin-off effects of these skyrocketing gas prices.

Tough as it is, they could force us to make adjustments that result in healthier, more communal and environmentally friendly living. And they could push governments and businesses to help provide the infrastructure.

Until now, we’ve had little incentive to cut back on a one-person, one-car lifestyle that’s polluting, wasteful, congests traffic and spawns the growth of highways and parking garages.

But when people can no longer afford to get in their gas-guzzling SUVs alone, maybe we’ll try something different.

At the most basic level, it should give a much-needed boost to public transportation, especially in cities that don’t have extensive bus routes or late hours of operation.

If enough people start riding, and demanding better routes and times, maybe we’ll get them.

Employers might consider offering shuttle services from the major residential areas where employees live. At the very least, we could all be doing more carpooling; employee groups or human resources officials could help coordinate schedules.

More commuters may be inspired to ride their bikes to work, a great heart-healthy exercise. Then we might get more bike lanes.

At least one city’s police department is putting more officers on bicycles, which encourages a more relaxed interaction between police and residents.

Gas prices are already leading to the manufacture of more hybrid cars for those who can afford them. But a more dramatic impact could be a trend some demographers predict, and real-estate agents are starting to see: a move back to the abandoned urban cores.

And since the cost of gas is most felt by companies and people doing long-distance travel, it might inspire the federal government to finally get behind better long-distance passenger rail service and even high-speed rail between major cities.

Some communities are looking at four-day workweeks, which could promote a better quality of life and more family time.

And if people limit their forays to the mall just to hang out or exercise, and start using their neighborhoods for recreation, maybe we’d see more block parties and picnics and a growing sense of community connectedness.

I know none of this long-term thinking can make up for the pinch we’re feeling at the gas pump right now. But when we stop behaving as if the Earth’s resources are infinite and each of us has unlimited, autonomous access to them, we might also start living more consciously and purposefully.

Maybe, in the larger scheme, we’ll be motivated to return more to our original (some would say natural) tribal state of interdependence.

Rekha Basu is an editorial columnist for the Des Moines (Iowa) Register. E-mail: mailto:rbasu@dmreg.com

Committed environmentalists, they try to live by their principles. They buy local foods, take public transport, don't use air conditioning and keep their home a chilly 65 degrees in winter.

Some of us learn to live with our contradictions. We might talk corporate responsibility but still shop at Wal-Mart. Or worry about global warming, but leave every light on.

While there’s no substitute for more conscious living, you can reduce the impact of some of your bad practices.

That thought came to Ryan Legg and Meredith Nelson after they had planned, by their own descriptions, a rather environmentally unfriendly wedding.

Committed environmentalists, they try to live by their principles. They buy local foods, take public transport, don’t use air conditioning and keep their home a chilly 65 degrees in winter.

But this was their contradiction: They wanted a traditional wedding – church ceremony, country-club reception, the works. They knew many of the 165 guests would drive three to five hours to get to the wedding. That’s a lot of exhaust to pump into the atmosphere.

Plus they were serving steak and chicken, though fish would have used four times fewer carbon emissions to produce. And they wanted cut flowers on the tables, though potted plants would have been renewable.

They were feeling guilty, even with the hydrangeas and peonies coming from local growers. Then, as Legg put it, “We went, ‘Wait a minute. We should do something good for the environment!’ ”

They could, they realized, lessen their environmental faux pas by tallying up the energy expended in each guest’s car or plane trip, hotel stay and meals, and from the wedding itself.

Once they had a “carbon equivalent,” they could buy an equal number of “carbon offsets” to be invested in renewable-energy projects such as wind farms and solar installations.

The concept is known as carbon trading, and it’s the same principle behind the U.N. Kyoto Protocol treaty, which sets limits on each country’s carbon emissions. Carbon dioxide is believed to be the No. 1 human-induced cause of global warming.

Countries buy credits in return for exceeding their limits.

The United States pulled out of the treaty before it took effect in 2005. But mitigating greenhouse gases can be done at the individual level, too.

Each person has a carbon footprint, representing the amount of carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere by using fossil fuels such as oil or coal to drive, fly or heat homes. Even the things we buy contribute because of the energy required to create and transport them. You can calculate your carbon footprint using the Web site they did, www.TerraPass.com.

The couple arrived at a carbon equivalent of 27,000 pounds. So they bought an equivalent amount of carbon offsets, which cost under $200. Cards on each table let guests know that this was in lieu of party favors. “Better than a little bag of M&M’s,” says Nelson.

Legg, 26, and Nelson, 25, are graduate students at Cornell University. Both went into engineering with an interest in improving living standards in the developing world.

As a researcher at Cornell’s Johnson School Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise, Legg has explored how the private sector is addressing environmental concerns.

The best way to reduce greenhouse gases and global warming, of course, is to conserve energy, use public transport or drive more energy-efficient cars.

But this is an alternative that promotes awareness and interjects an ethical approach into a major life event. It shows that doing better by the environment (and your conscience) doesn’t have to be punishing. You can get pretty creative with it.

Rekha Basu is an editorial columnist for the Des Moines (Iowa) Register. E-mail: mailto:rbasu@dmreg.com

Congress hasn't mowed the grass - or pumped our own gas - for years. We had a chance to start drilling on federal land in Alaska in 1996. The grass was short and easy to cut. The House and Senate pulled the starter rope. But President Clinton vetoed it.

I think I will stop mowing my lawn. After all, it’s just a short-term fix. If I mow this week, it will still have to be cut again next week. Demand for mowing just keeps growing. I can’t mow my way out of the grass crisis.

If the neighbors complain when my yard turns into a miniature rain forest, I will insist I’m doing it to be “green.” That seems to work for everyone else.

And if the neighborhood association drags me into court, I will call as my first witness Sen. Harry Reid, D-Weaselville.

“You people are just not serious about addressing grass,” he will say. “If you were, you would stop offering the same old ideas meant to pad the pockets of Big Mowers and work with Democrats to reduce our dependence on short grass.”

That’s almost exactly what he said about drilling for oil.

So I figure the logic is about the same. If we don’t cut the grass this week, it will be a lot harder to mow when it’s deeper than barnyard byproducts in the Senate.

And if we don’t keep up with demand by pumping more oil, our economy will turn into a vacant lot of weeds and thistles.

Congress hasn’t mowed the grass – or pumped our own gas – for years. We had a chance to start drilling on federal land in Alaska in 1996. The grass was short and easy to cut. The House and Senate pulled the starter rope. But President Clinton vetoed it.

He said it would ruin Alaska – which is like saying Texas would be “ruined” by adding a Shell station in Abilene.

Now the grass is $4 deep, and it gets harder to cut every day.

The Democrats’ answer: We should rely on alternatives, such as goats and sheep.

The environmentalists couldn’t be happier. They’ve managed to convince Congress that our overgrown backyard is a “sacred ecosystem.”

But I have a couple of cars in my garage. I like to drive them. Light rail, trolleys, buses and other goat-alternatives don’t move the needle on my thrill gauge like the rumble of a V-8.

And I’m not the only one who thinks driving is a cherished constitutional right. So until we come up with Fords that burn mulch or Hondas that run on dishwater, we’re going to need gas. Lots of it.

If we had drilled in Alaska in 1996, we could be tapping up to 12 billion barrels of our own oil. Even with rising demand from India and China, we’d have some relief from gas pains.

The good news: We have enough untapped oil reserves to fuel all the cars on the road today for 30 years, according to U.S. geological reports.

President Bush says we have 800 billion barrels of recoverable shale oil in the Rocky Mountain states alone – three times bigger than Saudi Arabia’s ocean of oil.

In the Gulf of Mexico and along our coasts, there’s another 18 billion barrels – 10 years of current U.S. oil production.

The bad news: It’s all off-limits – banned by Congress in 1981, when gas cost $1.38.

Bush wants to lift the bans and start drilling to keep gas prices reasonable until we come up with mulchmobiles. It takes years to get some of that oil to the nearest gas pump, but starting now could reduce prices by curbing speculation and notifying OPEC that they’re no longer the only gas station in town.

A petition drive by Newt Gingrich, “Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less,” has nearly 1 million signatures.

But Democrats offer the same old ideas: No to nuclear power. No to drilling our own oil. They say offshore oil drilling will be an environmental catastrophe.

Folderol. There were no damaging spills from 3,000 offshore platforms in the path of Katrina.

Polls show 57 percent of Americans agree with Bush. Just ask anyone pumping gas if they want cheaper domestic oil – then stand back.

Meanwhile, maybe we should stop paying gas taxes, which cost twice as much as “Big Oil” profits. After all, taxes are only a short-term fix. They are just the same old idea to pad the pockets of Big Blockheads in Congress.

Peter Bronson is a columnist with the Cincinnati Enquirer and former editorial page editor of the Tucson Citizen. E-mail: pbronson@cincinna.gannett.com

We are truly conflicted about energy. Everyone agrees gasoline prices are far too high, but:

• Congress claims the oil industry is manipulating gas prices, while not allowing drilling.

• President Bush’s corn ethanol mandate has nearly doubled the world’s food prices, while producing a tiny amount of low-grade auto fuel.

• The Senate is debating the Lieberman-Warner bill, which would deliberately tax gasoline and every other fossil fuel more and more heavily until we stop using them. That’s to “save us” from global warming.

The most foolish “solution” of all – the new law that lets us sue Arabs (we have zero jurisdiction) to force them to produce more oil while we sit on billions of gallons of oil and thousands of American jobs, refusing to drill in our own backyard.

The most logical answer to high gasoline prices has to be coal.

We have centuries’ worth of coal, and we have clean-burning systems such as fluidized bed combustion. But we’ve been retiring the old coal-fired power plants and burning scarcer oil and natural gas in our power plants. That has driven up both gas and gasoline prices.

Hybrid cars conserve a little oil, but shifting the power plants to “clean coal” would conserve a lot of it.

Instead, the Eco-Department of Kansas has just forbidden the construction of two new coal-fired power plants because they would emit greenhouse gases. Gov. Kathleen Sibelius has backed up the environmental regulators. Texas has been forced to drop plans for several new coal-fired plants as well.

Kansas and Texas are naïve. In Europe, they’re openly burning more coal already.

German coal burning was up 3.5 percent last year, never mind Kyoto. Britain is building a whole generation of new coal-fired plants to keep the lights on with a minimum of Middle East oil and Russian natural gas.

California wins the hypocrisy medal as it brags about its small carbon footprint while letting Arizona and New Mexico burn California’s coal just over the border, and paying the transmission costs back to California.

In the longer run, when we come to our senses, nuclear power will be a big player. But it will take a long time to get new nuclear plants on line. Nor is it clear what they will cost, even if we can rein in the green lawsuits that seem to have paralyzed both the courts and Congress.

Don’t blame Big Oil. Countries own their oil – and the U.S. won’t let U.S. workers produce it in this country.

Don’t blame the Arabs for the Greenpeace plan to scuttle “clean coal,” along with every other viable energy source.

Don’t even blame Congress, which foolishly tries to represent our own ambivalence about cars, energy and “conservation.” Is leaving coal in the ground part of conservation? And what are we conserving it for if we refuse to use it as energy?

The crowning irony is that NASA now says the Pacific Ocean has entered a 25-30 year cooling phase. The last time this happened was from 1940-1975, when we had moderate, erratic global cooling.

The climate science shows a 79 percent correlation between our temperatures and sunspots but no correlation with CO2. This means CO2 cannot be the dominant factor in our climate.

So the high gas prices, the reliance on foreign oil, the loss of American jobs in the oil and coal and potential jobs in the nuclear fields are all for naught.

Dennis T. Avery directs the Center for Global Food Issues (www.cgfi.org) for the Hudson Institute of Washington, D.C. He was formerly the senior agricultural analyst in the U.S. State Department. He is the co-author of the 2006 best-seller “Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1,500 Years.”

Farmers preferred that aid dollars be focused on buying surplus American food and shipping that to poorer countries, rather than helping them improve their own production.

The global food crisis has brought urgent new attention to the inability of many poor countries to feed their people.

Part of the problem, critics say, is that rich countries have slashed their spending on agricultural development even as hunger has grown.

How could that have happened? One reason was the opposition of U.S. farmers to agriculture aid.

In the 1980s, Democratic Sen. Dale Bumpers from Arkansas got legislation enacted to bar U.S. agricultural research funding for crops that could compete with American commodities.

That no doubt made sense at the time. The U.S. farm economy had collapsed and the world was awash in grain.

Soybean growers, who pushed for the legislation, didn’t want U.S. taxpayers funding development of seed varieties that could be used in countries such as Brazil and Argentina that have vast amounts of good farmland.

But those concerns made it difficult for U.S. officials to help countries improve production of a range of crops, including corn and cotton as well as soybeans, palm oil and coconuts.

What resulted was an “active hostility by Congress to working in this area,” said Gawain Kripke, who follows food policy for Oxfam America, a development and advocacy group.

Farmers preferred that aid dollars be focused on buying surplus American food and shipping that to poorer countries, rather than helping them improve their own production.

U.S. aid for agricultural development in Africa plunged from a high of $500 million in 1988, adjusted for inflation, to less than $100 million in 2006, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

Other nations cut back, too. The amount of rich countries’ development aid earmarked for agriculture in Africa fell from 15 percent in the 1980s to 4 percent in 2006, the accountability office says.

Meanwhile, the hunger problem in Africa had been growing even before the prices of corn and other staple crops started skyrocketing in 2007. About 200 million people on the continent were malnourished in 2001-03, up from 170 million a decade earlier.

Food production has declined per capita in Africa during the past 30 years, according to the United Nations. Farm productivity in Africa, if measured by grain yield, is 40 percent of what it is in the rest of the developing world.

Lack of foreign aid isn’t the only culprit. According to the accountability report, needy nations aren’t doing their part. They pledged in 2003 to devote 10 percent of government spending to agriculture, but few do.

Some governments undermine their farmers. In Tanzania, for example, farmers have to pay 55 taxes, levies and fees that together account for 50 percent of the price of the crops, the accountability office found. Zimbabwe, once the breadbasket of southern Africa, is now an economic disaster.

Still, interest in funding agricultural aid to Africa is increasing amid fears that rising commodity prices exacerbate hunger. Riots and protests have hit at least 15 countries, from West Africa to Indonesia.

The U.N. secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, said at last week’s U.N. food summit in Rome that global food production must rise by 50 percent by 2030. The same day, the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization appealed to world leaders to provide $30 billion a year in agriculture aid.

The Bush administration earmarked $150 million in development aid in an emergency supplemental spending bill now working its way through Congress. The House and Senate have raised that to $200 million.

Some U.S. farm interests, while fending off allegations that the use of corn for ethanol is fueling food inflation, support increased agricultural development aid. They also are calling for more use of genetically engineered crops, something poor African countries have resisted.

The food crisis must be addressed “in a thoughtful and comprehensive manner,” said Chris Garza, who attended the Rome meeting for the American Farm Bureau Federation.

Getting farm groups behind foreign agricultural aid raises the odds of increasing it. But there’s still the question of how much to help and how best to do it.

Philip Brasher is a reporter for The Des Moines Register. E-mail::pbrasher@dmreg.com

Congress retreated Friday from the world’s biggest environmental concern – global warming – in a fresh demonstration of what happens when nature and business collide, especially in an election year.

It was no contest.

A bill the Senate was debating would put a price on carbon emissions, targeting “greenhouse gases” that contribute to the warming that many scientists say could dramatically change Earth.

Opponents wanted to talk about higher gasoline prices. And higher taxes.

That kind of talk spooks Washington.

Senate Democratic leaders couldn’t overcome Republican opponents who managed to block the most serious effort in Congress to date to address the warming of the planet. The legislation called for cutting greenhouse gases by 71 percent from power plants, refineries and factories over the next 40 years.

The opponents first filibustered the bill, requiring supporters to get 60 votes, and at the same time attacked it on a gut issue making daily headlines: gasoline prices that have surged past $4 a gallon in many parts of the country.

“At the beginning of the summer driving season, offer a bill that would send gas prices up another 53 cents a gallon for goodness sake,” Republican leader Mitch McConnell needled the Democratic majority.

“This is a massive tax increase on the American people,” proclaimed Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., who is among Congress’ dwindling skeptics when it comes to global warming, having once called it all a hoax.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., one of three chief sponsors of the bill, disputed both assertions, saying the bill would provide tens of billions of dollars a year in tax breaks for people facing high energy costs and for other measures to ease the transition from oil, coal and other fossil fuels, which are the cause of impending climate change.

She argued that people actually may end up paying less to fuel their cars because a price on carbon emissions would accelerate the push for more fuel-efficient vehicles and alternative fuels.

While McConnell, Inhofe and other senators from states heavily dependent on coal and other fossil energy made no secret of wanting to kill the bill, they pressed for a longer debate, believing they had an issue that would resonate with voters worried about higher energy prices.

“We want this debated,” insisted McConnell.

Seeing events unfold in the Senate, GOP leaders in the House sensed a useful issue as well. Republican Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio called on House Democrats to bring up climate legislation now. “It would be a great time to have that debate,” declared Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri, the No. 3 Republican, citing gas prices.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she didn’t think climate legislation would be taken up this year, and suggested it would fare better next year anyway with a new president.

Democratic Sen. Barack Obama and his GOP presidential rival, Sen. John McCain, both favor mandatory reductions in greenhouse gases. President Bush had promised to veto the Senate bill if it ever got to his desk.

Boxer dismissed the political weight of the gasoline price arguments waged by Republicans as a “phony” debate. “They’ve got it exactly backward,” she told reporters.

But economics clearly drove senators – Republicans and some Democrats – away from legislation that would price carbon dioxide and in the process dramatically change future energy use.

“This bill is built on quicksand,” worried Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, who said he foresees skyrocketing natural gas prices – an issue particularly important to his state – as utilities and industries shift away from coal to gas.

Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota said that the concern about global warming is real but that he voted against the bill – one of four Democrats to do so – because it wouldn’t move quickly enough to jump-start development of carbon capture from coal plants and other research aimed at reducing the economic cost.

The bill’s sponsors said those were concerns that could be addressed.

Three years ago when the Senate voted on cutting greenhouse gases, it got 38 votes. Two years before that, it got 43. Democrats said this time they had little illusion of getting the 60 need to break a GOP filibuster but had hoped for 50 or 51 votes, according to Boxer.

They got 48, including seven Republicans.

Still, Democrats saw Friday’s vote as an opening for action on climate change next year when they believe a more accommodating president will be in the White House. A clear majority, 54 senators, expressed support for the bill counting letters of support received by absent senators, they emphasized.

“This lays the foundation for a new president to be able to move rapidly to get things done,” said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., a leading advocate in the Senate for aggressive action on global warming. He predicted a bill will pass next year.

Obama and McCain both support a mandatory cap-and-trade approach to cutting greenhouse gases, as opposed to President Bush who has vehemently opposed such action and made known even before it was formally taken up that he was ready to veto it.

“It puts us on the path of hopefully getting this done next year” agreed Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., a primary co-sponsor of the bill.

This year’s effort was marked more by political posturing, bickering and partisan one-upmanship – including a demand by Republicans at one point that Senate clerks spend 8 1/2 hours reading the entire 492-page bill – than by any serious debate about climate.

But senators “really got a gut feeling” of what dealing with climate change will mean to their states, remarked Kerry, implying it was a needed rehearsal for the real show next year.

H. Josef Hebert has covered energy and environmental policy for The Associated Press since 1990.

JACKSON, Miss. – Strong thunderstorms toppled trees, knocked out power and damaged homes Friday in Mississippi and Alabama, while flooding in Kentucky forced evacuations and left a 2-year-old girl dead.

Across Mississippi, fast-moving storms unleashed possible tornadoes, heavy rain and some hail. Power failures were reported near downtown Vicksburg and in Jackson.