I mentioned a couple days ago the sorrow that the US Senate’s best hope for any legislation even tangentially affecting catastrophic climate change was coming from Richard Lugar. The Indiana Senator released his bill yesterday, which includes some low-hanging-fruit steps on energy efficiency and renewables without the cap on carbon.

The Lugar-Graham plan achieves savings in electricity and oil use by requiring higher mileage for vehicles, greater efficiency in power generation, increased use of alternative fuels and new standards for energy use in buildings.

There is no mandatory reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide and other climate-altering gases like those in the Kerry-Lieberman plan put forward last month [...]

The new Lugar proposal would achieve roughly half the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions sought under the Kerry-Lieberman plan and a bill passed by the House a year ago. It falls short of the goal of the Obama administration as well.

Mr. Lugar acknowledged that his bill faced an uphill path but he said he hoped to present an alternative that would achieve significant energy savings and pollution reductions without huge costs to the economy.

You read “Lugar-Graham” right. At the last minute, Lindsey Graham showed up at yesterday’s press conference as a supporter of the Lugar bill. He previously said he would never support a “half-assed” product that didn’t create a price for carbon, which pretty accurately describes the Lugar proposal. He defended the change by saying Lugar’s bill sidestepped offshore drilling and cap and trade, so it was acceptable. And his pretzel logic on supporting climate change legislation without supporting climate change is epic:

How close is the Senate to a bipartisan climate deal? Here’s the Democrats’ best hope for compromise — Lindsey Graham, at a press conference today: “The science about global warming has changed… I think the science is in question… I think they’ve oversold the stuff.” [...]

Reporter’s response: So if carbon emissions aren’t warming the planet, why do you think they’re a problem? “There’s a reason I don’t hang out in traffic jams,” replied Graham. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that the stuff floating around in the Gulf doesn’t get better for you when you burn it. If you don’t want to go swimming in that stuff, why would you want to breathe it?” [...]

But post press conference, it was Graham’s absurd stance on global warming that drew questions. Graham fired back a few of his own: “Does climate change have to be a religion? No, it’s not my religion. It is my concern.”

“I do buy into the idea that carbon emissions are not good for the planet as a whole,” he conceded, “but they’re not going to get 60 votes to save the polar bears.”

This completely contradicts everything Graham’s been saying for eight months, and it’s just absolutely bizarre. But that’s nothing new for the US Senate.

The question is, what happens next. Lugar has Graham aboard and claims to have Lisa Murkowski’s support. While his bill does about half as much good as even the insufficient Lieberman-Kerry, it’s light years ahead of the truly awful Bingaman ACELA bill, which would wind us up with less renewable energy than the status quo. The energy efficiency and building construction proposals are smart and, if actually followed, the retirement of old dirty coal plants by 2018 would be great. And with the support from at least three Republicans, the White House has taken an interest.

Harry Reid has vowed to adopt a smorgasbord approach – a little of the Lugar or Bingaman proposals, some punitive measures on Big Oil regarding the BP disaster, a slice from Lieberman-Kerry, etc. Lugar has basically said that a carbon cap would nullify his support, and Lieberman has said that putting carbon trading in as an amendment would be dead wrong, so striking the right balance will be tricky. And if you thought the sausage making was painful to watch on health care, well, turn away from this.