The great climate sellout.

• Position: Political Eye - Essay

The warm fall weather in the Upper Midwest was beautiful. Sunny and clear, it was in the mid-sixties through the end of October, with humidity so low you could see the tiniest details of the shoreline across the lake near my house.

Sitting around one weekend afternoon, enjoying the steady shower of golden leaves in the slanting sunlight, I struck up a conversation with the mother of my three-year-old daughter's best friend.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

And that's where the whole pleasant afternoon idyll ended. The mom is a climate scientist, and not the least charmed by our warm, golden autumn weather.

According to the National Climatic Data Center, by mid-October, 2010 was on pace to tie 1998 as the warmest year on record.

The trend is dire.

At the rate we are going, our children will not know the planet we have known.

The lake near our house used to freeze solid for four months out of the year on average, my climate scientist friend pointed out. Now the average time is two months.

Another ominous sign: Insects in the Northwest are devastating forest land because, with the warmer weather, they now have two breeding cycles, and double the time to devour trees.

As I slapped at a hungry, late-fall mosquito, I felt my heart sink.

Global warming was on a lot of people's minds this summer, especially in Washington, D.C, where the sweltering heat--even by D.C. standards--made it hard to forget.

But in Washington and around the nation, the issue receded by fall. Oil-soaked birds were no longer in the news. The weather got cooler. And the Democrats in Washington abandoned their efforts to pass climate change legislation.

Given a historic opportunity to do something about the biggest threat to the health of the entire world, President Obama and the Democrats ultimately decided to do nothing. Before they dropped their efforts at passing a climate change bill, though, they went through a process that is truly remarkable for its cravenness in attempting to give away the store to the very polluters the legislation was supposed to regulate.

As they worked on the bill, Senators John Kerry, Joe Lieberman, and Lindsey Graham held a series of meetings with lobbyists from the big oil companies, the nuclear industry, truckers, and the Chamber of Commerce to offer them special favors and protection from regulation.

This effort ultimately failed not because the offers weren't sweet enough--jaded Senate staffers were aghast at the magnitude of the giveaways, according...