Woah, what is Senator Lindsey Graham up to? And why has this Southern conservative joined hands with Northern liberals to get global warming legislation through the Senate?

That’s a question that has most of the GOP and all of the global warming denier crowd scratching their heads and feeling betrayed on a hot emotional issue. Graham supports the Obama administration’s plan to create a cap-and-trade program to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Recently, Graham joined with Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) in a New York Times op-ed article to propose a radical compromise that would merge environmental and energy policies under the cap-and-trade banner.

The deal: Graham says the GOP will sign off on a climate change bill that would give environmentalists their holy grail, a GHG cap-and-trade program. In exchange, Kerry says the Democrats will accept expanding nuclear power, increasing oil and gas exploration offshore, and investing in clean coal technologies to capture carbon dioxide releases.

Kerry and Graham also support imposing a border tax on products from developing nations — India and China — if they refuse to match the U.S. effort to reduce GHG emissions.

Graham’s not ignoring business interests. The Kerry/Graham plan would also set maximum and minimum emission credit prices to ease the pain of the transition to low-carbon and clean energy sources like wind, solar and geothermal power.

Graham sees using the cap-and-trade bill as a vehicle to finally formulate a national energy policy that’s primarily designed to reduce American reliance on imported oil.

This story of strange bedfellows is more complicated that simple horse-trading.

It turns out that Graham thinks the planet is in peril due to global warming. As a Washington Post feature points out, Graham thinks it’s high time for the Republicans to stop pretending global warming is a hoax and admit that climate change is a real problem.

There’s a maverick streak in Graham as well. He has worked with Democrats in the past to find compromises on other hot button issues, including immigration reform, judicial nominations, terror trials and health care.

So far, Graham has been all alone in the GOP supporting a compromise on climate change legislation. But he says there are other conservative GOP senators who agree with him.  He says they’re just not ready to openly talk about it right now.

Meanwhile, Graham has been rebuked back home. The Charleston County Republican Party voted to censure the Senator “for many of the positions he has taken that do not represent the wishes of the people of South Carolina.” First on the list: passing a cap-and-trade energy bill.

What do you think about the Kerry/Graham deal? Is it time for Congress to work on a policy that solves an environmental and energy problem? Please share your thoughts in the comments section.

Tags: border tax, cap-and-trade, GHG emissions, nuclear power, renewable energy