Washington -- Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley plunged into the rising waters of the global warming debate last week, endorsing strict regulations on greenhouse emissions that could make the state's rules among the toughest in the nation.
"The climate crisis is real," said O'Malley, a Democrat, throwing the weight of his office behind a plan that would cut pollutants from homes and businesses to 25 percent below 2006 levels by 2020, and 90 percent by 2050.
O'Malley and a growing number of General Assembly members want to position Maryland at the leading edge of states that are taking steps to ease global warming in the face of what they say is foot-dragging by the Bush administration and Congress.
"We all hope that there is federal action," said state Sen. Paul G. Pinsky, a Prince George's County Democrat and lead sponsor of the global warming measure. "A number of presidential candidates have promised to go in that direction. But until it's done, we have to keep moving states in that direction."
It's not unusual for Maryland's left-of-center General Assembly to debate such a plan. In recent years, lawmakers have forged ahead on embryonic stem-cell research funding, requirements to make Wal-Mart provide health insurance to employees and limits on tailpipe emissions from vehicles.
What's more notable is that O'Malley would get firmly behind the proposal. It had not been part of his legislative agenda for the 90-day Assembly session, which ends in April.
Pinsky said he was "pleasantly and extremely surprised at the strength of the support" that came from the governor's office last week.
Conventional wisdom holds that this should be a time of wound-licking for O'Malley. He depleted much of his political capital late last year on a long-term budget-balancing fix that included an unpopular sales tax increase, raising the ire of residents and business owners. A poll for The Sun released last month, soon after the tax-raising special legislative session ended, showed him with a 35 percent job approval rating.
That O'Malley would risk angering business interests further by endorsing an expansive greenhouse gas reduction plan illustrates just how acceptable the environmental fight has become.
"Even coming from a fairly conservative district like mine, I have yet to see how you can be too liberal on the environment," said state Sen. Jim Brochin, a Towson Democrat who often sides with Republicans on fiscal and regulatory issues and who is a co-sponsor of the greenhouse plan.
The Maryland proposal takes a page from California, which in 2006 adopted an initiative to reduce the state's greenhouse gas emissions 25 percent by 2020. New Jersey, Washington and a few other states have followed.
"There is an immense amount of momentum out there, and it starts with the states," said Tony Kreindler, a spokesman for the Environmental Defense Fund.
Democrats aren't the only ones getting behind such measures, Kreindler said, citing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in California and Gov. Charlie Crist in Florida as state leaders in the greenhouse gas control movement.
"What's interesting about those two is they are flying high in the polls," he said. "What these guys have figured out is that climate is not just good policy; it's good politics. It's a very bipartisan push."
Maryland voters and politicians across the political spectrum have long supported path-breaking environmental initiatives, stemming from the state's reliance on and pride in the Chesapeake Bay, whose ecosystem is threatened and whose fringes are at risk of disappearing under rising seas.
As a relatively small state, Maryland alone doesn't have the same influence as California in the environmental debate. Still, "at the end of the day, every ton of carbon avoided is a ton of carbon avoided," said Kreindler, noting that the evolving state-by-state effort builds pressure in Washington because influential business interests "don't want to face a patchwork of state regulations."
Patrick J. Michaels, a climatologist and scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute, takes a dim view of the Maryland plan, calling a 90 percent reduction target "impossible" because technology to achieve it doesn't exist.
"People are waving legislative magic wands, as if it will create a result," Michaels said.
"The only way one could try to enforce that would be by making the price of carbon-based energy outrageously expensive," he said. "That takes money and capital away that could actually be used to invest in cleaner technology. That's the irony."
Any regulatory scheme, he said, must be flexible enough to allow capital to flow to sources of non-fossil-fuel energy that will inevitably develop over the next century.
The White House rejects the notion that it has not been aggressive enough on climate issues.
"The president takes climate change seriously, and is committed to a portfolio of actions that foster economic growth, achieve emissions reductions through technology investments, and include developed and developing economies," said Kristen A. Hellmer, a spokeswoman for the president's Council on Environmental Quality. President Bush, she added, has "devoted more than $37 billion to climate change related programs and research, and set the U.S. on a path to reduce greenhouse gas intensity 18 percent by 2012."
"As a former governor, he knows the positive roles state leaders must play in this effort," Hellmer said.
On the presidential campaign trail, climate change has figured solidly into messages by the leading candidates.
Republican Sen. John McCain stresses the role of free enterprise and carbon cap-and-trade plans. Democratic senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both call for an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by 2050, a level Clinton's campaign says is "necessary to avoid the worst impacts of global warming."
Like McCain, both Democrats support cap-and-trade programs for carbon emissions.
Kreindler, of the Environmental Defense Fund, thinks progress need not wait for a change in administrations. "We're not ruling it out in this Congress," he said.
Others take a slightly longer view.
"We are in the Stone Age right now, and whether it's Barack Obama or John McCain, we are going to come out of the Stone Age," Brochin said. "You are not going to believe how bright the future is in our efforts to combat global warming."
david.nitkin@baltsun.com