Much more than the future of US health care hangs on the fate of health care reform. That was the message delivered by Connecticut senator Joseph Lieberman, a long-term environmental campaigner, to Capitol Hill on the Senate's first day back in office after the August recess.

"If the health care bill fails, the climate change bill will fail too," Lieberman told the Climate Change, Energy and National Security conference hosted by the political think tank Partnership for a Secure America yesterday.

The climate change bill, which binds the US to cutting carbon emissions by 17 per cent in 2020 relative to 2005 levels, narrowly passed in the House of Representatives in June but must clear the Senate, where it is currently being debated, before it can become law.

If the fight over healthcare reform severs President Barack Obama's increasingly tense relationship with Republicans, there's little hope for the climate change bill, Lieberman said. He stressed how important it is that Republican and Democratic Senators compromise over the health care bill, and enter the debate over climate change with a spirit of co-operation.

"We must recapture the spirit of Vandenberg and Truman," said Lieberman, referring to the unlikely alliance between Democratic President Harry Truman and Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg in the 1950s which allowed the passage of the Marshall Plan and other divisive policies.

Burning issue

Of all the sources of tension between the Republican and Democrat senators debating the climate change bill, coal is the greatest, said Lieberman. Many senators are refusing to back the bill because the national cap and trade system it employs will financially penalise states that burn coal for electricity.

"Indiana gets about 95 per cent of its electricity from burning coal," said Lieberman. "So trust me, the senators from Indiana are not going to vote for this bill if they feel that the result of the bill will be a skyrocketing increase in the cost of electricity in their state."

Lieberman suggested that if the climate bill is to win support from senators in coal-burning states, it must boost subsidies for clean coal technologies that capture carbon emissions from coal-burning plants and store it underground. The bill must also do more for the nuclear power industry, he said.

Despite the picture of political schism painted by Lieberman, the senator had powerful allies amongst the other speakers at the conference, says Dennis McGinn, a US Navy Vice Admiral who is on the military advisory board of CNA, a non-profit research organisation based in Alexandria, Virginia.

"There was tremendous consensus across the board that a national strategy on climate change is essential," McGinn, who also delivered a speech at Tuesday's meeting, told New Scientist. James Woolsey, a former director of the CIA, and Frank Wisner, a former US ambassador to India, also spoke at the event.

War on climate change

The US needs to start treating climate change like a war, said McGinn.

"On the battlefield, there's no such thing as 100 per cent certainty: if you hesitate rather taking action, you're asking for disaster," he said.

Failing to take action on climate change will place an unacceptable burden on the men and women in uniform now and for generations to come, says McGinn, as its effects would amplify political, religious, economic and ethnic strife across the world. "It's like holding up a giant magnifying glass along human society's fault lines," McGinn said.

He added: "It's time that the US Senate recognises the enormous challenges posed by climate change to national security, and it's time that they come together to put together a comprehensive policy package to address the threat."

Such a union of strategy between politicians may be in sight. The Partnership for a Secure America has just released a bipartisan statement signed by 32 Republicans and Democrats that calls for a "unified American strategy" on climate change.