While climate change unfolds on nature's own inscrutable schedule, political events on this pressing issue are now moving with more urgency.

Next month, the U.N. Climate Change Conference will be held in Copenhagen, and in advance German Chancellor Angela Merkel addressed Congress on Tuesday to urge its members to unite on a plan to combat global warming. Democrats applauded; Republicans sat in silence.

Republican senators had been equally stubborn earlier when they boycotted the Environment and Public Works Committee as it began to consider amendments on the Democratic bill to curb greenhouse gases. Supposedly, they were protesting that the bill's cost to the economy had not been fully examined.

Pennsylvania has its own special stake in this debate. Because of its array of coal-fired power plants, it produces more global warming than most other states. But with its abundance of streams and woodlands, it also stands to lose flora and fauna to global warming.

To meet this challenge, the state Legislature last year established an 18-member Climate Change Advisory Committee. One of its charges was to assist the state Department of Environmental Protection in the development of a Climate Change Action Plan, a draft of which can be found at www.depweb.state.pa.us.

Written public comments via mail or e-mail are invited, but they must be received by Monday. A return name and address must be included with each e-mail transmission, which should go to epclimatereportcomments@state.pa.us. Other correspondence should be mailed to Joseph Sherrick, Department of Environmental Protection, Rachel Carson State Office Building, 400 Market Street, Harrisburg, Pa. 17105. (Faxes are not accepted.)

As the saying goes, all politics is local -- but at the end of the day so is climate.

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