Congratulations to all Wilderness Society supporters whose outpouring of e-mails, tweets, faxes and phone calls to members of the House of Representatives helped tip the balance in favor of The American Clean Energy and Security Act, also known as the Waxman-Markey energy/climate bill.

On May 21, the conservative House Energy and Commerce Committee passed this major legislative initiative by a bipartisan vote of 33-25, sending it on to the full House for a vote this summer.

As the House Energy and Commerce Committee prepares to mark up the Waxman-Markey clean energy jobs bill (the American Clean Energy Security Act) later this week, there’s a lot of debate in Washington about this historic legislation. The draft bill, introduced at the end of March, creates major new clean and renewable energy programs, while addressing the threat of global warming by imposing limits on greenhouse gases and making polluting industries pay for the global warming emissions they dump into the atmosphere.

Today, the 111th Congress introduced its first bill that would tackle the challenge of global warming. Efforts to pass global warming legislation during President George W. Bush's two terms focused almost exclusively on the Senate, to no avail. Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Edward Markey (D-MA) hope to break this stalemate and today’s effort marks the beginning of an approach that has broad support across the nation and within Congress.

We strongly support this legislative effort and commented on it here.