Oct. 17--Olympia Snowe wasn't the only senator in the past week to rise above partisanship. A couple days before the Maine Republican voted for the Democrat-led Finance Committee's health-care bill -- not because she liked everything in it but because she said health care's problems compelled her to keep the bill alive so it could be improved later -- another senator bucked his party.

South Carolina's Lindsey Graham co-authored with Massachusetts' John Kerry an essay last Sunday in The New York Times, imploring their fellow senators to coalesce around their blueprint for climate-change legislation. The decision of Mr. Graham, a Republican, to join Mr. Kerry, a Democrat, in drafting and hawking it could end up making an even greater impact than Ms. Snowe's decision to support a makeover of the health-care system.

After Ms. Snowe threw in with the Democrats, many opponents and backers of health-care reform actually dug in and intensified their rhetoric.

But dial back to Sept. 30, when Mr. Kerry unveiled his Senate bill attacking global warming. It exceeded some of the emissions-reduction targets included in the climate bill that passed the House in June. It also failed to attract the support of Mr. Graham, or any other Senate Republican.

Yet instead of retreating to their respective foxholes, Mr. Kerry and Mr. Graham reached out to each other and did what lawmakers are supposed to do, but rarely do -- they parleyed, made concessions, sought common ground and, in so doing, cobbled together a framework for climate-change legislation that's not getting summarily dismissed.

Quite the opposite. Since the senators' piece appeared on Sunday, Bracewell & Giuliani, a firm representing utilities and manufacturers, called the framework a "step forward" that could lead to a legislative compromise. The rival Natural Resources Defense Council called it a pathway to a bill.

Each also identified plenty of bumps in it, as do we.

We believe its call for compromise on more oil exploration, accompanied by vague promises of protecting states' interests, isn't compelling. Why is it needed, for example, when none of the 8.3 million acres in the Gulf that Congress opened to the oil companies in 2006 has been drilled?

Its call for making the U.S. "the Saudi Arabia of clean coal" similarly sounds misplaced. The carbon-sequestration technology needed to make that a reality lags some of the science that could advance the nation's use of alternative-energy sources.

Some environmentalists and their pals in Congress won't like the framework's clarion call for a new generation of nuclear power plants. Some business interests won't like its embrace of a cap-and-trade system.

But the framework's authors note it's elastic, pliable enough to attract sufficient support to get it through Congress, and speedily. That's critical if the U.S. is to offer itself as an example -- and as a broker -- to delegates negotiating a meaningful international climate-change protocol in Copenhagen in December.

Congress needs to have at it. No members disparage its goals of energy independence, a clean environment and a strong economy. It's just a question of whether lawmakers -- like Florida's George LeMieux, who pushed Gov. Charlie Crist's green agenda as his chief of staff; and Bill Nelson, who casts himself a defender of the environment -- will work to make it viable.

Like Ms. Snowe did in addressing health care.

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