AUGUSTA (AP) – Global warming was a subject of debate during this year’s legislative session in Maine’s capital, and now the debate is heating up again in Washington.

U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, called a draft report by the Environmental Protection Agency a catalog of 30 years of progress “that fails to assess one of the most important environmental issues of our time – global warming.”

Snowe criticized the EPA’s first Report on the Environment while calling for Senate passage of a bill she is co-sponsoring with Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., to set goals for greenhouse gas reductions.

Modeled after acid rain legislation of the 1990s, the bill would allow trading of carbon dioxide emission allowances on the open market and require a reduction to 2000 carbon dioxide levels by 2010 and a reduction to 1990 levels by 2016.

Gases such as carbon dioxide that come from various sources, including the burning of oil and coal, are blamed by many scientists for contributing to a greenhouse or warming effect on global climates.

All four members of Maine’s congressional delegation support national measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

In Augusta, the Legislature has enacted a bill that sets specific goals and a timeline to reduce carbon dioxide pollution.

Supporters say Maine is the first state to have a law on the issue, but other states have addressed carbon dioxide emissions. Gov. John Baldacci has signed the bill, but plans a ceremony marking that action Thursday.

The state Department of Environmental Protection will work with state agencies, individuals, businesses and others to come up with ways to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to 1990 levels by 2010, to 10 percent below those levels by 2020 and, eventually, by as much as 80 percent.

“We’re not mandating a command-and-control approach as to how we’re going to get these emissions down,” said the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Theodore Koffman, D-Bar Harbor. “It could be that in certain cases a regulatory approach would be the most effective and appropriate way of achieving some piece of our overall goal. In other cases, it may be education or technical assistance that is needed.”

New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Rhode Island have developed action plans, and Vermont has issued an executive order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Jim Marston, who coordinates state climate initiatives for Environmental Defense, a New York-based environmental organization, said it’s important for states to pass their own laws on greenhouse gas emissions since Washington is not acting.

AP-ES-06-25-03 0911EDT