In 1989 and 1990, two of the hottest summers in Washington on record finally broke a congressional logjam and led to passage of a new Clean Air Act. Maine’s Sen. George Mitchell, who was the principal author, later observed that the heat had helped win over a number of reluctant colleagues.

Twenty years later, we have had not only a mammoth oil spill, but what looks to be the hottest summer yet in Washington – but the Senate announced last week it is shutting down discussion of a comprehensive energy bill to combat global warming.

True, Mitchell was a more skilled leader that his counterpart today, Harry Reid, but there’s more to this impasse than parliamentary tactics. A largely passive public – and a president who’s remained too quiet — will have to start speaking out more forcefully if the Senate is to do its job and vote out the toughest energy bill it can muster.

Mainers should be leading the charge. There’s a reason why Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins both criticized Reid’s announcement. They know that not only is Maine poised to become a leader in renewable energy design and construction – but that it also is paying a stiff price for being more environmentally responsible than other states.

That second point needs particular emphasis.

Maine has high electric rates – not the “highest in the country,” as often alleged, but well above average. New England, as a region, has the highest rates, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Maine’s residential average, at 15.5 cents per kilowatt-hour, is actually lower than its neighbors; New England averages 17.1 cents with Connecticut topping the list at 19.7 cents. The region is far above the national average of 11.7 cents, and way above the plains states, which have the cheapest rates, at 9.4 cents.

There’s a clear and overwhelming reason for this. Aside from a few low-cost states like Oregon and Washington that enjoy massive amounts of hydropower, cheap electricity is produced by a single source: coal.

There is nothing Maine could do to lower its electric rates faster – something business groups are always calling for – than to build a coal-fired generating plant.

It’s to our credit that it’s politically impossible to license a coal plant in Maine – the last proposal, in Bucksport, was made by a company called AES back in the 1980s. But other states are, unfortunately, not as responsible.

Georgia has licensed a dozen coal plants, with trains running direct from the Powder Mill Basin in Wyoming, and driven down its electric rates to 9.8 cents. Texas licensed 18 coal plants in a single year.

This is what we know about coal: It is by far the most polluting large-scale source of electricity generation, and produces mammoth amounts of carbon dioxide not offset by regrowth, as with wood burning. Coal plants are regulated by the 1990 Clean Air Act, but primarily to reduce sulfur content. That means Wyoming coal has begun replacing coal from Kentucky and West Virginia, which has helped reduce acid rain but has no effect on carbon dioxide.

Not only does Maine get most of the pollution from coal-burning plants in the South and Midwest, thanks to prevailing winds, but we pay far more for electricity because we’ve been too responsible and far-sighted to join the renewed coal-burning binge of the 1990s.

The most effective way to quickly reduce coal-burning by making it more expensive is a form of the privately managed “cap-and-trade” system adopted by the House in a bill passed last year. An alternative approach, proposed by Sen. Richard Lugar(R-Ind.) , is a rule-based system that would specify efficiency standards for power plants and everything else that burns fossil fuels.

The irony is that “cap and trade” was developed by Republicans as part of the 1990 debate, when it was opposed by Democrats who preferred direct regulation. Snowe and Collins are cap-and-traders, with their own ideas, and there are other Republicans whose states are in the same fix as Maine – environmentally responsible, but at a price disadvantage because of it. Any revenue from cap and trade or regulations should be recycled to further long-term energy solutions.

Despite Reid’s timeout, there’s still plenty of time to get a bill in the current session that at least deals with power plants. States that want to burn coal will still be able to do. But they ought to pay a price.