Even environmentalists expect the Senate’s scheduled vote on climate change today to fail. Perhaps Sens. John McCain and Joseph Lieberman will get 40 senators to support their Climate Stewardship Act, which sets caps on the electrical power, industrial and transportation sectors for carbon dioxide and five other industrial pollutants that contribute to global warming. And while there may be other ways of achieving the kinds of reductions proposed by the bill, it stands as a measure of whether Congress is serious about acting on this growing threat.

Since the National Academy of Sciences, at the request of the Bush administration, reviewed the research on climate change a couple of years ago and concluded it was caused at least in part by man-made pollution, there has existed in the White House and Congress a quiet wish that the problem would disappear, as if it could be dumped from the back of a truck in the middle of the night with no one the wiser.

The president early on backed away from his pledge to establish carbon dioxide standards, the Environmental Protection Agency has dithered with modeling that would give the public a clearer sense of the extent of the problem and some very good ideas for cutting climate-change pollution nationally, such as the Clean Power Act and increased vehicle fuel-efficiency standards, have been unwelcome by the majority of Congress.

Maine Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe have built strong environmental records and are expected to vote for the Climate Stewardship Act today. Their leadership is heartening and is not recognized often enough, especially at election time. Unfortunately, a majority of their colleagues have yet to indicate they agree with Maine’s senators. Yet this bill should attract both environmentalists and capitalists: The market-driven incentives in this act steer polluters into a cap-and-trade system that rewards efficiency and encourages smart business investments. Its tradable emissions allowances may also be banked for future use, bought or sold across industries and, under certain conditions, even borrowed against future emission reductions.

The complaint against this act, a complaint advanced by the administration, among others, is that it will reduce the number of jobs or otherwise hurt the economy. The expected cost of the bill varies based on several factors but all the costs are lower than doing nothing and expecting taxpayers to pick up the cost of the effects of climate change caused by industry. Someone will pay for either the effects of the pollution or the cost of reducing pollution: The Senate’s job is to determine whether the polluting industry or the taxpaying public should be held responsible.