Alaska’s senior senator has stirred up a beehive of protest and rightly so, given Lisa Murkowski’s proposal to strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from “non-mobile sources” such as power plants and factories. (The Daily News ran a story about her efforts and the ensuing protest in Tuesday’s paper, headlined “Murkowski wants hold on gas emissions rules.”)

Without looking closely at the issue, one might suppose that the usual suspects – environmentalists – are the ones leading the charge to stop Murkowski’s pending amendment to a spending bill. And in fact, greenie groups have been sending out alerts and rallying their troops. But lots of other folks are also upset with Murkowski, including the Union of Concerned Scientists, which first alerted me to the senator’s shenanigans. The UCS is a non-partisan, science-based nonprofit which “combines scientific research and citizen action to develop innovative practical solutions and to secure responsible changes in government policy, corporate practices, and consumer choices.” In protesting Murkowski’s amendment, the UCS emphasizes that her action would keep the EPA from adequately “addressing the biggest environmental problem we face [and] will halt any serious effort by our country to effectively fight global warming.”

As reported in the Daily News, the EPA, too, wonders what the heck Murkowski is up to and notes that her amendment could, in fact, “have several negative side effects for American industry.”

More worrisome to those of us who care about addressing global warming is Murkowski’s apparent disregard for efforts to seriously address climate change. As Pat Lavin in the National Wildlife Federation’s Alaska office told ADN reporter Erika Bolstad, “I’m no longer convinced she’s looking for a solution” to our nation’s way-out-of-balance production of greenhouse gases, which contributes mightily to global warming.

Murkowski’s office of course says her intent has been misunderstood, in fact she merely wishes the government to “get it right.” By gutting EPA’s ability to do its job? It appears she’s got it all wrong.

It wasn’t so long ago that Sen. Murkowski seemed to be among the Senate’s more moderate and reasonable Republicans, but recently – perhaps reflecting her increased seniority and influence within the Senate minority – she has made a number of disappointing choices, including her opposition to Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s appointment to the Supreme Court, her standard party-line resistance to health-care reform (without presenting any viable alternative), and now her efforts to, in one clean-air advocate’s words, “handcuff the EPA.”

It is mind-boggling that a senator from Alaska, “ground zero” for the impacts of global warming in the U.S., would do anything that would stall, stonewall, or block government attempts to control and diminish industry’s contributions to climate change. Her proposal seems especially wrong-headed when President Barack Obama is emphasizing to the world America’s commitment to finally take a leadership role in the effort to address global warming and the immense changes it is already bringing. Murkowski’s amendment would be an awfully big step backward in that effort.