She acknowledges the toll global warming is taking on the 49th state, and that kind of Republican moderation could be in short supply when the dust settles after November's elections.
It is also worth remembering that Murkowski co-sponsored a cap-and-trade bill in 2007, voted for an energy committee bill that included a 15 percent renewable electricity standard and is considered a potential swing vote on climate legislation, though not a bill with as much punch as the American Clean Energy and Security Act.
Still, Murkowski can be an environmentalist's nightmare.
"Murkowski is a little bit of a hard animal to pin down," Elizabeth Martin Perera, a legislative liaison with the Union of Concerned Scientists, notes in an interview. ... She frustrates conservation organizations by calling her attacks on the EPA benign when they aren't, supporting weak climate legislation and watering down the renewable electricity standard included in the bill that emerged from the energy committee chaired by Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., who is known as a fair and open-minded negotiator.
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