According to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), if airlines were a country, they would be the world’s seventh biggest polluter. Aviation carbon emissions are expected to rise to 3.5 billion tons by 2050. The European Union’s requirement that all airplanes landing in the EU reduce the carbon pollution that is causing global warming, would lower carbon dioxide emissions by 70 million tons per year – equivalent to taking 30 million cars off the road.

On Saturday, September 22, 2012, a bill to prohibit operators of civil aircraft of the United States from participating in the European Union’s emissions trading scheme to reduce carbon pollution from airplanes passed in the United States Senate by unanimous consent. The Senate bill, S. 1956, co-sponsored by Senator John Thune (R-SD) and Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO), will allow U.S. airlines to ignore the European Union’s requirement that they reduce their carbon pollution that is causing global warming. If the U.S.-based airlines choose to ignore the E.U. law, they could be on the hook to pay huge penalties, which undoubtedly and inevitably will be a cost passed on to consumers.

I am less concerned about the price of my airline ticket than I am about the significant costs that come with our federal government’ and our Congress’ inability to get out of its own way when it comes to responsibly acting to reduce the threat of climate change. I understand that this is election season, and some of the Senate races are tight, and airlines can be powerful lobbyists, but, it is 2012 and an anti-climate emissions control bill is passing via unanimous consent in the United States Senate? Either climate change is really happening or it isn’t.

I expect Fox News, the Tea Party, and even the Wall Street Journal to get its facts wrong about climate change. They have attempted to undermine climate science conclusions by cherry-picking data and attacking individual scientists every chance they get. And, I am not so naïve to think that control of emissions responsible for climate change will ever happen with a Republican majority in Congress (even though the United States Supreme Court said carbon dioxide could be regulated by the federal government nearly 6 years ago). But, I am completely flabbergasted by the fact that the United States Senate unanimously acted to defeat the effectiveness of a good climate reduction law. Not a single Senator stood up in opposition. Not a single Senator even used this as an opportunity to speak publicly about climate change and the implications that passing an anti-emissions control bill via unanimous consent would have on our collective campaign to stop climate change.

For 650,000 years atmospheric carbon dioxide has never been above 300 parts per million. Today, it is screaming toward 400 parts per million. The Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of 1,300 independent scientific experts from countries all over the world, under the auspices of the United Nations, concluded there’s a more than 90 percent probability that human activities over the past 250 years have warmed our planet.

And, the rocket scientists agree. That’s right. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s or NASA’s website states that “the current warming trend is of particular significance because most of it is very likely human-induced and proceeding at a rate that is unprecedented in the past 1,300 years.” The scientific evidence for the warming of our climate is unequivocal and the cause of it, which should be obvious at this point, is the uncontrolled global burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas). The effects of a warming climate are only slightly more obvious than the fact that the climate is warming and humans are causing it.

For example, this is the second time in less than two years that the Petermann Glacier in Greenland has calved icebergs double and quadruple the size of Manhattan. Global sea level rose almost 7 inches in the last century, but the rate in the last decade is nearly double that of the last century. Arctic sea ice is retreating and thinning at unprecedented rates, West Nile Virus is now something for which people cancel summer events and New Englanders are still recovering from significant storm events that have wiped out whole communities.

At 2 a.m. on September 22, 2012, the United States Senate voted by unanimous consent that U.S. airlines could choose to ignore the European Union’s requirement that all airplanes landing in the EU reduce their carbon pollution that is causing global warming. Either climate change is happening or it isn’t. But, once you look at the data, once you subscribe to the opinion that it is happening, you have an affirmative obligation to take all reasonable steps to responsibly address the problem. If the Senate believes the evidence of 1300 scientists, NASA, and their own eyes, they should vote accordingly.