If you're looking for a preview of what might happen to climate and energy legislation when it gets to the U.S. Senate later this summer, I commend my colleague Mike Coleman's column in today's Journal on the energy bill that just emerged from Jeff Bingaman's Senate energy committee:

The ink wasn't even dry on Sen. Jeff Bingaman's national energy bill last week before environmentalists starting ripping it to shreds.

"The standards are so weak and there are so many loopholes that the renewable (energy) requirements are nearly worthless," declared the League of Women Voters.

The bill "will put our coasts at risk, feed our addiction to oil and do nothing to help build the clean energy economy - all while benefiting Big Oil," lamented the Sierra Club.

"This bill must be dramatically improved," concluded Environment New Mexico.

Bingaman, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the chief architect of the wide-ranging bill that cleared the committee Wednesday, was stoic in the face of the withering criticism.

Jeff Bingaman is an experienced master at the delicate problem of counting to 60 votes on energy issues. That's the number of votes needed to move legislation along in the face of a threatened filibuster. While the details of the issue might change once the complication of cap-and-trade greenhouse regulation is folded in, what we saw passing out of the energy committee offers some clues as to the nature of the arguments to come.

In particular, Mike captures the key issue:

Sure, Democrats have a three-vote majority on the committee, but most energy issues aren't partisan - they're regional. Lawmakers vote on energy policy depending on what it will mean for their state.

Some senators don't have a lot of wind or solar at home, so they're reluctant to support a federal mandate that their utility companies would struggle to comply with. Sen. Mary Landrieu, a Louisiana Democrat, is a prime example. Sen. Evan Bayh, an Indiana Democrat, is another. So, it was Democrats on the committee - in a sense as much as Republicans - who thwarted a stronger renewable energy standard.

The arithmetic will change somewhat at the full senate level, but the key issue here is that the final shape of energy and climate legislation in the Senate is not a D-vs.-R issue, but something far more complex.