On Saturday, The Times’s business section featured two reports from unexpected parts of the country that should cheer the bipartisan coalition in the Senate that wants to move ahead quickly on legislation limiting emissions of carbon dioxide, the main global warming gas. The reports provide further evidence, if any were needed, that Congress should not listen to the coal industry’s siren call for special treatment.

One report, from Montana, described an increasingly vocal movement opposed to new coal-fired power plants on the Great Plains. The movement includes not only the usual suspects in the environmental community but also conservative and largely Republican ranchers worried about the impact of global warming on their water supply.

In addition, The Times reported that a state regulator in Kansas had denied a permit for a large coal-fired power plant because of the global warming gases it would emit. As far as anyone knows, that’s the first time that a power plant has been blocked for that reason alone.

Now it’s Washington’s turn. A Senate subcommittee will soon take up a very promising global warming bill written by Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and John Warner of Virginia — the first step in what could be an arduous legislative journey. The bill would place a mandatory, declining cap on emissions from the electric power, manufacturing and transportation sectors of the economy. It aims to cut total emissions to 63 percent below 2005 levels by 2050, less than many scientists say is necessary but still very ambitious.

The coal industry will try very hard to weaken the bill, and it has assembled a large war chest for that purpose. Coal accounts for just over half the electricity generated in America and 30 percent of its carbon dioxide emissions. Unless ways can be found to replace coal as an energy source or to capture its emissions, the global warming game is essentially lost. More than 120 new coal-fired power plants are on the drawing boards in this country. Of those, only a small percent are likely to be equipped with technologies that could reduce emissions.

The Lieberman-Warner bill makes it clear that coal-fired power plants, new or old, will be forced to meet stiff new emissions targets just like everyone else. Dirty plants, in short, will pay heavily, as they should. That is the only way to encourage the utilities to find cleaner ways of burning coal and, even better, alternative energy sources.

Until the United States takes the lead, other big emitters — starting with China, which is building the equivalent of one large coal-fired plant every week — will feel no pressure to act.