There is only one big issue that will be decided in the Florida Republican primary next Tuesday. Unfortunately, it's an issue Florida voters don't know they are voting on.

Improbable as it may seem, the Florida Republican primary will be, in effect, a referendum on global warming.

Why is this the central issue of the Florida primary? Because if John McCain wins, he will become the overwhelming favorite and the presumptive Republican nominee going into Super Tuesday. And if McCain becomes the Republican candidate for president, then we are virtually guaranteed to have massive new energy taxes and regulations imposed in 2009. Both of the Democratic contenders back this kind of legislation, and McCain does more than back it: he has promoted it. He has embraced the global warming crusade; he has hosted Senate hearings that were strongly sympathetic to the claim that humans are causing runaway global warming; and he has co-sponsored a bill to impose a system of energy rationing. It is one of his signature issues.

Alarmists like Al Gore keep responding to the debate over global warming by declaring that the debate is over. But if McCain wins, it really will be over, as far as Congress is concerned. A President McCain would push for global warming regulations to be passed within his first 100 days, with enthusiastic support from Democrats. Republicans will be far less enthusiastic, of course—but how could they stand up against their own newly elected leader?

So by next Wednesday, the die on global warming regulations will have been cast. But do Florida Republicans even know they are casting it?

My sense is that they have no idea. Many are leaning toward McCain because of his record as a war hero, or because of his backing for the War on Terrorism, or because they like his reputation as a "maverick" and a "straight talker." But they have focused a good deal less on McCain's record on domestic issues like taxes—and global warming regulations aren't really at the forefront of their minds. So they don't realize that they're being asked to decide on this issue for the whole nation.

And that's a problem, because the fact is that there is a still great debate to be had on the issue of global warming, and contrary to the claims of folks like Al Gore and John McCain, that debate is not over. It is just beginning.

There is a debate over whether human beings really are causing global warming, and this is not just a matter of the claims of a few disgruntled skeptics. In response to a legal challenge against the showing of Al Gore's global warming documentary in British schools, for example, London's High Court held extensive hearings and questioned dozens of scientists, then ruled that showings of the film had to be accompanied by a disclaimer acknowledging nine major factual errors in the film, errors made "in the context of alarmism and exaggeration."

And it's not just Al Gore. One of the errors singled out by the High Court is the claim that the glacier on Africa's Mount Kilimanjaro are melting because of global warming. In fact, a comprehensive scientific study concluded that "warming fails spectacularly to explain the behavior of the glaciers and plateau ice on Africa's Kilimanjaro massif." It turns out that natural changes in precipitation are the actual cause, and that the glacier has been shrinking for more than a century, long before global warming could have been a cause. Yet the New York Times, undeterred by real science, still carried an article a few days ago about a tourist's desire to climb Kilimanjaro "before climate change erased its ice fields." In short, much of what you have read about global warming in the newspapers, reported as scientific fact, is demonstrably untrue.

No, I don't expect the Republican nominee to challenge all of these myths and declare that humans play no role in causing global warming. Unfortunately, the false "consensus" on global warming is too well entrenched and its critics too thoroughly vilified for a "climate change denier" to be elected. But at least we could have a Republican nominee who is not anxious to dismiss and shut down that scientific debate.

And even for those who believe that humans are causing global warming, there is still a debate to be had about whether we can or should do anything about it. For example, a large and growing amount of the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere by humans is produced by the emerging new industrial economies of China and India. Is it realistic—and is it moral—to ask the people of these countries to remain mired in poverty and to sacrifice middle-class conveniences like automobiles and air conditioners, just as those goods are finally coming within their reach? In fact, the Danish economist Bjorn Lomborg has argued that the cost to the global economy of global warming regulations far exceeds any benefits to be gained. We are better off putting no restraints on global growth, allowing people in every corner of the globe to become far wealthier and thus better able to deal with whatever the climate throws at them.

And finally, there is a debate to be had about which of the proposed solutions to global warming would be least damaging to the economy. Rudy Giuliani's response to global warming, for example, has been to advocate that the government clear the way for the construction of more nuclear power plants. This solution recognizes that energy is what makes our economy go, that we prosper when we have more power to use, not less. It is an attempt to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, not by restricting our supply of power, but by replacing current power sources with a proven alternative.

That's a far cry from McCain's solution. McCain has co-sponsored legislation that would impose a system known as "cap and trade." For major producers of energy, this proposal would impose a system of rationing. It is essentially similar to the old-fashioned World War II era rationing, in which you were allowed to buy a certain amount of gasoline only if you had the right kind of coupon on your windshield. The only difference is that in the new system, you're allowed to sell or trade your ration coupon—it would be called an "emissions allowance"—which supposedly makes the rationing more efficient. That just puts a little free-market window dressing on a system whose real essence is the old-fashioned war-time ration card.

Florida contains a large number of retirees who are, perhaps, old enough to remember ration cards back during World War II, when the scarcity was real—a temporary emergency imposed by war. But McCain is proposing energy rationing as a permanent system imposed during a time of peace and plenty.

And we're already getting some warnings about what this future of artificial scarcity will look like. A recent article in the Financial Times warns of a looming shortage of electrical power in the United States, as soon as two to three years from now. Why? Power companies have stopped building new plants—the Financial Times reports that "about 15,000 megawatts of planned coal-fired capacity has been cancelled in the past several years"—because producers are afraid that these power plants will be effectively outlawed by the new "cap and trade" system.