By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent

WASHINGTON, Feb 6 (Reuters) - The fight against climate change isn't just for Democrats any more.

Democrats used to own the environmental issue, grabbing votes from party loyalists and independent voters when they stressed their plans to curb global warming. But 2008 could be the year Republicans use climate change as a rallying point at election time.

The reason, according to former Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, is that this is an issue that draws multiple constituencies. And that's what Republicans need after losing control of both houses of Congress in 2006.

"Republicans lost in 2006 because independents abandoned our party," Mehlman said at a political discussion several weeks before the Feb. 5 Super Tuesday vote.

"How do we earn the confidence back of independents? This (climate change) is an issue on which not only you can do it, but it's an issue on which you can do it consistent with conservative values," Mehlman said.

Economic conservatives see the technological solutions to climate change as a way to create more wealth and jobs, and many corporate leaders have pushed for a federal limit on carbon emissions to prevent a patchwork of state laws.

Religious conservatives embrace cutting carbon emissions as an aspect of human stewardship of divine creation.

National security conservatives argue that reducing dependence on foreign oil would cut off funding for anti-U.S. elements in the Middle East and elsewhere.

This stance is at odds with the current administration, which is alone among major industrialized countries in opposing the carbon-capping Kyoto Protocol.

President George W. Bush has said the Kyoto plan, which expires in 2012, would put the United States at a disadvantage if fast-growing developing countries like China and India are exempt from its requirements.

On Capitol Hill, though, Republican Sen. John Warner of Virginia has taken the lead, co-sponsoring a bill to cap the carbon dioxide emissions that spur climate change. Arizona Sen. John McCain, running for the Republican presidential nomination, sponsored an earlier climate change bill.

BIPARTISAN SUPPORT

Former Republican Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister now running for president, has been light on specifics to combat climate change but has said that whatever is causing it, humans are responsible for cleaning it up.

By contrast, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney won last month's Republican primary in Michigan -- where his father served as governor and where the Big Three automakers are based -- after taking aim at McCain's support for increased fuel efficiency, saying this would hurt the U.S. auto industry.

In California, the biggest prize of "Super Tuesday," Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has headed a campaign to set tougher-than-federal emissions standards for cars, light trucks and sport utility vehicles, and that plan has been taken up by 16 other states.

To do this, the states need a waiver from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which has so far not been granted. McCain, Huckabee and Romney have said at a candidates' debate they support the waiver, though Romney later modified his answer.

In the presidential race, where "change" has become a mantra for candidates on both sides of the aisle, Democrats Hillary Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois have strongly supported so-called cap-and-trade plans to limit emissions of climate-warming carbon.

"The clear bipartisan support for capping global warming pollution should be a wake-up call for Congress," said Tony Kreindler of the non-partisan group Environmental Defense.

Polls generally show U.S. voters rank climate change below the top tier issues, such as the economy and the war in Iraq, a finding disputed by David Sandretti of the League of Conservation Voters.

"Pollsters put the environment in this little box and pretend that it doesn't bleed over into other issues," Sandretti said in a telephone interview. He noted, as Mehlman did, that climate change is tied to national security, and added that it was also linked to the U.S. energy future.

"You can't address global warming without dealing with the energy issue, and the energy issue pervades all aspects of America's political life," Sandretti said. (Editing by Todd Eastham)

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