Yesterday's climate-change debate between current Senator Kerry and former Speaker Gingrich seems to have earned a big raise for all concerned.

It raised awareness of the urgent need to deal with the science of global climate change in a responsible manner.

It raised questions of why smart people from both sides of the issues can't work together more often to find mutually-acceptable solutions to common problems.

It raised the bar for reasonable, rational, respectful discourse between persons from different partisan political parties.

It raised eyebrows on the part of pundits who had been predicting a 'smackdown' but got a hug fest instead.

It raised the hopes of those who believe progressive politics is finally on the rebound in America.

And it raised the hackles of arch-conservatives who bitterly accused their erstwhile standard-bearer of selling out to those terrible tree-hugging leftists.

(I especially like that last aspect of it -- let the über-right wingnuts go choke on their own vile bile. Sorry, you whackjobs, Gingrich's goin' green. Deal with it.)

All things considered, this was a pleasantly (and surprisingly) civilized, informative, and even entertaining two hours of watching intelligent persons debate the pros and cons of serious issues in meaningful detail. There's not a lot of that going around these days.

As the moderator mentioned towards the end of the event, if only Presidential debates could be done the same way as this one was. Things would go ever so much better for all of us if they did.

(FYI -- video of the whole debate is available on http://c-span.org and will be posted in a slightly time-trimmed version on Kerry's website by the end of the day. There's a good sampling of some of the blog posts and MSM reports on yesterday's climate change debate on Kerry's blog as well.)