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A bipartisan group of 32 former secretaries of State, national security advisers, senators, military leaders and senior foreign policy officials are urging Congress to pass legislation aimed at reducing the country's dependence on petroleum, curbing greenhouse gas emissions and mitigating the effects of climate change.

"Doing so now will help avoid humanitarian disasters and political instability in the future that could ultimately threaten the security of the U.S. and our allies," the former officials said in a statement released by the Partnership for a Secure America, a group created in 2005 by senior Democrats and Republicans seeking bipartisan progress on difficult foreign policy challenges.

At a Tuesday forum sponsored by the group on Capitol Hill, Frank Wisner, a career diplomat who served in a number of key government posts at the State and Defense departments, as well as an ambassador to India, the Philippines, Egypt and Zambia, said climate change affects water and food supplies, contributes to mass migration and refugee crises, and destabilizes weak governments.

"We must take this issue on as a matter of foreign policy and exercise leadership," said Wisner, one of the statement's signatories.

While the group does not endorse the controversial climate change legislation narrowly passed by the House in late June and now under consideration in the Senate, they do urge the Senate to take up the issue soon and forge a comprehensive, bipartisan plan to address the crisis. The House bill would implement a cap-and-trade system to eliminate 17 percent of greenhouse gas emissions by 2017, and 83 percent by 2050. Such gases, produced as a result of burning fossil fuels such as oil and coal, contribute to climate change, according to scientists.

R. James Woolsey, CIA director from 1993 to 1995, another signatory, said the House bill would do little to curb U.S. dependence on oil, which creates key national security vulnerabilities for the United States.

"It's not a question of imported oil versus domestic oil -- it's oil," Woolsey said. "We need to destroy its monopoly on transportation."

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., also speaking at the forum, said climate change is unquestionably a matter of national security, but the economic stakes are so high domestically that it has become an exceptionally difficult political issue. He has been working with advocates and opponents of a cap-and-trade system to find common ground for Senate-crafted legislation.

Any bill the Senate produces will have to include support for both nuclear energy and the aggressive development of clean coal technology, he said, citing the centrality of coal to electricity production in the United States.

Lieberman predicted that progress on climate change would depend on how health care reform pans out in the Senate. "If health care ends in failure, Obama will come into this fight much weaker," he said.