The best way to create a problem is to tie seemingly unrelated issues together:

Much more than the future of US health care hangs on the fate of health care reform. That was the message delivered by Connecticut senator Joseph Lieberman, a long-term environmental campaigner, to Capitol Hill on the Senate's first day back in office after the August recess.

"If the health care bill fails, the climate change bill will fail too," Lieberman told the Climate Change, Energy and National Security conference hosted by the political think tank Partnership for a Secure America yesterday.

The system of quid pro quo favors between politicians succeeds at creating connections where naturally none exists. Logically, solutions to global warming and health care problems should be evaluated on their own merits. But in practice, by acting opposite to the recommendations of the separation principle, politicians tie them together to create problems for their opponents.