Thousands and thousands of climate science advocates — including me — will be in Copenhagen next month trying to advance an international deal that gives the world a chance to avoid catastrophic global warming.
And then there will be the man even the Washington Post calls “the last flat-earther,” Sen. James Inhofe (R-OIL). Why is he going? The Ada Evening News reported Monday:
Inhofe said he still intends to attend the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Conference.
“I’m always the spoiler at this thing. Last night I was on the Larry Kudlow show. He said, ‘Inhofe is the one-man truth squad going to Copenhagen.’ So when Barbara Boxer, John Kerry and all the left get up there and say, ‘Yes. We’re going to pass a global warming bill,’ I will be able to stand up and say, ‘No, it’s over. Get a life. You lost. I won,’ ” Inhofe said.
Sadly, the U.S. Constitution restriction — “No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years” — applies only to physical age. The senior junior-high-school Senator from Oklahoma is proof of that. What’s next for Inhofe? Perhaps during the Senate floor debate he plans to say “La, la, la, la, I can’t hear you”?
Inhofe makes other equally revealing nonsense statements in the interview:
“The far left is trying so hard to get a cap-and-trade now,” Inhofe said
Yes, Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) are the “far left” — see Graham, Kerry, and Lieberman “will be working closely with the White House” to develop separate tripartisan climate bill to get 60 votes; Graham rebukes fellow Republicans saying, “The green economy is coming!”
That statement just shows you how far, far, far right Inhofe is.
Inhofe said the Committee on Environment and Public Works passed the John Kerry—Barbara Boxer global warming bill without any Republican votes.
“We set up the rules of the Environment and Public Works Committee way back in 1970—a long time ago. The rules say that you can’t report a bill out of the committee to go to the floor of the Senate unless there are two members of the minority there,” Inhofe said. “What we did was I told all of the Republicans not to go so they couldn’t have an official mark-up.”
It’s good that he finally admitted the truth that the GOP claim this was all about waiting for more EPA analysis was as bogus as everyone thought. He just wanted to kill the bill. But since that bill isn’t going to the floor, his whole effort was wasted.
The entire article makes clear that Inhofe channels Groucho “Whatever it is, I’m against it” Marx. It opens:
Although the healthcare bill made it through the House of Representatives on Saturday, United States Senator Jim Inhofe said it would face a harder road in the Senate.
“We will kill it in the Senate,” Inhofe said. “I think the main thing I want to get across is it doesn’t really matter because it (the healthcare bill) is not going anywhere.”
That’s The Audacity of Nope.
Ironically — or is that “tragically”? — if we don’t have a climate bill, future generations are going to need a lot better health care:
- Climate change endangers human health
- NRC: Burning fossil fuels costs the U.S. $120 billion a year — not counting mercury or climate impacts!
- Global Warming Is A Medical Emergency”: Hellish heatwaves to harm health of millions
- The Lancet’s landmark Health Commission: “Climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century”
- Climate change helps spread dengue fever in 28 states
The article ends with even more irony:
Inhofe said he has secured many funds for Ada, including $440,000 for a water tower for the city, $500,000 for the Ada Public Works Authority to treat Ada’s wastewater/sewer system, $250,000 for the Wintersmith Dam along with other funds for the city.
Imagine that — Inhofe has brought in more than $1 million for water-related projects for the city.
Well, Ada is going to need those projects even more if the nation and the world actually listens to Inhofe and fails to take serious action on climate and clean energy, since on our current emissions path most of Oklahoma is projected to turn into a permanent dust bowl in the second half of this century.
Two years ago, Science (subs. req’d)
published research that “predicted a permanent drought by 2050 throughout the Southwest” on our current emissions path — levels of aridity comparable to the 1930s Dust Bowl would stretch from Kansas and Oklahoma to California. The Bush Administration itself reaffirmed this conclusion in December (see US Geological Survey stunner: SW faces “permanent drying” by 2050.)
But hey, the newspaper’s website notes it has been “Serving Ada, Oklahoma since 1904.” So it’ll be able to rerun those old Dust Bowl stories — for a long, long time (see NOAA stunner: Climate change “largely irreversible for 1000 years,” with permanent Dust Bowls in Southwest and around the globe).
h/t Media Matters.
