You may know him as Senator James Inhofe (OK). Mr. Inhofe is noted for his outspoken (and out there) nature when it comes to climate change. He has labeled global warming "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people" and even has gone as far as proclaiming that warming has ceased and that we are now experiencing a "cooling spell." In other words, the Senate's ranking Republican on the Committee on Environment and Public Works, which will be the primary committee looking at a global warming bill, will wield all of his influence to derail legislation.
How are we so sure? Well, for starters, because he said so yesterday:
In case you couldn't hear it, in reacting to the Obama Administration's decision to regulate greenhouse gases as they pose a threat to humans, Mr. Inhofe pledged to “stall that until we get a new president – that shouldn’t be a problem.” In case you forgot, we will not have a new president for at least another four years, and quite possibly not for another eight. And Mr. Inhofe seems to think that whenever that time comes, the next president will share his extreme views on global warming, which, judging by emerging leaders in even his party, seems to be an unlikely scenario at best.
And of course, he also flatly rejected the notion that the Senate will ever pass a clean energy and climate change bill.
(Just in case you were wondering where such declarations would ever be greeted with applause, Mr. Inhofe's lecture was delivered at the Heartland Institute, the vanguard of global warming denier, and healthy recipient - to the tune of $675,000 - of ExxonMobil funding.)
So keep in mind that when Mr. Inhofe and many of his like-minded colleagues will enter "negotations" on a package to revitalize our economy, improve our national security, and protect our planet, they will be doing so with one goal: to indefinitely stall action from ever being taken.
